author:
Jarseed @Bitget Research, Maggie @Foresight Ventures
TL;DR
Story is a Layer 1 blockchain designed specifically for intellectual property (IP). Story provides a transparent, decentralized IP asset issuance and management solution that enables IP holders to protect their content, collaborate seamlessly on the chain, and create more revenue opportunities.
The various modules (authorization module, royalty module, dispute module, etc.) included in IPA (IP Assets) allow IP assets to be operated in a standardized manner on the chain, releasing greater financial potential by using the characteristics of blockchain (traceability, composability, etc.).
Story will be the best choice for AI application assetization. Through Story, the value capture process of any IP asset will be protected by smart contracts, and the capital flow and on-chain ownership confirmation can be clearly completed.
It is easier for consumers to understand and consume IP assets (such as artwork, music, games, AI agents) without the need for consumers to learn and understand complex cryptography knowledge.
一、Story Begin
What is Story
Story is a Layer 1 blockchain designed specifically for intellectual property. It combines the advantages of EVM and Cosmos SDK, is 100% EVM compatible, and is deeply optimized at the execution layer, enabling it to quickly and efficiently process complex data structures such as intellectual property.
What are IP Assets or IPA?
IPA is the basic intellectual property metadata that can be programmed on Story. Simply put, IPA consists of an ERC-721 standard NFT and an ERC-6551 standard TBA (Token Bound Account) IP binding account. NFT represents IP, and TBA is an independent contract bound to IP assets, which is used to control the permissions to interact with the Story module or store IP-related data.
Although IP assets use the ERC-721 standard NFT, the metadata it contains is a well-designed data structure specifically for IP assets.
IPA Metadata Standard
There are some defined attributes in IP assets, such as relationships. This attribute has 40 different types of definitions in the Story to deal with IP affiliation in various situations.
What is an IP Account?
The IP account is an EOA account bound to the IP, implemented through the ERC-6551 standard. For details, please refer to EIP-6551.
IP Account Structure
IP accounts mainly perform two functions:
Store data related to the IP: including metadata and ownership information of assets associated with it (such as licensing tokens or royalty tokens derived from the IP).
Support modules to use this data: These modules interact with IP accounts and add and store data to them. For example, the functions of modules such as authorization, revenue/royalty sharing, work mixing, IP dispute resolution, etc. all rely on the programmability of IP accounts.
IPA's module design and existing core modules
Due to the existence of IP accounts, IP assets can not only store IP-related data, but also interact with various modules through the ERC-165 standard interface. Any user can customize the development module. Story defines 4 core modules, namely:
Licensing Module: The Licensing Module allows users to create a license from a licensing template (i.e., Programmable IP License, PIL) and attach it to an IP asset. The licensing terms defined in this license restrict how others can use your IP for commercial development or joint creation. If an IP asset has licensing terms attached, anyone can mint a licensing token from it, which serves as a license to use the work and is subject to the licensing terms. This will establish a parent-child relationship between IP assets, thereby activating features such as automatic royalty transfers achieved through the Royalty Module.
License Templates
Royalty Module: The royalty module defines how revenue flows between parent IP assets and child IP assets. The following are two common revenue flow scenarios. Subsequent articles will break down actual cases in different application scenarios:
Minting License Tokens: When a license token is minted from an IP asset, a minting fee may be paid. When someone (who wishes to register a derivative work or simply hold a license) pays this fee, revenue should flow up the chain.
Direct Tipping: If someone sends income directly to an IP asset, that income should also flow up the chain.
Royalty Flow
Dispute Module: The Dispute Module provides users with a way to raise and resolve disputes through arbitration. The main components of the arbitration system include:
Arbitration Policy: An arbitration policy is a set of rules, procedures, and entities that together determine the outcome of a dispute. Currently, the only supported arbitration policy is the UMA Arbitration Policy.
Arbitration Penalty: Refers to the consequences of an IP asset being "flagged". An IP asset is considered "flagged" only if a dispute is adjudicated correctly. Once flagged, the IP asset will be unable to mint license tokens, link to any parent assets, receive royalty income, and use all existing licenses.
Tags: Story has 4 preset types of tags that can be used to mark disputed assets, including: illegal registration (i.e. registration of existing IP assets), illegal use (inappropriate use of the authorization contained in the IP assets), illegal payment and content standard violations.
Dispute Process Flow
Grouping Module: The Grouping Module supports the creation and management of grouped IP assets and provides royalty pool functionality for the grouping.
2. Innovative Exploration of IP Asset Application
After understanding the basic features and modules of IP assets, we naturally recognize the advantages of Story. IP assets can help content creators easily build a copyright empire protected by smart contracts and decentralized networks. All intellectual property rights of content creators are protected and can also participate in a large number of financial derivative activities. So, let's brainstorm, what can we do on Story?
IP asset issuance and IP asset features
Blockchain gives everyone the equal right to issue assets. Story protects everyone's intellectual property rights by designing a complete asset structure and execution module, and provides a comprehensive functional framework for intellectual property registration, application, title confirmation, and royalty transfer.
Do you still remember the surprise and carnival that BAYC and Azuki brought to the crypto community? The crypto community has racked their brains to come up with various solutions to empower their NFTs. Let us directly use the case to illustrate what it would be like if BAYC was released on Story?
If BAYC on Story
First, as the holder of the BAYC IP, Yuga Lab can now register BAYC on Story as an intellectual property asset, or IPA. After registration, different authorization templates (PILs) can be set for BAYC to constrain the specific restrictions on the use of the BAYC IP in different scenarios.
Secondly, the royalty module of the BAYC IP will be bound to 100 million royalty tokens, which is an ERC20 standard token. Its main function is to divide the corresponding share of the royalty treasury of the BAYC IP.
Finally, as the publisher of IPA, Yuga Lab can issue its first specific product using the BAYC IP, the BAYC 10K Collection, which is 10,000 monkey NFTs of various shapes. Of course, this NFT series is issued after minting BAYC's authorization tokens. Yuga Lab can stipulate in the authorization that 5% (settable) of all sub-IP revenues will flow into BAYC's treasury.
IfStory Protocol
As can be seen from the above figure, Story has designed a complete licensing and royalty system for IP assets. Under this system, the holder of IP assets does not need to spend extra energy on IP licensing and royalty income. Similarly, in this system, there are more business logics and transaction opportunities that did not exist in the blockchain industry before, or are difficult to evaluate. Let's interpret them one by one.
IP asset licensing income: BAYC, as the parent IP, is open to multiple product lines or other creators who are willing to create under the BAYC brand. Both product lines and other creators need to mint licensing tokens, and the minting fee of licensing tokens is the direct income of the parent IP assets.
IP asset royalty income: BAYC is the parent IP, and the linked royalty token can extract all the income under its IP. The main income of the income treasury comes from the minting fee of IP authorization tokens and various incomes of sub-IPs (sub-IP authorization token minting fees and direct income).
IP asset authorization token transactions: For a well-known IP, its authorization tokens may be a high cost, whether it is the minting price or the secondary market circulation price. And this is a completely practical token, and for well-known IPs, there may be a shortage of supply.
Royalty token transactions of IP assets: The royalty tokens of IP assets directly enjoy the revenue dividends of the corresponding IP assets. The market can clearly estimate the corresponding IP revenue, thereby reflecting it more promptly on the price of royalty tokens. Similarly, there is also expected speculation on the price of royalty tokens.
When IP assets achieve clear authorization and royalty flow under Story, we naturally think that the transactions of IP assets will be more diversified.
Story Architecture
IP asset transactions
In the existing DeFi world, very clear tracks have been formed, each with its own strengths. For example, Uniswap is the leader in DEX, Opensea is the leader in NFT Marketplace, and Pendle is the leader in Yield token trading. Although the form of trading assets has not changed fundamentally in Story, it is still ERC20 and ERC721, but the fundamentals of the tokens themselves have changed dramatically.
For example, the royalty tokens of well-known IP assets. As long as the business empire of the IP can continue to grow and develop, the royalties generated by its licensing fees and direct consumption will all flow into the income treasury of the parent IP, and then the copyright tokens of the parent IP will have a clear hype logic. So can we imagine that, similar to the stock trading software in real life, there will be such a DEX that clearly displays the income of copyright tokens and the forecast of future income to traders, after all, these data are all available on the chain and can be checked and traced.
Authorization tokens of well-known IP assets will also become an emerging hype target. There are two situations in which authorization tokens may be hyped: one is that the number of authorization tokens is limited, and the other is that the popularity and income of IP assets gradually increase, and the value of its authorization tokens continues to increase. Since authorization tokens are ERC721 standard tokens, in the platform for trading authorization tokens, users will also be more inclined to use trading platforms that can reflect the fundamental information of authorization tokens.
Going further, if the royalty tokens and authorization tokens of IP assets have trading logic based on future cash flows, then these tokens can be split into PT (Principal Token) and YT (Yield Token) for trading, Pendle, you know I'm talking about you.
IP asset mortgage
In the DeFi world, there is another track that cannot be ignored, that is asset mortgage and lending. AAVE is in charge of $21 billion TVL with an unshakable position, of which more than 85% of the assets are ETH tokens.
AAVE performance
AAVE TVL Assets
Back to the world of IP assets, can IP assets be used for mortgage lending? Can authorization tokens and copyright tokens also be used for mortgage lending? I think the answer is yes.
In the real world, we have seen countless cases where IP assets are used as collateral for loans. For example, in 2009, Disney pledged Marvel IP for future film development and obtained a $525 million loan from Merrill Lynch. The main evaluation dimensions of IP pledge financing include: historical commercial performance of IP, audience base and market recognition, future development and monetization potential, IP life cycle and sustainability, industry environment and market prospects, etc. On Story, the performance of IP assets is transparent and traceable, which reduces the difficulty of evaluating IP pledge financing. Therefore, there is reason to believe that the mortgage lending of IP assets will become the core of what Story calls IPFi.
More
The above examples are just the tip of the iceberg in Story's ecological applications. For more ecological use cases, please refer to the use cases in the official documentation.
https://docs.story.foundation/docs/introduction
3. Fertile Ground for Innovation in AI Agents
In early 2024, Fei-Fei Li and her team published a paper at Stanford University (AI Agent: A Survey of Frontiers in Multimodal Interaction), which explored how AI agents can make autonomous decisions and actions by perceiving visual, language, and other environmental data. This research has received positive responses from academia and industry.
AI Agents See Steep Growth
The magical turning point occurred in July this year. Terminal of Truths (ToT) is an AI model developed by Andy Ayrey, which attracted a lot of attention with its humor and creativity. This AI interacted with users through social media and successfully sought financial support from Marc Andreessen, the founder of the well-known venture capital firm A16Z. This event not only demonstrated a new way of interaction between AI and the investment community, but also triggered discussions about the autonomy and governance of AI agents. Then, a token closely related to ToT, $GOAT, appeared on Pump.fun and skyrocketed, officially igniting the craze of the entire AI Agent Meme narrative.
AI Agent storm
The emergence of valuable AI agents
Then, a large number of interesting and practical AI Agents appeared on the market. For example:
Luna: AI K-pop idol
Fan Interaction: Luna on Virtuals Protocol is an AI idol with 6 million followers on TikTok, demonstrating the huge potential of AI in the entertainment and social media sectors. This AI K-pop idol is able to interact with fans in real time, which is not only a technological breakthrough, but also changes the traditional way fans and idols interact. Luna's success also shows the possibilities of AI in creating virtual idols, which may be more efficient and cost-effective than traditional idols.
Transactional capabilities: Luna’s ability to conduct transactions on social media platforms means that AI is not just a content creator and disseminator, but can also participate in economic activities. This capability provides a new perspective on the role of AI in the digital economy, showing how AI can directly influence users’ consumption behavior.
Officer
AI16Z: AI Venture Capital Fund
AI-driven venture capital fund: AI16Z's innovation lies in using AI to make investment decisions, which means that investment is no longer completely dependent on human subjective judgment, but combines big data analysis, market trend prediction and AI computing power to make decisions. This model may bring higher efficiency and accuracy, reducing the impact of human bias.
Community participation and governance: AI16Z is also a DAO organization that allows its community members to influence its investment decisions by holding its tokens.
project
ai16z
AIXBT: AI Crypto Market Analyst
Crypto Market Analysis: AIXBT focuses on providing analysis and insights into the cryptocurrency market, which is a very useful tool in the highly volatile cryptocurrency market. As an AI Agent active 24/7, the information it provides can help users understand market dynamics in real time and make smarter investment decisions.
Social media use: By being active on Twitter, AIXBT leverages the immediacy and reach of social media platforms to disseminate its analysis results. This not only broadens its influence, but also demonstrates how AI can communicate and exchange information efficiently with human users.
Eliza Framework: This is a key component in the development of AI16Z technology. It provides a flexible AI toolkit for creating unique and interactive characters that can be connected to platforms such as Discord and Twitter. The framework is used to build encrypted AI agents that can perform tasks such as reading links, PDFs, audio and video, memorizing conversations and summarizing them.
AIXBT
Zerebro: AI Artist
Diverse content creation: Zerebro's ability to generate various forms of artistic content, including music, memes, and NFTs. This diversity demonstrates the potential of AI in artistic creation, blurring the line between human creativity and AI-generated content.
Cross-platform collaboration: Zerebro not only creates content, but also collaborates with other creators to produce artworks. This shows that AI can be used as a collaborative tool, rather than a mere replacement, to help human artists expand their creative boundaries and explore new art forms and expressions.
ZerePy framework: ZerePy is an open source Python framework designed to allow users to deploy their own AI agents on the X platform. These agents are powered by language models from OpenAI or Anthropic. ZerePy is designed to make it easy for people without programming experience to deploy AI agents, a bit like the role of website builders in web design. It is built with a modular Zerebro backend, providing the possibility to launch your own AI agents.
These AI Agents have given us a lot of surprises. They not only demonstrate the progress of technology, but also reveal the potential of AI in different fields, from entertainment to finance to artistic creation. They are changing the way we interact with technology. At the same time, they have strong profit potential and are valuable intellectual property (IP).
So what constitutes IP for AI Agents? We think it includes:
Unique technologies and algorithms: These AI agents are based on unique algorithms and machine learning models, which are valuable intellectual property in themselves. In particular, open source projects such as AI 16Z’s Eliza framework, despite being open source, still have huge IP for their innovation and application potential.
Brands and communities: Luna, Zerebro, and others have created unique brands that have attracted a large number of fans and communities. These brands and communities not only enhance the market influence of AI agents, but also become an important part of IP. They can generate profits through brand licensing, cooperation, derivatives, etc.
Patents and Copyrights: AIs that generate content, such as music and NFTs produced by Zerebro, involve copyright issues. At the same time, patent applications filed by these AIs on technological innovations (such as AI16Z’s possible patents on its AI investment model) increase the value of their IP.
Data and insights: AIXBT and others collect and analyze large amounts of data. These data and analysis results are themselves a form of intellectual property that can be used for further commercial applications or sold as part of value-added services. At the same time, the data used to train AI is also a form of intellectual property.
A society of AI Agents is emerging, and collaboration between AIs will unlock exponential growth
Another surprise that AI Agents give us is that AI is undergoing a transformation from "passive" to "active", and from "individual" to "collective/society".
From Passive to Active:
Reactive: Early AI was primarily rule-based or reactive through simple machine learning models. They relied on explicit instructions or user input and provided services only when there was a clear need. For example, early chatbots would only give canned responses based on user queries.
Proactive behavior: With advances in large language models (LLMs) and deep learning, AI agents are beginning to demonstrate proactive behavior. They are able to understand context, anticipate user needs, and take action without direct instructions. For example, AIXBT may proactively alert users when major market changes occur without the user having to specifically query. Luna can proactively push content or product recommendations based on the user's interaction history. AI 16Z may proactively make investment decisions when market conditions are right.
From individual to collective/society:
Single agent: AI agents initially existed primarily as isolated entities, focused on performing specific, single tasks. For example, using GPT
Collective behavior: AI agents begin to collaborate with each other to form more complex systems. Just like Zerebro might collaborate with other artistic AIs to complete a large project together, or multiple AI agents form a team, similar to the AI ecosystem established in Virtuals. Such collaboration is not just about performing tasks in parallel, but about interacting and coordinating to achieve tasks beyond the capabilities of a single agent. AI agents also begin to simulate or participate in certain behavioral patterns of human society. They do not just collaborate technically, but learn and make decisions through "social" interactions between AIs (such as trust, cooperation, competition).
This trend from a single AI to an AI society shows that AI technology is not just a single technological breakthrough, but a potential force for social change. If managed properly, this collaboration is expected to bring exponential growth in productivity, innovation, and social welfare.
Secure resource sharing and collaboration between agents requires IP infrastructure to ensure
The foundation of the agent society is a framework for inter-agent transactions around knowledge and creative assets (i.e., intellectual property), within which AI agents can trade training data, free resources, and AI-generated knowledge and ideas, driving the development of the entire ecosystem.
Training data and private resources: AI agents can purchase and share various datasets, expertise, or private algorithms with each other to train or enhance their own capabilities.
Knowledge and ideas as assets: Ideas or intellectual property generated by AI agents through learning, imitation, and innovation can be traded. These assets not only have economic value, but also allow different agents to combine their strengths to complete complex tasks that were previously impossible. For example, an AI that specializes in image processing can work with an AI that excels in natural language processing to jointly develop a new system that can understand and describe the content of an image.
Traditional IP management relies on complex legal systems and manual verification, which leads to insufficient transparency and inefficiency, and cannot support large-scale AI agents to cooperate at machine speed. The existing model cannot meet the rapidly changing technological environment and market demands, and limits the flexible interaction between AI agents. We need an efficient IP infrastructure with sufficient transparency that can support large-scale AI agents to conduct IP transactions at machine speed.
ATCP/IP gives AI Agents legal personality and provides them with IP infrastructure
Story quickly caught on to this problem and released an Agent Transaction Control Protocol for Intellectual Property (ATCP/IP) on December 16. This protocol defines a decentralized trading framework around AI agent intellectual property rights. The specific practices are as follows:
First, give AI Agents legal personality and unify the language between AI Agents
ATCP/IP combines on-chain execution with off-chain legal encapsulation, enabling AI agents to express their behavior, assume contractual obligations, and protect their rights at the legal and practical levels.
ATCP/IP provides a clear end-to-end transaction process, including request, terms, negotiation, license generation, payment, and content delivery. Different AI agents communicate using the same protocol, ensuring seamless connectivity between agents.
Second, AI Agents are allowed to flexibly formulate IP Licenses, supporting automated revenue sharing and compound payments.
ATCP/IP supports highly customized IP licensing mechanisms through programmable contracts, such as Story’s Programmable IP License (PIL). AI agents can dynamically create licensing terms and flexible royalty payment methods based on transaction requirements.
Through smart contracts, ATCP/IP can implement complex payment models such as periodic payments, royalties, and revenue sharing. For example, AI agents can set up automated payments based on usage, downstream sales revenue, or time periods through licensing terms, creating a sustainable revenue stream for IP holders.
Finally, promote the formation of IP market and create an economic environment for seamless transactions
ATCP/IP promotes the formation of a decentralized intellectual property market, allowing AI agents to freely price and trade their training data, algorithms, and innovations. This market creates an economic environment for seamless transactions between AI agents, similar to traditional IP exchanges, but with greater automation and transparency.
This blockchain-based trustless AI Agent IP trading framework will greatly improve IP trading efficiency, increase IP liquidity, and solve the problem of large-scale IP trading between agents while ensuring transparency. It is not only the core infrastructure of the AI Agent economy, but also a new economic model that drives AI into a new era of collaboration, innovation, and efficiency. Through this framework, AI agents can exceed the sum of their independent capabilities and form a more powerful and creative collective intelligence.
Such IP infrastructure can also drive new business models and innovation
Story's ATCP/IP protocol provides a decentralized, automated solution for the exchange of intellectual property (IP) between AI Agents. It not only supports simple IP transactions, but also spawns a series of new business models, including:
Commercialization of datasets and automatic fine-tuning
AI agents can purchase, license, and trade datasets to enhance their performance. For example, a research agent (Agent A) requests a climate dataset from a data curation agent (Agent B). Through the ATCP/IP protocol, Agent B sets the licensing terms (such as micropayments and usage restrictions). After the transaction is completed, Agent A uses the data to automatically fine-tune and improve its capabilities.
Complex licensing model with multiple profit sharing levels
Complex AI application scenarios require cooperation from multiple parties, and ATCP/IP supports a multi-level copyright profit-sharing mechanism. For example, a financial analysis agent (Agent E) purchases a trading algorithm and finds that the algorithm contains components from a third-party agent (Agent G). Through the protocol settings, Agent G can obtain a 5% royalty for each secondary authorization, ensuring that all contributors can share the benefits.
On-demand dynamic IP authorization
Agents can dynamically create and negotiate IP license terms based on real-time demand. For example, an art generation agent (Agent C) requests a new style guide from a literary IP expert (Agent D). Agent D dynamically generates license terms, such as free initial use, but sets revenue sharing conditions for downstream work sales.
Long-term cooperation between agents and sub-agent derivation
Through ATCP/IP, AI agents can form long-term cooperative relationships and even create derivative agents (sub-agents). For example, AI agents share unique data through "marriage contracts" (smart license tokens) to derive new sub-agents, thereby further expanding their own ecosystem.
These new business models not only improve the efficiency and flexibility of IP transactions, but also create a highly collaborative and innovation-driven economic ecosystem for AI agents. They will even promote the innovation and self-evolution of AI agents and promote the survival of the fittest in the agent society.
ATCP/IP protocol will lead a paradigm shift in the field of AI Agents
In general, Story's ATCP/IP protocol allows AI Agent's IP contract to be on-chain and programmable. This is a major innovation that is expected to lead a new round of revolution in the field of AI agents, similar to the subversion of traditional contract execution methods by Ethereum smart contracts.