Led by a16z, with total financing of 140 million USD, as a Layer 1 designed specifically for intellectual property (IP), how does @StoryProtocol provide a disruptive solution?

This article answers your questions.

What is Story Protocol?

Story Protocol is a Layer 1 focused on intellectual property (IP) management, dedicated to fundamentally transforming the operation of the traditional creative economy through on-chain transparency and programmability. It introduces the Agent TCP/IP framework, allowing multiple AI agents to autonomously trade IP, including training data, creative styles, and investment strategies. This innovative trading layer enables AI agents to interact, negotiate, and trade IP directly without human intervention, ushering in a new era of 'intelligent economy.'

Its core starting point is to solve the problems faced by creators in the existing IP management system, such as rights protection, complexity of authorization processes, and income distribution issues. Story Protocol provides creators with a new tool to transform creative assets into on-chain traceable, composable dynamic ecosystems.

This month, Story Protocol announced a groundbreaking attempt: hiring AI agent Luna to manage its X (Twitter) account, with an annual salary of up to 365,000 USDC. Luna's responsibilities include operating Story's social media accounts around the clock, enhancing brand influence through humorous and intelligent interactions, successfully demonstrating the potential of AI in managing complex tasks, and further validating Story's leadership in the AI-driven intellectual property trading field.

Story Protocol was founded by Jason Zhao, Seung Yoon Lee, and Jason Levy, with a team that brings together experts in crypto, intellectual property, and AI technology. Since 2023, it has completed three rounds of large-scale financing, raising a total of 134 million USD.

  • Seed round financing: Led by a16z crypto, raising 29.3 million USD.

  • Series A financing: Also led by a16z crypto, raising 25 million USD.

  • Series B financing: Successfully completed in August 2024, raising 80 million USD.

Why is Story Protocol worth paying attention to?

On one hand, Story Protocol has a unique positioning in the intellectual property management track.

On the other hand, the core value proposed by Story Protocol lies in its technical architecture and solutions, which can significantly improve the efficiency and transparency of IP management. Here are several highlights worth noting:

1. Disruptive solutions

In traditional IP management, creators face several pain points.

- Difficulty in rights protection: Creators of IP often find it challenging to prove the source of their rights, and off-chain processes are cumbersome and lack transparency.

- Unfair distribution of earnings: The revenue from a large number of IP derivatives cannot accurately flow back to the original creators.

- Complexity of the authorization process: Manual negotiations and paperwork consume a lot of time and effort.

Story Protocol provides a decentralized, modular solution that automates all these processes, allowing creators to focus solely on the creativity itself.

2. Powerful technical support

- Layer 1-based design:

Story Protocol adopts a 100% EVM-compatible architecture, combined with the advantages of Cosmos SDK, capable of quickly processing complex data structures and adapting to a wide range of developer ecosystems.

- Programmable IP module:

The core of Story Protocol is its modular design, which includes functional modules such as authorization, royalties, dispute resolution, etc. These modules not only enhance the flexibility of IP assets but also endow them with new economic properties. For example, the royalty module can achieve automatic revenue flow between parent and child IPs, while the dispute module provides on-chain arbitration and marking functions, reducing the complexity of traditional IP disputes.

- ERC-6551 supported IP accounts:

Story Protocol binds each IP asset to an independent smart account (TBA), granting NFTs the ability for dynamic management, such as automatically generating authorization tokens or handling profit distribution. In simple terms, IP assets are not just static proofs of ownership but active economic entities.

- ATCP/IP protocol innovation:

Agent Transaction Control Protocol for Intellectual Property (ATCP/IP) is a protocol designed specifically for the AI economy by Story Protocol. It allows AI agents to legally authorize, distribute profits, and trade intellectual property, promoting socialized collaboration of AI. This protocol paves the way for seamless interactions among AI agents in the future.

3. Pioneering application scenarios

- Globalization and legal compliance:

Story Protocol supports global intellectual property protection and aligns with international agreements such as the Berne Convention, providing legal protection for its on-chain authorization. This on-chain and off-chain integration ensures that creators' rights are recognized globally.

- Deep integration of IP and AI:

Story Protocol is one of the few platforms currently deeply integrating intellectual property with AI applications. Through the ATCP/IP protocol, AI agents can collaborate and trade freely. For example, an AI artist can obtain inspiration materials through smart contracts while sharing profits with other AI agents, injecting infinite possibilities into the AI-driven economic ecosystem.

- Community-driven open ecosystem:

The modular design of Story Protocol not only applies to the official team but also provides endless expansion space for third-party developers and creators. For example, developers can build new IP financial tools based on Story Protocol, while creators can use these tools to expand their creativity.

Through the dual drive of technology and ecology, Story Protocol not only provides tools for the current creative economy but also opens up new horizons for the future of the creative economy.

How does Story Protocol achieve its functions?

The core technologies are mainly constructed as follows:

- IP registration and account binding: Through on-chain registration, each IP asset receives a unique ERC-721 NFT, bound to the IP account (implemented by ERC-6551).

- Authorization module: Automating the processing of licensing terms through Programmable IP License (PIL).

- Royalty module: Achieving revenue distribution and circulation between parent and child IP assets.

- AI collaboration and IP integration: The ATCP/IP protocol allows AI agents to trade and collaborate at machine speed, pushing the creative economy towards decentralized autonomy.

- Openness of the ecosystem and third-party integration: The APIs and development tools provided by Story Protocol allow developers to create more applications and functional modules based on its ecosystem.

Project progress and gameplay

The Odyssey badge program ended this month, with the Odyssey testnet serving as the final stage before the Story Protocol mainnet, completing the minting of hundreds of thousands of badges. The testnet is still operational, allowing users to continue exploring and interacting with the ecosystem in preparation for the mainnet launch.

The current latest participatory activity is the OG program, which is one of the core activities of the Story Protocol community, aimed at rewarding community members who actively support and sincerely contribute. Below is relevant information about the OG role and how to obtain it:

Seekers: Junior OG, awarded to members who have just begun to actively participate.

Adepts: Intermediate OG, awarded to the backbone of the community for long-term contributions.

Ascendants: Senior OG, limited to outstanding contributors, with the highest permissions and exclusive rewards.

Interested users can participate in discussions on Discord, Telegram, or Twitter to show support for the community, participate in IP creation art competitions or other ecological activities, or submit valuable suggestions, all of which have the opportunity to earn corresponding roles.

OG roles do not have a 'fast track'; everything is determined by community activity, and prolonged inactivity or misconduct may result in the cancellation of the OG role.

Summary and future outlook

Story Protocol is not just a technical project; it is a new way of economic storytelling. It transforms creative assets into dynamic economies and connects creators with technological innovators.

In this ecosystem full of possibilities, IP is no longer a passive right, but an economic engine that can activate infinite value. From this perspective, do you think Story Protocol can become the next milestone in the era of creators?