The Story After 800,000 RMB in Debt · Episode 1
2026-07-02 · Leafer
Something I'm Grateful For
Life has felt a little lighter recently.
For the past several months, multiple loans have been reaching maturity, and I woke up every month knowing I had more than 30,000 RMB in repayments waiting for me. For someone who has spent the last five years building an open-source project largely on my own, it has been a heavy burden.
Fortunately, the core foundation of LeaferJS is now essentially complete, and our commercialization efforts are finally starting to work. More and more companies are purchasing our PxGrow commercial plugins, and the income is now enough to cover most of the project's expenses. Whenever it wasn't enough, I had to rely on help from family and friends to get through.
Recently, several companies building AI infinite canvas products purchased our performance plugins, and I've also been busy developing an advanced commercial plugin for Client Z. Thanks to this new income, I can finally cover my essential expenses for the coming months.
Most importantly, I no longer have to keep borrowing money just to stay afloat.
That alone has made me incredibly grateful.
A Story I'd Like to Share
Today I'd like to share the story of Client Z.
They build professional design software for a specialized industry. Although we're business partners, our relationship feels much closer than that. Maybe it's because we're both entrepreneurs, both trying to build great design tools, and we share a similar taste in products.
I first met their technical lead through the open-source community. Over the years, we've stayed in close contact. They've reported bugs, shared valuable suggestions, and continuously helped improve LeaferJS.
Building open-source infrastructure and keeping it alive is far from easy. That's why I'm always grateful to companies willing to support us. They were also among the earliest adopters of our commercial plugins.
At first, they simply wanted to give one plugin a try. After experiencing the productivity improvements, they gradually adopted almost all of our commercial plugins.
One day, their CEO told me:
"What you've built is genuinely better than what our competitors have. Your performance plugins, in particular, create a noticeable advantage in canvas responsiveness."
Hearing that meant a lot to me.
Because we've always focused on the deepest layers of the technology stack—the work that users rarely notice. Only teams building professional software truly understand how much difference that foundation makes.
The more I work on LeaferJS, the more I realize that our mission isn't simply to build another Canvas engine.
We want to solve the hardest, most time-consuming infrastructure problems so that other teams don't have to spend years solving the same challenges again.
Moving Forward with Real Customer Needs
Recently, Client Z encountered an even more difficult technical challenge—one their own engineering team couldn't easily solve.
They asked whether I could build an advanced commercial plugin specifically for them.
I accepted without hesitation.
Partly because I wanted to help them succeed, and partly because I knew some of the technologies involved would eventually benefit LeaferJS itself.
To tackle this challenge, I went back and rebuilt my understanding of WebGL from the ground up.
From constructing geometry efficiently to pushing rendering performance to its limits, I worked through every layer until everything came together.
This is exactly what I enjoy about low-level engineering.
The process is often painful, but once it's finished, both the customer and I benefit. They get the solution they need, and I gain a much deeper understanding of the underlying technology.
Looking back, many of our biggest technical breakthroughs weren't carefully planned in advance.
They were driven, step by step, by real customer needs.
Let the Market Decide What's Next
LeaferJS has now been open source for five years.
To be honest, both financially and personally, I've reached the limit of what one person can realistically sustain.
The good news is that the core foundation of LeaferJS is now essentially complete. For most projects, the open-source version already provides everything needed.
So from this point forward, I'd like to develop advanced features through community crowdfunding.
Instead of deciding everything myself, I'd rather let real market demand determine what gets built next.
If enough people genuinely need a feature and are willing to support it, we'll bring together outstanding developers to build it properly.
Since we're talking about the future, here are two features many people have been asking about:
- A WebGPU Accelerator — If I launch a crowdfunding campaign, how many people would be interested?
- An SVG Export Plugin — This could also be community-funded, allowing us to invite some of the best experts in the field to help build it.
As for the AI Challenge that I announced earlier, development work has forced me to pause it for a while. My next step is to continue seeking sponsors and bring it back.
The challenge isn't just a competition.
It's a way to discover talented developers, connect great teams, and help the entire LeaferJS ecosystem grow together.
More importantly, it will help LeaferJS gain visibility among AI foundation model companies.
Our long-term vision remains unchanged:
To become the underlying platform for building unified 2D and 3D user interfaces in the AI era.
Canvas is only where the journey begins.
Final Thoughts
Over the years, I've shared many goals that probably sounded overly ambitious.
Looking back now, I realize they're gradually becoming reality.
Maybe not as quickly as I once imagined.
But the direction has never changed.
I've always believed that when someone truly loves what they're building—and is willing to spend ten years, twenty years, or even a lifetime pursuing it—many things that seem impossible today will eventually become possible.