What is Story Protocol?

Story Protocol is a decentralized intellectual property (IP) management protocol based on blockchain technology. It aims to reshape the global creative economy ecosystem through transparent on-chain copyright tracking and revenue distribution mechanisms. Its core is the creation of a Layer1 blockchain, Story Network, designed specifically for IPs. It enables modular registration, collaborative derivation, and automatic royalty distribution of IPs, solving the traditional IP market’s problems, such as difficulty in rights confirmation, inefficient collaboration, and opaque revenue distribution.
The project completed testnet deployment in Q3 2023 and will officially launch on the Ethereum mainnet in Q2 2024, with cross-chain integration partnerships with Polygon and Avalanche.

In preparation for $IP’s upcoming listing, Gate.io has opened its pre-market trading for $IP: https://www.gate.io/pre-market/IP.

Why is Story Protocol Needed?

The global creative economy currently faces the following core pain points:

1. High Cost of Rights Confirmation: Deriving IP across platforms and media requires complex legal agreements, which are unaffordable for small and medium creators.
2. Imbalanced Value Capture: Platform owners capture most of the revenue, with original creators receiving only about 15%-30% of the share.
3. Lack of Dynamic Adjustment: IP licensing terms are rigid and cannot be adjusted in real time based on market feedback.

Story Protocol reconstructs the production relations through a full-chain IP lifecycle management framework:

• On-chain IP Map: Breaks down IPs into composable “gene units” (e.g., character settings, art elements), and records each modification and derivative path via smart contracts to track creation contributions and ownership.
• Dynamic Revenue Streams: Uses the ERC-7641 standard for “automatic royalty distribution,” supporting real-time revenue allocation based on contribution proportion (e.g., when a derivative creation gains 10,000 clicks, the original creator automatically gets a 0.5% share).
• Global Collaboration Network: Developers can call protocol interfaces to build IP derivative applications, forming an open creative ecosystem.

Story Network Architecture

Story Protocol has built a dedicated blockchain architecture centered on intellectual property (IP), using a modular layered design and a multi-core execution environment to solve the performance bottlenecks and functional deficiencies traditional blockchains face in complex IP management. The core architecture consists of three layers:

Execution Layer

The “Main Core + Specialized Cores” heterogeneous architecture is adopted:

• Main Core: Fully compatible with EVM to ensure ecosystem compatibility, handling regular transactions and smart contracts.
• IP Core: Natively supports IP asset map management and efficiently traverses the IP relationship network (e.g., compatibility checks, rights inheritance verification) through optimized data structures. It integrates the PoC (Proof of Creativity) protocol for IP registration, licensing programming, and automatic royalty distribution.
• Off-chain Synchronization Core: Integrates the SOS (Story Orchestration Service) framework, bridging off-chain identity verification, legal contract generation, and other real-world services.
• Cross-chain Communication Core: Natively supports the IBC protocol, enabling seamless IP asset transfer in DeFi, NFT, and other multi-chain environments.

Storage Layer

Breaks through the traditional on-chain storage limits to build a multi-tier storage system:

• Smart Layered Storage: Hot data (e.g., IP metadata) is stored on-chain, while cold data (e.g., large media files) is automatically mapped to a distributed storage protocol.
• Storage Abstraction Layer: Adapts NAND flash conversion layer technology, optimizing storage performance by logical address mapping, and supports dynamic data grading (automatically optimizing storage strategies based on access frequency and file types).
• Data Integrity Assurance: Integrates the C2PA content provenance standard to ensure the integrity of multimedia IPs.

Consensus Layer

Uses CometBFT (an enhanced Tendermint consensus):

• Byzantine Fault Tolerance: Supports up to 1/3 of nodes acting maliciously while maintaining security.
• Instant Finality: Transaction completion is achieved with a single block confirmation, meeting the high-frequency demands of IP transactions.
• Modular Design: Decouples consensus and execution via ABCI interfaces, enabling future upgrades.

Ecosystem Projects

Aria Protocol

• Function: Converts music works into programmable IP assets. For example, after Justin Bieber’s single “Peaches” is tokenized on Aria, fans can purchase 15-second segment licenses for short video creation, with the system automatically distributing royalties based on the playback volume.
• Mechanism: Introduces an “Emotional Value Mining” mechanism, where listener comments based on emotional reactions increase IP weight, earning additional token rewards.

Sekai

• Function: Combines generative AI with interactive storytelling. Users input a story outline, and AI automatically generates branching narratives, tokenized as dynamic NFTs. For example, a mystery novel IP allows readers to vote on the identity of the killer, and each choice generates a new storyline, distributing creative rights.
• Data: In beta, it has produced 120,000 user-generated plotlines, increasing the original IP’s value by an average of 23%.

Ritual

This project provides training data provenance for AI models like Stable Diffusion. When models use Story’s on-chain IP data, 0.3%-1.2% of the computational cost is deducted as copyright compensation. If an anime IP dataset is used to train a LoRA model, the original artist receives 7% of the model’s revenue.

Combo

• Function: Allows users to fuse multiple NFTs into a new creation. For example, combining features of CryptoPunks and BAYC to create the “Punk Ape” series, with the original project teams sharing royalties according to preset proportions.
• Mechanism: Uses an on-chain “feature entropy value algorithm” to ensure the originality of each derivative creation.

Funding Background

Aug 21, 2024: Story Protocol completed $80 million in Series B funding, led by a16z crypto, with participation from Polychain and others.
Sep 6, 2023: Story Protocol raised $25 million in Series A funding, led by a16z, with participation from Hashed, Endeavor, Samsung Next, Foresight Ventures, Dao5, and others.
May 17, 2023: Story Protocol completed $29.3 million in Seed Round funding, led by a16z Crypto, with participation from Hashed, Samsung Next Fund, Two Small Ventures, DAO5, Berggruen Holdings, Mirana Corp, Foresight Ventures, and SLVC.

IP Tokenomics

Token Utility

The native token of the IP Network is IP, which serves multiple functions within the ecosystem:
Staking: Validators stake $IP to maintain the security and integrity of the Story’s Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism.
Gas Fees: All transactions on Story require $IP as the gas token to ensure the network’s continuous operation.
Governance: Token holders participate in governance decisions, shaping the future of the on-chain IP market.

Token Distribution

The total supply of $IP is 1 billion tokens, with an initial unlock of 25%. The token distribution is as follows:

• Ecosystem & Community: 38.4%
• Initial Incentives: 10%
• Foundation: 10%
• Early Investors: 21.6%
• Early Contributors: 20%