Overview

The initial incentive plan is a $IP token distribution scheme specifically designed to reward Story end users and community members. On the first day of the public mainnet launch, we will implement strict anti-farming and anti-Sybil measures to ensure that more rewards can be fairly distributed to community members in future initial incentive activities.

The initial incentive plan begins on the first day of launch, but this is just the starting point. In addition to the initial incentive plan, we will also introduce other token distribution schemes to provide long-term support for the ecosystem.

Story Incentive Philosophy

Story’s incentive philosophy is built on three core pillars:

1. Rewarding real users

2. Encouraging practical applications and innovative use cases

3. Ensuring long-term alignment

Let’s briefly explore the logic behind these three principles.

A strong incentive mechanism is one of the most exciting and promising advantages of blockchain-based products. However, in recent years, the crypto space has seen a surge in failed incentive mechanisms. What initially served as a powerful bootstrapping mechanism has now turned into an unhealthy expectation, forcing projects and their communities into zero-sum conflicts.

The natural state of a healthy project is strong long-term alignment between the community and core contributors. Despite this inherent harmony, we believe that the current unhealthy opposition stems from the emergence of a third type of actor—one that is neither truly aligned with the long-term interests of the community nor with the overall success of the project. These actors are Farmers.

Farmers extract rewards from users who are aligned with long-term goals and immediately exit the project after receiving incentives. This creates a false tension between the project and its real users, ultimately harming both. These exploitative behaviors establish an unnatural and inefficient zero-sum environment right from the project’s launch.

Based on these lessons, Story will create a positive cycle by filtering out Farmers to ensure true goal alignment between the project and the community. Users contribute meaningful actions to the network and receive fair rewards in return.

From Sybil Attack Prevention to User Redistribution

All token allocations saved through Story’s anti-Sybil measures will be 100% redistributed to real users in future initial incentive programs. This ensures that Farmers cannot exploit rewards meant for participants aligned with Story’s long-term goals. In fact, all unclaimed tokens—retained by filtering out ineligible Sybil attackers—will be staked from the Story rewards platform to validators, increasing the reward pool for the initial incentive program. By reinvesting staking rewards earned during the initial claim phase, we ensure that the user incentive pool continues to grow as the initial incentive plan expands, with all additional rewards redistributed back to the community.

Story’s Initial Incentive Plan

The initial incentive plan accounts for 10% of the total $IP token supply, entirely dedicated to rewarding end users and community members. These tokens will be used to incentivize valuable activities and contributions during the early stages of the Story ecosystem, starting from the first day of the public mainnet launch until the network reaches maturity. However, the initial incentive allocation is just a small portion of the overall $IP token distribution. More tokens will be specifically allocated to support Story’s ecosystem, community, users, and developers.

Initial Incentive Distribution Details

All initial incentives will ultimately be distributed to users and the community.

These rewards will be delivered through two main channels:

1. Direct claims

2. Distribution via ecosystem projects (ecosystem-based incentives)

Direct Claims: Half of the initial incentive (5%) will be distributed to users through direct claims. This includes rewards distributed on the first day of the public mainnet launch and through ongoing initial incentive activities over the following months.

Ecosystem-Based Incentives: The other half of the initial incentive (5%) will be allocated to ecosystem projects, with a strict requirement that all rewards must be distributed to end users. The advantage of the ecosystem-based incentive model is that the Story community can earn broader rewards through various activities across different ecosystem applications. In the future, this allocation may exceed 5%, sourced from unclaimed tokens of Sybil attackers filtered out during the first-day claim period. Ecosystem-based incentives will apply to various application categories on Story, including AI, IPFi, and consumer applications. Initially, these incentives will focus on IPFi activities, covering applications such as decentralized exchanges (DEXs), IP RWA protocols, and lending protocols. Each project will announce its incentive plan separately, and all rewards from the initial incentive pool will be distributed directly to users, with projects themselves retaining none of the rewards.

It is important to note that Story’s core contributors are not eligible to claim any initial incentives, now or in the future.

Story Reward Claims on Launch Day

The initial incentive program will consist of multiple reward distribution rounds. The first round begins on the public mainnet launch day and will remain open for 30 days.

The initial incentive on launch day will be distributed to the following groups:

• Odyssey Badge Holders
• Chronicles NFT Holders

• Only for users who also hold an Odyssey Badge

  • Snapshot time: February 9, 2025, at 11:53 PM PT

  Active Story Community Members

• OG Role
• Other Community Roles
• Genesis IP Creators

Social Rewards

• Kaito Genesis NFT Holders
  • Snapshot time: February 10, 2025, at 9:00 PM PT
• High-Quality Story Yappers
  • Prioritizing long-term contributors over short-term content Farmers based on data since 2023
• Other users who engage in high-quality discussions around IP (based on Kaito data)
• Regional Contributors and Community Leaders

Exchange-Related Programs

• Binance Wallet Rewards
• OKX Wallet Rewards
• Bybit Wallet Rewards

Validator rewards

• Validators participating in the Odyssey testnet validator competition, including those who did not make the final 64-person roster

Ecosystem-based incentives

• IPFi rewards (e.g. PiperX, Story Hunt, Verio)
• IP ecosystem rewards (e.g. Aria)

These rewards will be distributed through means independent of the Story reward claiming platform

Beyond the launch day claim event, we have established and will continue to develop plans for regularly rewarding users. Through our strong anti-Sybil measures (detailed below), we will reclaim a significant portion of the initial incentives from harmful Sybil attackers and Farmers, reallocating these rewards to real users and the community in future events.

We plan to continue providing initial incentives during the early stages of the Story network and will introduce more reward programs in the future, always adhering to our core principles: rewarding real users and long-term contributors.

Anti-Sybil Attack Strategy

To ensure that rewards are fairly distributed to real users and communities aligned with long-term goals, we have dedicated significant team resources and effort to filtering out Sybil attackers. We have also engaged three independent firms to analyze on-chain and off-chain behaviors and provide recommendations to maximize our ability to detect Sybil attackers while minimizing false positives against real users. Based on Passport data estimates, assuming a similar participation rate among Farmers, we are able to filter out approximately three times as many Sybil attackers (as a percentage of all eligible wallets) compared to similar projects. This does not include the Farmers we expect to filter out on Story’s reward claim day, which is projected to be a substantial number.

Our overall process begins by filtering Sybil attackers using clustering algorithms. We integrate multiple clustering techniques, incorporating both on-chain and off-chain data, to identify groups of Sybil attackers. We also analyze badge behavior to verify authenticity, especially when large groups collect the same badges in the same order at the same time. Additionally, we examine activities across other EVM chains, using Ethereum, Base, Polygon, BNB, Optimism, Arbitrum, and other popular EVM chains as reference points. Wallets with no activity on these chains undergo further scrutiny.

Funding source patterns are also considered—large groups of wallets that repeatedly receive funds from the same source at the same time are removed. These combined methods allow us to clearly differentiate real users from Farmers. In most cases, the differences in activity and intent are evident. However, clustering algorithms are not flawless, so in cases of uncertainty, we still allow those wallets to participate in Story’s launch-day reward claims.

To further verify these wallets and filter out Sybil attackers, the Story reward claim platform will require most wallets to provide a relatively low Passport score to prove their uniqueness and authenticity. Any user either already possesses such a score or can easily obtain one. We anticipate that this requirement will further filter out a significant number of Sybil attackers during the claim period, which will last for one month from the public mainnet launch day.

Other Ecosystem and Community Programs

Beyond the initial incentive distribution—designed to rapidly kickstart a strong and aligned ecosystem—several other allocation programs are in place to support the ecosystem in the long term. Some of these programs have already launched, including hackathon rewards and ecosystem grants.

The ecosystem grant program is live, and funding has already been provided to the following projects:

Hackathon rewards have been launched, and rewards have been distributed to the following events:

• Story’s Alpha Hackathon (2023)
• Story’s Beta Hackathon (2024)
• ETHDenver (2024)
• ETHGlobal SF (2024)
• Cursor Hackathon (2024)
• Livepeer/Encode Hackathon (2024)
• Autonomous Hackathon (2024)
• Agent to Agent Payment$ Hackathon (2025)
• TartanHacks (2025)
• AI Agents Bounty (2025)
• AI Framework bounties (2025)
• Sozu House (2025)
• ETHDenver Hackathon (2025)
• Super Agent Hackathon (2025)
• Safe’s Agentathon (2025)

Building a thriving ecosystem

We firmly believe that incentives are the core element in launching a vibrant ecosystem and a key differentiating factor for blockchain products—provided these mechanisms are executed with principles. While many may disagree with our approach, we believe it maximizes the likelihood of Story achieving its user-centric, long-term vision: making IP accessible, open, and programmable, thereby unlocking and scaling a multi-trillion-dollar asset class.

Disclaimer：

1. This article is reprinted from [TechFlow]. All copyrights belong to the original author [Story Protoco]. If there are objections to this reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team, and they will handle it promptly.
2. Liability Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not constitute any investment advice.
3. Translations of the article into other languages are done by the Gate Learn team. Unless mentioned, copying, distributing, or plagiarizing the translated articles is prohibited.