One article to understand Story Protocol, an IP public chain with a total financing of US$140 million, and tutorials on how to participate

Led by a16z, with 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 gives you the answer.

⭐️ What is Story Protocol?

Story Protocol is a Layer 1 that focuses on intellectual property (IP) management and is committed to completely changing the way the traditional creative economy operates through transparency and programmability on the chain. By introducing the Agent TCP/IP framework, it allows multiple AI agents to trade IP autonomously, 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, 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 authorization process, and income distribution issues. 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 around the clock, enhancing brand influence through humorous and intelligent interactive methods, successfully demonstrating the potential of AI in managing complex tasks, and further validating Story's role in the field of AI-driven intellectual property transactions. leadership position.

Story Protocol was founded by Jason Zhao, Seung Yoon Lee and Jason Levy, and the team behind it brings together experts in Crypto, intellectual property and AI technology. It has completed three large-scale financing rounds since 2023, raising a total of US$134 million.

• Seed round financing: Led by a16z crypto, it raised US$29.3 million.
• Series A financing: Also led by a16z crypto, it raised US$25 million.
• Series B financing: Successfully completed in August 2024, raising US$80 million.

⭐️ Why is Story Protocol worthy of attention?

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 income distribution: The income from a large number of IP derivatives cannot accurately flow back to the original creators.
• Authorization processes are complex: Manual negotiations and paperwork consume a lot of time and effort.

Story Protocol provides a decentralized, modular solution that automates all these processes, so creators only need to focus on the creativity itself.

2. Strong technical support

Design based on Layer 1:

Story Protocol adopts a 100% EVM-compatible architecture, combined with the advantages of Cosmos SDK, to quickly process complex data structures and adapt to a wide range of developer ecosystems.

Programmable IP modules:

The core of Story Protocol is its modular design, including functional modules such as authorization, royalties, and dispute resolution. These modules not only increase 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 father and son IP, and the dispute module provides on-chain arbitration and marking 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), giving NFT the ability to dynamically manage, such as automatically generating authorized tokens or processing 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 specially designed by Story Protocol for the AI ​​economy. It allows AI agents to legally authorize, distribute and trade intellectual property rights, and promotes AI social collaboration. This agreement paves the way for seamless interactions between AI agents in the future.

3. Groundbreaking application scenarios

Globalization and Legal Compliance:

Story Protocol supports global intellectual property protection and is in line 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 and interests to be recognized globally.

Deep integration of IP and AI:

Story Protocol is currently one of the few platforms that deeply integrates intellectual property and 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 the 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, and 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 a new horizon for the future creative economy.

⭐️ How does Story Protocol implement its functionality?

The main construction of its core technology is 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: Automated processing of licensing terms via Programmable IP License (PIL).
• Royalty module: Realizes income distribution and transfer between father and son IP assets.
• AI collaboration and IP convergence ATCP/IP protocol allows transactions and collaboration between AI agents at machine speed, pushing the creative economy towards decentralized autonomy.
• Ecological 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. As the final stage before the Story Protocol mainnet, the Odyssey testnet 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 that you can participate in is the OG plan, 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 relevant information about OG characters and how to obtain them:

• Seekers: Junior OG, awarded to members who begin active participation.
• Adepts: Intermediate OG, awarded to community backbones who have made long-term contributions.
• Ascendants: Advanced OG, limited to outstanding contributors, with the highest permissions and exclusive rewards.

Interested users can participate in discussions on Discord, Telegram or Twitter, show support for the community, participate in IP creation art competitions or other ecological activities, or submit 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-term inactivity or bad behavior may result in the cancellation of OG characters.

⭐️ Summary and future outlook

Story Protocol is not just a technology project, but a new way of economic storytelling. It transforms creative assets into a dynamic economy that connects creators with technology innovators.

In this ecosystem full of possibilities, IP is no longer a passive right, but an economic engine that can activate unlimited value. From this perspective, do you think Story Protocol can become the next milestone in the era of creators?