There has been a lot of discussion in the crypto this week, and the most shocking news is that Story Protocol announced that its total financing amount has reached 140 million US dollars. This number has aroused widespread attention and discussion, not only attracting the attention of users in the crypto, but also attracting a large number of "airdrop parties" to come to interact and look for possible airdrop opportunities.
The goal of Story Protocol is to put real-world Intellectual Property Assets on the chain and use blockchain technology to solve various issues related to Intellectual Property. So, what exactly allows Story Protocol to attract so much capital? Does it have the potential to become the next blockchain project to break out of the circle? This article will provide an in-depth analysis of this.
What is Intellectual Property?
The core of intellectual property rights is to encourage innovation and creation and promote the progress of knowledge and technology by giving creators or inventors exclusive rights for a certain period of time. At the same time, intellectual property rights also help protect consumers, allowing them to distinguish genuine products from counterfeit products and maintain market order. Although the value of intellectual property assets is difficult to accurately estimate, the commercial potential behind them is undoubtedly huge.
For example, in 1999, the rights to the Spider-Man movie were sold to Sony for US$7 million, and Sony has built Spider-Man into a globally renowned IP character through years of management. In 2019, Disney was even willing to purchase the Spider-Man IP from Sony for a high price of US$5 billion.
In addition to Spider-Man, many famous IPs have brought very high commercial value, each worth tens of billions of dollars. Therefore, Story Protocol chooses to use IP as the core of the narrative, and the value contained in it is endless. imagination space.
Problems solved by the project
Story Protocol mentioned in the white paper that they aim to solve several core problems faced by creators: ensuring the protection of intellectual property rights, convenient authorization and monetization of IP ownership. Traditional IP litigation is often time-consuming and costly. Story Protocol hopes to provide more efficient and cost-effective solutions through blockchain technology.
In short, Story Protocol’s vision is to put all IP assets on the chain and establish a set of standards to enable creators and IP owners to manage and protect their assets in a decentralized ecosystem. This will not only reduce disputes caused by ownership disputes, but also protect creators’ revenue sharing.
Team background
To understand a project, we must not only look at its technology and goals, but also the team background. Seung Yoon Lee, the founder of Story Protocol, graduated from Oxford University. He served as the first Asian president of the Oxford University Alliance and is currently one of the venture capital partners of South Korean blockchain fund Hashed. In addition, Lee also founded the novel app Radish Fiction, which was acquired by South Korean technology giant Kakao in 2021 for US$440 million.
This experience makes the Story Protocol team very convincing in terms of VC background, successful project experience and academic background. This is also an important reason why it was able to obtain US$140 million in financing.
Project technology and operating principles
Story Protocol's technical architecture includes three core components: L1 public chain Story Network, Proof-of-Creativity Protocol and Programmable IP License, aiming to solve the current problems faced in the field of intellectual property rights. .
Story Network
Story Network is an L1 public chain built by Story Protocol, developed based on COSMOS SDK, and is EVM-compatible. This design is a relatively normal approach. As a project that operates IP, it must hope to attract large funds and whales to enter the market. Most of these funds and whales are also active in the Ethereum ecosystem. Using EVM-compatible can indeed Attract capital more effectively.
In addition, the project also noted in the white paper why it needs to establish L1 instead of L2. The project hopes to allow Netflix, TikTok, etc. to run validators to transmit IP data directly on the chain, and allow these nodes to have graph libraries optimized for IP graphs. It can be seen that the self-built L1 hopes to bring ownership and consensus rights to the project, and has a blueprint plan to attract different large enterprises to establish nodes and conduct verification.
Proof-of-Creativity Protocol
Story Protocol also establishes Protocol, which also has different modules for users to perform various actions on their IP, including licensing modules, royalty modules and dispute modules, etc. The ERC-721 (NFT) and ERC-20 protocols are used. Users can create their own IP on the Story Protocol, such as entering a title, entering a description or inserting an image file, etc.
When the user successfully creates an IP, the IP will be placed in the user's wallet in the form of NFT and will be linked to the user's account at the same time. Users can also instantly use the revenue tokens brought by the IP held in the account and operate different modules on Story Protocol.
Programmable IP License
Programmable IP License is to produce real-world licenses for all blockchain-related data. The general concept is to generate a certificate, and the certificate is verified through Story Network, thus increasing the practical value.
I think this IP License is the most valuable point of the entire project, because this IP License will determine the ownership and value of IP ownership and protect all content creators. The project also pointed out that it will be used in both Onramp and Offramp. The relevant IP value continues to increase in each category.
Risks and Challenges
While Story Protocol’s vision is attractive, the challenges it faces cannot be ignored. First of all, Story Protocol stated that it does not aim to replace the legal system, but hopes to assist the legal system in managing creative intellectual property rights more effectively. How the project needs to log well-known IP projects onto its platform in the future and obtain legal effect is, I think, the main problem it faces.
The existing legal and regulatory systems, such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), have irreplaceable legal effect. Story Protocol must find a way to gain recognition from these institutions, otherwise I think it will be difficult to attract large-scale IP holders. chain.
personal opinion
I’m really shocked that Story Protocol received $140 million in funding. In fact, I have already noticed this project. I still remember that when they announced that they had raised US$30M, I opened their website and twitter, and found that there was no information at all on the website. It wasn’t until Story Protocol changed their logo and completed the rebranding of their interface that I learned what the focus of their project was.
Story Protocol shocked the market with a financing amount of US$140 million, which was certainly supported by the value of the IP track, team background and VC support. But in my opinion, there may also be a certain "bubble" element in this amount of financing.
Although the technical level required by the project itself is not particularly advanced, the realization potential of its IP License cannot be ignored. If Story Protocol can successfully promote its IP License to become an industry standard and gain widespread recognition, then it may indeed become the next blockchain project to break out of the circle. On the contrary, if core issues such as legal validity cannot be resolved, the difficulty of the project getting out of the circle will be greatly increased.
