Led by a16z and with a total financing of US$140 million, as a Layer 1 designed specifically for intellectual property (IP), how does @StoryProtocol provide a disruptive solution?
This article will give you the answer.
⭐️ What is Story Protocol?
Story Protocol is a Layer 1 focused on intellectual property (IP) management, dedicated to revolutionizing the way the traditional creative economy works through on-chain transparency and programmability. It introduces the Agent TCP/IP framework to allow multiple AI agents to autonomously trade IP, including training data, creative style, and investment strategies. This innovative transaction layer enables AI agents to directly interact, negotiate, and trade IP without human intervention, thus ushering in a new era of "smart 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 the licensing process, and income distribution. Story Protocol provides creators with a new tool to transform creative assets into a dynamic ecosystem that is traceable and composable on the chain.
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 24/7, enhancing brand influence through humorous and intelligent interactions, successfully demonstrating the potential of AI in managing complex tasks, and further verifying Story's leadership in AI-driven intellectual property transactions.
Story Protocol was founded by Jason Zhao, Seung Yoon Lee and Jason Levy. The team behind it 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 US$134 million.
Seed round financing: Led by a16z crypto, raising US$29.3 million.
Series A financing: Also led by a16z crypto, raising US$25 million.
Series B financing: successfully completed in August 2024, raising US$80 million.
⭐️ Why is Story Protocol worth paying attention to?
On the 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 a few highlights worth watching:
1. Disruptive solutions
In traditional IP management, creators face the following pain points.
Difficulty in protecting rights: It is often difficult for IP creators to prove the source of their rights, and the off-chain process is cumbersome and lacks transparency.
Unfair profit distribution: The profits from a large number of IP derivatives cannot be accurately returned to the original creators.
The authorization process is complicated: Manual negotiations and paperwork consume a lot of time and energy.
Story Protocol provides a decentralized, modular solution that automates all of these processes, allowing creators to focus only on the creativity itself.
2. Strong technical support
Based on Layer 1 design:
Story Protocol adopts a 100% EVM-compatible architecture, combined with the advantages of Cosmos SDK, which can quickly process complex data structures and adapt to a wide range of developer ecosystems.
Programmable IP blocks:
The core of Story Protocol is its modular design, including functional modules such as authorization, royalties, and dispute resolution. These modules not only enhance the flexibility of IP assets, but also give them new economic attributes. For example, the royalty module can realize the automatic flow of income between parent and child IPs, and 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), giving NFT the ability to dynamically manage, such as automatically generating authorization tokens or handling revenue distribution. Simply put, IP assets are not just static proof of ownership, but an active economy.
ATCP/IP protocol innovation:
Agent Transaction Control Protocol for Intellectual Property (ATCP/IP) is a protocol designed by Story Protocol specifically for the AI economy. It allows AI agents to legally authorize, distribute and trade intellectual property rights, and promote AI social collaboration. This protocol paves the way for seamless interaction between AI agents in the future.
3. Pioneering application scenarios
Globalization and Legal Compliance:
Story Protocol supports global intellectual property protection and is aligned with international agreements such as the Berne Convention, providing legal protection for its on-chain authorization. This combination of on-chain and off-chain allows creators’ rights to be recognized globally.
Deep integration of IP and AI:
Story Protocol is one of the few platforms that deeply integrates 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 and share profits with other AI agents. This innovation injects unlimited possibilities into the AI-driven economic ecosystem.
Community-driven open ecosystem:
Story Protocol’s modular design is not only suitable for the official team, but also provides unlimited 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.
Driven by both technology and ecology, Story Protocol not only provides tools for the current creative economy, but also opens up new horizons for the future creative economy.
⭐️ How does Story Protocol achieve its functions?
The core technology is mainly constructed as follows:
IP registration and account binding Through on-chain registration, each IP asset obtains a unique ERC-721 NFT, which is bound to the IP account (ERC-6551 implementation).
Licensing Module: Automates licensing terms through the Programmable IP License (PIL).
Royalty module: Realize the income 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 speeds, driving the creative economy towards decentralized autonomy.
Ecosystem openness and third-party integration The API 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 has ended this month, and the Odyssey testnet, as the final stage before the Story Protocol mainnet, has completed the minting of hundreds of thousands of badges. The testnet is still running, and users can continue to explore and interact with the ecosystem in preparation for the mainnet launch.
The latest activity available is the OG program, which is one of the core activities of the Story Protocol community and aims to reward community members who actively support and sincerely contribute. The following is the relevant information and how to obtain the OG role:
Seekers: Junior OG, awarded to members who begin active participation.
Adepts: Mid-level OG, awarded to long-term community stalwarts.
Ascendants: Premium OG, limited to outstanding contributors, with the highest privileges and exclusive rewards.
Interested users can show their support for the community by participating in discussions on Discord, Telegram or Twitter, as well as participating in IP creation art competitions or other ecological activities, or submitting valuable suggestions, and have the opportunity to obtain corresponding roles.
There is no "fast track" for OG characters. Everything is determined by community activity, and long periods of inactivity or bad behavior may result in the cancellation of OG characters.
⭐️ Summary and future prospects
Story Protocol is not just a technology project, but a new economic narrative that transforms creative assets into a dynamic economy, connecting creators with technology 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?