Led by a16z with total funding of $140 million, as a Layer 1 specifically designed for intellectual property (IP), how does @StoryProtocol provide a disruptive solution?
This article answers for you.
⭐️ What is Story Protocol?
Story Protocol is a Layer 1 focused on intellectual property (IP) management, dedicated to fundamentally changing 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 directly interact, negotiate, and trade IP without human intervention, thus opening a new era of 'smart economy.'
Its core starting point is to solve the challenges creators face within the existing IP management system, such as rights protection, the complexity of authorization processes, and revenue distribution issues. Story Protocol provides creators with a new tool to transform creative assets into traceable and composable dynamic ecosystems on-chain.
This month, Story Protocol announced a groundbreaking attempt: hiring the 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 AI's potential in managing complex tasks, and further validating Story's leadership in AI-driven intellectual property transactions.
Story Protocol was founded by Jason Zhao, Seung Yoon Lee, and Jason Levy, with a team comprising 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.
Seed Round Financing: Led by a16z crypto, raising $29.3 million.
Series A Financing: Also led by a16z crypto, raising $25 million.
Series B Financing: Successfully completed in August 2024, raising $80 million.
⭐️ Why is Story Protocol worth paying attention to?
On one hand, Story Protocol has a unique positioning in the intellectual property management sector.
On the other hand, the core value proposed by Story Protocol lies in its technical architecture and solutions, which can significantly enhance 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.
Rights protection difficulties: IP creators often find it challenging to prove the source of their rights, with off-chain processes being cumbersome and lacking transparency.
Unfair revenue distribution: The profits from numerous IP derivatives cannot accurately flow back to the original creators.
Complex authorization processes: Manual negotiations and paperwork consume a lot of time and effort.
Story Protocol offers a decentralized, modular solution that automates all these processes, allowing creators to focus solely on the creativity itself.
2. Strong Technical Support
Layer 1 Based Design:
Story Protocol adopts a 100% EVM-compatible architecture, leveraging the advantages of Cosmos SDK to quickly handle complex data structures and adapt to a wide range of developer ecosystems.
Programmable IP Module:
The core of Story Protocol is its modular design, which includes functional modules for authorization, royalties, and dispute resolution. These modules not only enhance the flexibility of IP assets but also endow them with new economic properties. For example, the royalties module enables automatic revenue flow between parent and child IPs, while the dispute module provides on-chain arbitration and tagging functions, reducing the complexity of traditional IP disputes.
IP Accounts Supported by ERC-6551:
Story Protocol binds each IP asset to an independent smart account (TBA), endowing NFTs with dynamic management capabilities, such as automatically generating authorization tokens or handling revenue distribution. Simply put, IP assets are no longer 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 specifically designed by Story Protocol for the AI economy. It allows AI agents to legally conduct authorization, revenue distribution, and transactions related to intellectual property, promoting AI social collaboration. This protocol paves the way for seamless interaction between future AI agents.
3. Groundbreaking 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 guarantees for its on-chain authorization. This combination of on-chain and off-chain methods 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 inspirational 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 is not only suitable for official teams but also provides unlimited expansion space for third-party developers and creators. For example, developers can build entirely new IP financial tools based on Story Protocol, while creators can leverage these tools to expand their creativity.
Through dual drives of 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 are done through on-chain registration, with each IP asset receiving a unique ERC-721 NFT, bound to the IP account (implemented by ERC-6551).
Authorization Module: Automates the processing of authorization terms through Programmable IP License (PIL).
Royalties Module: Enables revenue distribution and flow between parent and child IP assets.
AI Collaboration and IP Fusion: The ATCP/IP protocol allows AI agents to trade and collaborate at machine speeds, promoting the creative economy towards decentralized autonomy.
Ecological Openness 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 concluded 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 remains operational, allowing users to continue exploring and interacting with the ecosystem in preparation for the mainnet launch.
The current latest activity available for participation is the OG program, which is one of the core activities of the Story Protocol community, aimed at rewarding those who actively support and sincerely contribute to the community. Below is relevant information and how to obtain OG roles:
Seekers: Junior OG, awarded to members who begin to actively participate.
Adepts: Intermediate OG, awarded to the community's backbone for long-term contributions.
Ascendants: Senior OG, limited to outstanding contributors, with the highest privileges and exclusive rewards.
Interested users can demonstrate their support for the community by participating in discussions on Discord, Telegram, or Twitter, engaging in IP creation art competitions or other ecological activities, or submitting valuable suggestions, all of which may provide opportunities to obtain 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 OG roles.
⭐️ 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, connecting 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?