Story Protocol is a Layer 1 blockchain designed specifically for intellectual property (IP). Story Protocol is optimized to handle complex data structures quickly and cost-effectively, and it is also highly compatible with EVM, thereby opening up a new economy for IP, IPFi.
Story Protocol - Intellectual Property Blockchain Unlocks the IPFi Economy
Introduce
In our modern world, besides the commonly seen types of assets such as currency, gold, silver, real estate, stocks, and crypto, there is also an extremely large but rarely mentioned list of assets. is intellectual property.
The reason this group is less discussed by the community is because it is more related to B2B activities. In fact, in a report by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), IP-intensive industries accounted for 41% of economic activity in the United States. water, equivalent to 7.8 trillion USD, and these industries also provided 44% of total US jobs in 2019.
Although the value of the IP market is very large, it is still mainly limited to the business layer due to many limitations such as legality and complexity in registration and deployment.
The founders of Story Protocol, who were active in the IP industry, quickly saw the problem and began developing a blockchain-based intellectual property infrastructure system to solve the problem. this topic.
In the sections below we will learn details about the Story Protocol project.
What is IP - Intellectual Property?
Intellectual Property (IP) or intellectual property is a concept used to refer to intellectual creations that are protected by law. IP includes intellectual property such as literary works, artistic works, inventions, symbols, names, images, trade secrets, etc.
IP is classified into 6 main groups:
- Patents : Protect exclusive rights for technical inventions, including new products or processes that are guaranteed to be useful and innovative.
- Copyright : Protects authors' rights to creative works such as literature, art, music, software and other works.
- Trademark : Protects distinctive signs, such as names, logos or slogans, used to identify and distinguish the goods or services of a business.
- Industrial design : Protects the product's aesthetic appearance, including its distinctive shape, pattern, and color.
- Geographical Indication : Protects a name or symbol that indicates a product originates from a particular geographical area, where the quality or reputation of that product is related to the place of origin.
- Trade secrets : Protection of confidential information, usually technical or commercial, that provides a competitive advantage to the owner.
Image depicting the intellectual property class. Source: Story Protocol
As you see, IP is more than just Hollywood movies or iPhone patents. Beyonce's voice and image are IP, Mickey Mouse, Fortnite game interface is IP, when you search you will see IP everywhere and it is no surprise that it is considered one of the major asset categories world with a value of trillions of dollars.
Intellectual property is often associated with an intangible nature, so its journey into the commercial space is often complex and difficult to grasp. From the registration and issuance stage, it takes a lot of time and effort, not to mention copyright disputes.
Another problem is that the commerciality or liquidation for intellectual property is often very poor, not all IP is commercialized, which is why small individuals cannot effectively utilize the assets. his intelligence.
In general, there are two big problems of traditional IP systems, the first is the complex process and the second is liquidation.
What is Story Protocol?
Story Protocol is a Layer 1 blockchain designed specifically for intellectual property (IP). Story Protocol is optimized to handle complex data structures quickly and cost-effectively, and it is also highly compatible with EVM, thereby opening up a new economy for IP, IPFi.
Developers call Story Protocol "The world's IP blockchain - The world's IP Blockchain" .
Operational model
The goal of Story Protocol is to create a network capable of working efficiently with intellectual property (IP). The project team Chia the architecture of Story Protocol into 4 major parts, at the bottom is layer Layer 1 Story Network, above is the smart contract layer responsible for registering and allocating intellectual property licenses called Proof-of-Creativity Protocol and Programmable IP License, finally at the top layer is the layer of applications in the ecosystem (Application Ecosystem).
Main layers in the Story Protocol architecture
Story Network: "The World's IP Blockchain"
Story Network is a Layer 1 blockchain designed based on Cosmos SDK with high compatibility with EVM. Efficiency when working with network IP is achieved through:
Use pre-compiled primitives to process complex IP data structures in seconds, at a low cost.
The consensus layer is based on the 'mature CometBFT stack' to ensure fast and low-cost finality.
Proof-of-Creativity Protocol
Proof-of-Creativity Protocol is a smart contract system deployed on the Story Network layer that allows anyone to inject IP into the Story Protocol.
Owners through the Proof of Creativity protocol can list their intellectual properties as “IP Assets” on the Story Protocol.
Proof-of-Creativity Protocol includes main components: IP Asset, Registry, Access Controller and Modules.
IP Asset (IPA) : is data about IP on Story Protocol. Each IPA that includes an IP Non-Fungible Token is an on-chain ERC-721 Non-Fungible Token representing the IP, and an IP Account is an account linked to the IP Non-Fungible Token according to the ERC-6551 standard.
Non Fungible Tokens can be existing assets on the blockchain like Pudgy Penguins, Azuki, or a newly minted Non-Fungible Token representing real-life IP (RWA). There will be no wrapping or locking of the original assets.
If you don't know, ERC-6551 is a Token Standard that strengthens ERC-721 without changing the network infrastructure. It gives Non-Fungible Token created by ERC-721 the ability to own a separate smart contract account, called a Token-bound Account (TBA). This opens up countless possibilities for interaction with other applications and assets.
- Read more: Everything about Token Standard on the Ethereum network
Registry : is the primary storage location for the entire Story Protocol network state. If the IP Account manages the status of each specific IP, the Registry manages many types of status and of the entire network.
There are three types of Registry:
- IPAsset Registry: plays an important role in registering IP into the protocol.
- Module Registry: manages the list of modules and hooks on the network.
- License Registry: manages the status of IP Licenses in the protocol.
Access Controller : also known as Security Center, it is responsible for managing the rights of components in the network.
Modules: are independent smart contracts with their own functions. Through these modules, they can interact with IP status such as changing and updating data. Modules include Base Module, Hook and other Modules created according to Story Protocol standards. Some standard modules include:
- Licensing: allows creating IP licenses (IP License) with specific terms on usage, rights,...
- Royalty: regulations on copyright fee policy. Through this module, copyright fees are Chia automatically and transparently.
- Dispute: where IP-related disputes are handled through the arbitration system. It includes arbitration policies, penalties and tags to attach to the IP after the dispute process, for example the tag “PLAGIARISM - plagiarism".
Model of copyright fee policy on Story Protocol network
Programmable IP License
Programmable IP License (PIL) is the product of the entire Story Protocol, it is programmable IP licenses. PIL allows trillions of dollars of intellectual property to be put on the blockchain and into DeFi protocols to solve liquidation and at the same time cut many intermediaries and complex procedures.
To achieve this Story Protocol creates a common framework for PILs based on US copyright law, which includes a set of parameters set by the IP owner.
PIL is a two-way IP onramps product, meaning it not only puts IPs on the chain, it also has the ability to connect to the real world. Similar to USDC representing the USD issued by Circle, users can convert it to fiat through intermediary organizations, so is PIL. Users can bring PILs from on-chain to use in real life.
Interaction model between components in Story Protocol
For ease of understanding, we can summarize the journey of an IP on the Story Protocol network as follows:
The owner's intellectual property (IP) will be Token into Non-Fungible Token if it is real property.
This IP can be registered to the Story Protocol through the Registry to become an IP Asset. The IP Asset consists of an IP Non-Fungible Token (ERC-721) and an IP Account (ERC-6551) linked to the original Non-Fungible Token . The wallet that owns the original Non-Fungible Token is the wallet that has the ability to control the IP Account.
After the registration process, the owner can issue IP licenses with defined terms (License Terms) on usage, form and copyright fee.
IP Licenses issued by Story Protocol are standardized according to a certain pattern using parameters on the blockchain network, so it is programmable. So it is called Programmable IP License (PIL).
Those who wish to use them can pay a license fee to use these PILs for their purposes. These licenses can also be purchased on-chain and used in real life.
Royalties are paid to intellectual property owners based on their license settings. There can be many IP layers from one original IP, for example B buys IP1 from A, then converts it to IP2 and sells it to C, the copyright fee will still flow to A at the prescribed rate when C buys IP2 . Everything is automated and transparent on the chain.
Another good point about Story Protocol is that they issue ERC-20 Royalty Tokens (RT) for IP Licenses. Those who own Royalty Tokens will be the ones who receive royalties, these RTs can be traded on the DeFi space as usual, thereby opening up the IPFi economy. It can be seen that the developers have separated control and commercial rights and usage rights from an intellectual property.
During use, if any disputes arise, they will be handled in the Dispute module.
Development team
- SY (Seung Yoon) Lee - Co-founder & CEO: Seung Yoon is also currently a member of the global board of directors of Asia Society and venture partner at Hashed. Previously, he was the founder of the Radish Fiction project, a storytelling application acquired by Kakao for 440 million USD.
- Jason Levy - Co-founder: Before founding Story Protocol, Levy was founder & CEO of Worlds Between Worlds for 3 years, before that 4 years as director at Pocket Gems. He also has worked for more than 4 years at Apple through many positions related to financial analysis.
In addition, according to the project's Linkedin page, there are 37 other members of the Story Protocol team in many different positions. In general, the project's founders are all experienced in the field of blockchain and especially intellectual property. Co-Founder Seung Yoon once founded the very famous storytelling application Radish Fiction in Korea, which was later acquired by Kakao for up to 440 million USD. This is a good premise for the development of the project.
Investors
Story Protocol has gone through two rounds of Capital with a total amount raised of up to 54.3 million USD.
Story Protocol's Capital rounds. Source: CryptoRank
The Seed round took place in May 2023, the amount raised was 29.3 million USD led by A16Z . Besides, there is also the participation of Hashed Fund , SamsungNext, Mirana Ventures and many other funds.
The Series A round came just four months later with $25 million raised. A16Z continues to be the leading investment fund, other funds participating in this round include Hashed Fund, SamsungNext, Alliance DAO and many angel investors such as Balaji Srinivasan, Charlie Songhurst (Former Head of Corporate Strategy at Microsoft), David Lee, David Bonderman.
Tokenomics
No information.
Epilogue
The ambition to bring a trillion-dollar intellectual property economy to the blockchain network is a huge goal of the development team. There will be many difficulties in implementation, especially legality, dispute resolution and real-life on-chain cooperation processes. It is also because of these things that the new traditional intellectual property system needs a lot of time and process to ensure accuracy.
Along with the development of the trend of Token of real assets , the traditional economy is increasingly moving onto the chain. Combining the decentralization, transparency and complete automation of the blockchain network, IP Token will be a very notable story in the near future.
Above is all the information about Story Protocol - blockchain for intellectual property, hopefully the article can help you in your research process.
Note: The information in the article is not XEM investment advice, Coin68 is not responsible for any of your investment decisions.
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