Storys story: A world where IP eats everything

Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )

Author: Wenser ( @wenser 2010 )

Recently, the Layer 1 IP blockchain Story officially announced the release of its project white paper, which stated: Story is committed to building a programmable knowledge and creative market, allowing all intellectual property assets to be registered on a universal ledger with customizable parameters. This asset is equipped with a composable interface that can be called by any software application or artificial intelligence model to realize the use and monetization of intellectual property on the Internet. Storys native token IP will coordinate all value flows throughout the entire peer-to-peer intellectual property system.

With approximately US$140 million in financing and support from a number of star capitals such as a16z, Polychain, Hashed, and DAO5 , Story has once again significantly raised the ceiling of the IP+Crypto track, and also opened up imagination space for the creator economy and the intellectual property chain ecosystem.

On the eve of Story TGE, Odaily Planet Daily will conduct a systematic analysis of the project in this article, in order to provide readers with a more comprehensive perspective on the project. Note: This article is only a sharing of opinions and does not constitute investment advice, DYOR.

Imagine the future: a world where IP eats everything

With the rapid development of AI, content has exploded at a speed beyond everyones imagination - because this is a growth paradigm that completely transcends past historical laws. Now that the LLM large language model is becoming more and more mature, AI can generate thousands or even tens of thousands of fonts of corresponding content in just a few minutes or even tens of seconds, in the form of text, pictures, videos, audio and other media carriers.

In other words, we are about to enter a media world with highly rich content.

But at the same time, as AI gradually penetrates the human information society, problems such as fake news, plagiarism, copycat content, etc. will become more and more serious, and the concept and value of IP (intellectual property) will become more and more important. After all, not all content can reach the level of IP, just like not all books written by everyone can become classics.

By then, the value of IP will be mainly reflected in the following aspects:

Cultural value: IP carries consensus in different scopes

A good story is an IP, an excellent application is an IP, and a popular movie is an IP. It can be said that IP is a carrier of cultural consensus in different scopes, regions, classes, and systems. The reason why a series of superhero-related IPs, including Superman, Spiderman, and the Marvel Universe, are so popular around the world is that they embody the imagination of the future, the expectation of hope, the pursuit of goodness, and the fight against evil in universal values. A good IP can not only inspire consensus in peoples hearts, but also spread this consensus to a wider range. It is no exaggeration to say that the consensus appeal of IP can grow to infinity.

Economic value: IP directly creates economic benefits

According to data from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), intellectual property-intensive industries contribute more than one-third of the worlds GDP. Taking the United States as an example, intellectual property-intensive industries contributed $7.8 trillion in economic output in 2019, accounting for 41% of its GDP, with more than 63 million industry employees, accounting for 38.2% of the total employment in the United States; in 2022, the added value of Chinas patent-intensive industries will be 14.3 trillion yuan, accounting for 11.97% of GDP; the added value of the copyright industry will also exceed 8 trillion yuan; according to a joint research report by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), intellectual property-intensive industries contributed more than 47% of the EUs GDP between 2017 and 2019, worth 6.4 trillion euros. In the future, the direct economic value related to IP will continue to grow. Intuitively, IP-related industries are lubricants for social economy and play an important role in social innovation, employment opportunities, and international trade.

Political value: IP may shape the political landscape

As the AI wave gradually advances, the value of IP will further spread to the political field. Whether it is the previous Tiktok ban storm, or the recent panic caused by Deepseek in the political and business fields of the United States, or even the latest bill making downloading DeepSeek a crime, with a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a fine of $1 million. Behind IP, it often represents the struggle for multiple discourse rights such as technical intellectual property rights, capital transactions, and political standards. As the classic statement during World War II said: Science has no borders, but scientists have their own motherland. In the future, IP may have no borders, but people who create IP, trade IP, and innovate IP have different political positions and nationalities, which often have different degrees of impact on the political situation.

In summary, as time goes by and technology develops, the value and influence of IP will continue to increase. As a result, a world where IP devours everything is gradually taking shape, and this is exactly the direction Story is aiming for.

The team reveals: An IP changes the world and saves creators

Going back to 2013, Story, the now popular IP story, is inseparable from the contribution of a man named Gatsby.

Story Origin: A Gatsby-style entrepreneurial story

At that time, Story co-founder SY Lee founded a news crowdfunding platform called Byline, and his classmate Gatsby (Seung Soo, translated as Chengxiu in Chinese) also joined as the chief operating officer. This was a news crowdfunding platform aimed at saving the advertising-driven news industry that was swallowed by giants such as Google and Facebook, but as online advertising became more and more popular, the project soon ran into trouble. As a last resort, SY Lee adopted a similar model and founded Radish in 2015, aiming to escort creators IP works and provide sustainable income for authors who worked hard to create stories. But at the beginning, the market was also not optimistic about this platform. When Radish was only a few weeks away from repeating the mistakes of Byline, Gatsby stepped forward and took out $200,000 from a personal credit loan to support the project to continue operating.

Gatsby Benby and SY Lee

In this way, Radish was able to support itself until 2017, when it received a $3 million seed round of financing, and investors included Greylock, Lowercase Capital, Next Media Innovation Fund under SoftBank Group, United Artists Agency (UTA), Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (Bertelsmann Groups parent company owns Penguin Random House), Sherpa Capital, ITV President Peter Bazalgette, former Microsoft executive Charlie Songhurst, Nicolas Berggruen, LendingHome co-founder and CEO Matt Humphrey, BDA China founder Duncan Clark, Jeremy Yap and well-known Chinese-American writer Amy Tan. The model established by Radish, readers can try for free, pay to read, and authors can earn income while retaining content copyrights, has gradually been highly recognized by the market. On the basis of achieving a win-win situation for the platform, readers and authors, it has subsequently achieved huge commercial success and was once hailed as the Netflix of online novels.

In 2021, Kakao Entertainment, the entertainment subsidiary of South Korean mobile social giant Kakao, acquired Radish for US$440 million (approximately RMB 2.9 billion, approximately 500 billion won). At that time, it owned more than 10,000 online novel IPs, more than 1 million monthly users, and annual sales of approximately 23 billion won.

In this way, SY Lee and Gatsby accumulated their own first pot of gold, and their goals were also set on a grander vision.

Story Development: Targeting the World of AI Content

After finishing Radishs entrepreneurial journey, SY Lee met Jason Zhao, the youngest product manager of Google Deepmind Lab, in 2021. After a series of communications, the two hit it off and decided to carry on the IP business to the end. This time, the field they chose was both familiar and unfamiliar - intellectual property in the world of blockchain and AI at the intersection of humanities and social sciences and rational technology.

After experiencing initial setbacks, SY Lee and Jason Zhao finally knocked on the door of venture capital giant a16z with their own strength, connections and other factors. SY Lee declared at the time: I want to completely change the entire copyright system that has existed for 400 years and cannot operate without complex legal documents and professional lawyers. In addition, because a16z partner Andrew Chen had previously commented that the Radish platform lacked network effects, Lee also told a16z partner Chris Dixon, who led the investment, that he wanted to create network effects in the content business.

The solution they proposed is to use blockchain networks and protocols to build IP Lego for the content industry until it becomes an IP universe.

A group photo of Story Protocol team members (yes, they were just Protocol at that time)

In May 2023 , Story Protocol (subsequently upgraded to IP Chain Story ) completed a US$29.3 million seed round of financing, led by a16z Crypto, with participation from Hashed, Foresight Ventures, Samsung Next Fund, Two Small Fish Ventures, DAO 5, Berggruen Holdings, Mirana Corp and SLVC.

As of September 2023 , Story Protocol (subsequently upgraded to IP Chain Story ) has completed a total of US$54 million in financing, led by a16z, with participation from Hashed, Endeavor, Samsung Next, dao 5, Insignia Venture Partners and others.

In August 2024 , PIP Labs, the core contributor team of Story, an intellectual property blockchain, completed a $80 million Series B financing led by a16z crypto. Polychain participated as a strategic investor. Other investors included Scott Trowbridge, senior vice president and board member of Stability AI, Adrian Cheng, founder of K11, and digital art collector Cozomo deMedici, No Capital, etc. The new round of financing brings PIP Labs total financing to $143 million, and its valuation has reached $2.25 billion, making it a unicorn company.

When the latest round of financing was completed, the Story developer ecosystem had more than 200 teams, providing services for more than 20 million IP development, covering multiple fields such as IPFi (IP Finance), artificial intelligence and consumer markets. (Such as Sekai , which completed a $3.1 million seed round of financing in December 2024, and Ablo, a generative AI platform in the fashion field.) At that time, Story co-founder Jason Zhao said: Story will pursue a win-win situation for creators and the AI industry. We are trying to create a turning point in the history of AI.

Story Highlight: TCP/IP and White Paper Release

In February 2024 , Story released a programmable IP layer.

In August 2024 , Storys first public testnet Iliad was officially launched;

In November 2024 , Story’s final testnet Odyssey was launched, with nearly 100 ecosystem partners participating in its construction.

In December 2024 , Story officially released Agent TCP/IP, an experimental framework that enables agents to trade IP with each other. Through this framework, agents will be able to trade their training data, creative styles, investment strategies, etc., to usher in a new era of smart economy.

In January 2025, the Story developer mainnet was launched, marking the final stage before the public mainnet launch; Aria Premiere Launch, the IP RWA protocol based on Story, reached the purchase limit of US$7 million within 9 minutes.

In February 2025 , the Layer 1 IP blockchain Story officially released a white paper titled Story: A Peer-to-Peer Intellectual Property Network and the publisher was signed as Story Foundation.

As SY Lee mentioned in a previous tweet : It is urgent to provide solutions for content creators to fight against big technology companies. The emergence of AI is putting the entire Internet culture in danger. The economic contract behind the Internet - content creators provide supply and content distributors provide demand - is being subverted by the popularity of AI. Story, as a programmable IP infrastructure, is expected to meet this challenge, protect IP sovereignty in the form of IP Lego, and allow creators to set licensing and royalty sharing terms.

In the near future, a UGC MMORPG world based on AIGC has begun to emerge.

Of course, achieving this goal is not easy, and this is exactly the problem that the Story project white paper aims to solve.

The Difficulty of IP: A Bridge Connecting UGC and AIGC by IP

As a former IP industry practitioner, I have to say that in my personal opinion, the track Story has chosen is full of challenges. In addition to the AI-generated content, data, and IP monopoly of technology companies mentioned above, IP itself faces many practical challenges.

Real Dilemma: Prisoner’s Law on and off the Chain

In the past, the difficulty of IP was mainly in the word ownership confirmation.

How do you prove that the copyright of a work, an application, or a set of technologies belongs to you?

With the development of industrial society, the recognition of ownership and originality of humans unique ideas or patented technologies and theoretical successes has gradually focused on a method that leads to the same result - that is, proof of consistency.

One route is the credibility route, which is to transform the IP confirmation process into a credibility certification that relies on individuals, organizations or government agencies. Whether it is a guarantee between individuals or a notarization by a notary office, it essentially relies on credit and reputation as the authoritative force for IP recognition, and there are many man-made hidden dangers.

Another route is the technical route, which is to confirm the IP rights through technical means to clarify ownership and prove effectiveness. Whether it is decentralized blockchain technology or timestamp technology, it is essentially a string of hash values generated by file records that cannot be tampered with, in order to achieve the initial record of an IP document and complete the confirmation of rights.

The confirmation of IP rights on the blockchain also requires off-chain subject comparison, rights fulfillment and other processes to connect with each other and complete the identification of rights and clear asset ownership in the real world. At present, just as RWA requires the involvement of real assets and the access of real regulatory agencies, it is difficult for the IP industry to bypass this step.

The current situation is that original creators and IP works in the IP industry are like two prisoners living in on-chain space and off-chain space, and on-chain property rights confirmation still requires off-chain verification.

Story was born to solve this prisoners dilemma and bridge the gap between on-chain and off-chain.

Anonymous Economy: An Ecosystem Powered by IPFi

In the Story project white paper, we can see that the Story network is generally divided into three layers: execution layer, storage layer, and consensus layer.

Among them, the execution layer includes the main execution core and the exclusive execution core: the former mainly handles all transactions and smart contracts, and activates the latter; the latter includes the existing IP core, oracle core (off-chain synchronization core) and bridge core (cross-chain communication core) as well as the future AI core, ZK core and more professional core components.

• The main function of IP Core is to track the rights, licenses and monetization of original and derivative assets with the help of IP graph;

• The core function of the oracle is to verify the authenticity of IP assets and licenses, including verifying the social identity of the creator, receiving off-chain payments, and generating legal contracts for off-chain use;

• The main function of the bridge core is to realize cross-chain message transmission, allowing IP assets to be used on different blockchains, thereby expanding the scope of IP asset flow in disguise.

The storage layer draws on the design concept of the NAND Flash Translation Layer (FTL), effectively balancing performance, scalability, cost, proof size, and redundancy, and mainly provides storage APIs for the execution layer and its core. At the same time, it also integrates on-chain and off-chain storage solutions such as IPFS.

The consensus layer adopts the PoS mechanism and Tendermints modern high-performance implementation CometBFT, which has the characteristics of fault tolerance, liveness guarantee, instant finality and modular design. With direct economic incentives, it ensures that node validators maintain the security and integrity of the blockchain, thereby providing guarantees for the efficient and stable operation of the network.

Based on this, Story Network is expected to become a one-stop IPFi ecosystem that integrates IP management, authorization, trading, and revenue returns. With the help of the previous AI Agent TCP/IP framework, Story has also incorporated AI content into its own ecological universe, greatly enriching the IP content landscape and tradable targets, while making AI Agent integrated into the Story ecosystem and forming its own school.

As a result, an anonymous economic system is expected to be gradually established on the Story network and become more prosperous.

Future expectations: A token called IP participates in the flow of value

As Deepseek uses algorithms to burst the computing power bubble in the AI industry, the value of data and content becomes increasingly important, and thus the value of IP is highlighted.

Based on this background, Story ecosystem token IP will also become a crucial part of the value flow within its ecosystem.

On the one hand, IP is not only the gas fee token, pledge token and utility token of the Story ecosystem, but also the intermediary of network transactions;

On the other hand, IP is also the incentive carrier and reward expression for Story’s operation based on the POS mechanism;

In addition, IP will also be used in scenarios including royalty distribution, license fee payment, and usage compensation; it will also become the currency in the AI Agent transaction process.

At 9 pm on February 7, IP tokens will be listed on Bybit’s pre-market . At that time, you can pay attention to the market’s value judgment and price expectations of the tokens in advance.

Conclusion: The IP industry, with a market size of tens of trillions of dollars, is undergoing a transformation

What is certain is that as the Story ecosystem becomes increasingly richer, the RWA track and IP industry, with a market size of tens of trillions of dollars, are about to usher in a new round of changes.

As for whether Story can drive the development of more IP industries through the IPFi system and AI framework, and bring a new paradigm of IP trading and management to creators around the world, we will wait and see.

References:

https://x.com/storysylee/status/1828812173675843933

https://x.com/storysylee/status/1827363197265048019

https://x.com/StoryProtocol/status/1868696340156538959