The web3 IP Protocol, Story which aims to provide an open market for Intellectual Property (IP) assets by making them programmable, made its Public Mainnet, Homer, live today. The launch ends its six-month long testnet phase that began in August last year.
Story aims to make IP a secure foundation that others can build on, provided decentralized ownership to the creators and embedding components of Artifical Intelligence (AI). In its mainnet launch video, it mentioned its vision of stopping the exploitation of IP by the growing development of AI. It is also worth noting that the kickoff of PIP Labs founded-Story protocol comes after it raised $140 million in total funding from a16z and Samsung Next.
The centralised IP Market
IP has come to rely almost exclusively on centralized intermediaries to coordinate ownership and value. The production and exchange of intelligence across all disciplines is taxed at the hands of a few unaccountable entities — ranging from social platforms to pharmaceutical companies — which has increased the transaction costs for intellectual property.
Intellectual property is a $60+ trillion market, yet creators still face massive challenges with ownership, licensing, and monetization. Furthermore, with the accelerating development of AI, creative outputs of IP assets owners and creators have become mere scapegoats to train models without attribution and compensation. Creatives ideas of IP assets are being created and distributed at an unprecedented and unjust scale.
In addition, the traditional system can no longer compete with the reality of artificial intelligence, in which ideas can be created and distributed at scale with vanishing marginal costs. Individuals find their creative output scraped to train models without attribution and compensation, and AI companies themselves cannot feasibly generate hundreds of millions of individual licensing agreements. There exists neither legibility nor liquidity in the marketplace of ideas. It is to solve these challenges that Story is aiming to provide solutions for.
Can Story build a secure IP Market?
Story as a Layer 1 blockchain and a peer-to-peer intellectual property network is intending to provide an open and programmable market for peer-to-peer intellectual property exchange. Any two willing individuals can trade, extend, and monetize their ideas directly on Story without interference from rent-seeking intermediaries.
By using Story, owners will be able to embed programmable terms set by themselves within their intellectual property asset. This will allow their hard-created IP assets to get monetized and exchanged across any software application on the Story network, generating yield for its owner across the internet. It also aims to provide both the universal repository and the programmable market for intelligence needed to increase the intellectual output of humanity.
Although Story focuses primarily on intellectual property, its flexible architecture enables the adoption of future cores that can expand far beyond IP-related applications.
Homer, our Public Mainnet, is live.
Welcome to a new era of ꧁IP꧂
Learn more ↴ pic.twitter.com/u3BkW5WJYj
— Story (꧁IP꧂) (@StoryProtocol) February 13, 2025
Story’s $IP token
Apart from its Public Mainnet launch, Story has also launched its $IP token with an initial supply of 1 billion.
The $IP token is set to function as the network’s underlying medium of exchange. Using $IP to enable efficient transaction processing and fair resource allocation, creators and users can use it to make transparent fee payments whenever intellectual property assets are used, exchanged, or generate revenue.
The token facilitates direct peer-to-peer transactions without intermediaries, serving both as a utility and value exchange medium to strengthen the network’s economy.
Also because Story uses PoS consensus, validators can stake IP as collateral to maintain network security. Validators process transactions and maintain blockchain integrity, receiving rewards denominated in IP based on their performance. This creates strong incentives for validators to operate honestly and efficiently since they have a direct stake in the network’s success, and cements $IP as the foundation of Story’s security.
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