On-Chain IP Economy Exploration: How Does Story Protocol Reshape the IP Value System?
Key Points:
● The intellectual property (IP) industry has been growing steadily in recent years, becoming a crucial pillar across entertainment, technology, and consumer sectors. According to Business Research data, the global IP market is projected to reach $2.66 billion by 2033. However, traditional IP industries still face challenges such as uneven revenue distribution, complex IP registration processes, geographical restrictions, and infringement issues. Story Protocol proposes a more efficient IP management solution leveraging blockchain and AI technologies, aiming to address issues like revenue distribution and registration complexity. However, it is important to note that Story Protocol does not currently solve the issue of IP infringement in the traditional industry.
● Story Protocol focuses on intellectual property (IP) by bringing IP assets on-chain and utilizing smart contracts to establish authorization and revenue-sharing rules. This enhances the circulation and monetization of original and derivative content. With its unique narrative, Story Protocol has garnered market attention and secured three rounds of funding led by top VC firm a16z. Founder S.Y. Lee has a strong background in media and politics, providing Story Protocol with unique perspectives and resources.
● Story Protocol enables direct IP trading, licensing, and transactions, expanding market size while reducing third-party intermediary costs. Its core mechanisms revolve around Programmable IP and the ATCP/IP framework. Through Programmable IP, smart contracts automatically allocate royalties between original IP creators and derivative content creators based on pre-set terms, eliminating third-party intervention and ensuring fair profit distribution. Additionally, Story Protocol introduces the ATCP/IP framework, treating IP as a core asset that enables autonomous transactions between AI agents, including trading training data, creative styles, and investment strategies. The native token, $IP, has an initial supply of 1 billion, with 25% unlocked at launch. Early supporters and core contributors hold 41.6% of the tokens, which remain locked and will gradually unlock over two years.
● Story Protocol’s mainnet officially launched on February 13, 2025. As of publication, the total number of addresses on the network stands at 762,000, with daily transactions reaching 231,000. The mainnet has 37 validators, with a total staked amount exceeding 300 million $IP and an APR of approximately 9.24%. However, following the mainnet launch and token issuance, active accounts have stabilized. The Story Protocol ecosystem primarily focuses on IPFi, AI, consumer applications, and infrastructure. Most ecosystem projects are still in early stages, with 148 projects in total — some have ceased operations, while others aim for rapid growth. This report highlights key projects in IPFi, AI, consumer applications, and infrastructure.
● The IPFi sector includes Unleash Protocol in DeFi, Satori in Perp DEX, and Aria and STR8FIRE in IP RWAs. Unleash Protocol, a lending platform built on Story Protocol, aims to enhance IP liquidity and leverage. It accounts for approximately 40.6% of Story Protocol’s DeFi TVL, with its long-term growth reliant on the development of the Story Protocol blockchain. Unleash Protocol has not yet disclosed its tokenomics, and its token remains unissued. Satori serves as a multi-chain infrastructure supporting Story Protocol and has secured funding from top VCs like Polychain and Jump Crypto. Satori’s token is also yet to be issued, and it currently incentivizes users through a points system. In the IP RWAs sector, Aria seeks to integrate K-pop culture but has not issued its token yet, while STR8FIRE positions itself as a decentralized “Hollywood.” However, its official website only lists seven partnered IPs, including collaborations with American actor JD@DavidFaustino, and its token remains unissued.
● The AI sector includes Solo AI for music IP generation, Playartsdotai as an IP creation platform, and WhatTheFreg in the IP Meme category. Solo AI focuses on music IP and aims to establish a music IP financial ecosystem. It has received support from top VC firm Hongshan, but product updates have been slow, and integrated IPs remain limited, with collaborating creators failing to generate substantial new traffic. Playartsdotai has joined the NVIDIA Inception program, gaining access to more resources. Through Story Protocol’s ATCP/IP framework, Playartsdotai enables AI agents to autonomously interact, negotiate, and trade IP, offering users a more convenient, secure, and fair creative experience. WhatTheFreg is the first meme project generated through Story Protocol’s ATCP/IP, positioning itself as an alternative to $PEPE. It features AI agents mocking fake memes, aiming to be the ultimate guardian of IP. However, the WhatTheFreg community lacks strong engagement, and market sentiment has yet to generate significant traction, with limited participation in community incentive activities.
● The consumer applications sector includes Color, an IP NFT marketplace; Spotlight Protocol, an IP Memecoin launchpad; and BlockBook, an IP UGC platform. Color serves as the primary NFT marketplace within Story Protocol, allowing users to create, trade, and browse IP assets and licenses. However, product updates have been limited, and IP NFTs created on the platform have yet to gain widespread circulation. Community participation also remains low. Spotlight Protocol joined Story Protocol in October 2024 and participated in its testnet activities. While it identifies key market pain points, it has not yet provided a concrete solution. BlockBook, a UGC-focused platform, integrates with Story Protocol to help creators earn more revenue and recognition. However, community participation remains limited, and its token is yet to be issued, with user incentives currently distributed through a points system.
Content
2.1 AI Generating Music IP — Solo AI
2.2 IP Creation Platform — Playartsdotai
3.1 IP NFTs Marketplace — Color
3.2 IP Memecoin Launchpad — Spotlight Protocol
3.3 IP UGC Platform — BlockBook
4.1 Cross-chain Bridge — deBridge
4.2 Developer Services — Gelato
Story Protocol, with its unique narrative, has become a focal point in the market. It has secured three rounds of lead investment from top VC firm a16z. Founder S.Y. Lee’s strong background in media and politics provides Story Protocol with a distinctive perspective and valuable resources. Today, Story Protocol has emerged as a key project in the on-chain IP space.
Story Protocol co-founder @jasonjzhao believes that IP spans a vast range of industries and has a significant market size, covering scientific research IPs like Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, consumer sector IPs like Coca-Cola and Disney, and even personal IPs like Trump and Messi. However, the traditional IP market faces various issues, such as unfair distribution. Story Protocol was created to address these problems by integrating IP with blockchain, enabling on-chain programmability. It transforms creativity into on-chain assets and ensures proper ownership distribution.
Additionally, Story Protocol’s ecosystem integrates Korean pop culture and American film IPs, appealing to the younger crypto market. With these elements combined, could Story Protocol evolve into the foundational IP infrastructure of Web3? In the current market environment, can Story Protocol defy the odds and attract more users? With these questions in mind, we continue our exploration.
I. Fundamental Analysis
1. Market Background
Before diving into Story Protocol, let’s first examine the current state and challenges of the intellectual property (IP) industry.
In recent years, the IP market has continued to expand, becoming a key pillar across entertainment, technology, and consumer sectors. According to Business Research data, the global IP market is projected to reach $2.66 billion by 2033, reflecting a 118.7% increase. This growth spans multiple industries, including film, gaming, music, publishing, and sports.
However, despite the vast scale of the IP industry, it continues to face several challenges. The primary issues in the current IP landscape can be summarized into three key areas:
· Unequal Revenue Distribution: The IP industry is highly concentrated, with over 70% of revenue controlled by a few large corporations. Independent creators and small content producers struggle to monetize their work fairly. For example, in the music industry, Spotify’s royalty model results in over 90% of independent musicians earning less than $1,000 per year, while the top 10% of artists capture more than 80% of streaming revenue.
· Complex Processes & Geographical Restrictions: Traditional IP development is complicated, with long authorization cycles and regional limitations. For instance, adapting a popular film into a video game requires extensive legal, business, and distribution negotiations, often taking years. Additionally, due to the difficulty of verifying IP ownership, creators struggle to receive fair compensation, limiting innovation within the IP ecosystem.
· Severe IP Infringement Issues: IP infringement remains a global problem. According to WIPO data, economic losses from IP infringement surpassed $320 billion in 2024. Digital art, film, and gaming industries are particularly vulnerable, suffering from widespread unauthorized use and replication.
Story Protocol proposes an optimized solution focused on addressing unfair revenue distribution and simplifying IP registration processes while eliminating regional constraints. However, it is important to note that since Story Protocol’s core mechanism is on-chain IP asset management, blockchain data remains immutable and unaffected by external factors. As a result, Story Protocol cannot effectively enforce penalties for malicious IP infringement, meaning that the issue of IP violations remains unresolved.
With blockchain and AI at its core, Story Protocol aims to establish a more efficient IP management system. How does it achieve this? What are the key differences from traditional IP management? What innovations does it introduce? In the following sections, we will analyze these aspects in detail.
2. Core Mechanism
Story Protocol focuses on intellectual property (IP) with its core feature of bringing IP assets on-chain and using smart contracts to define authorization and revenue distribution rules. This allows for more efficient circulation and monetization of creative and derivative content. Story Protocol enables direct buying, selling, licensing, and trading of IPs, expanding the market size while reducing third-party intermediary fees. The core mechanisms of Story Protocol can be summarized as follows:
· Programmable IP: Story Protocol brings IP onto the blockchain and sets licensing rules. When derivative works generate income, smart contracts automatically distribute royalties between the original IP creator and the derivative work creator based on predefined terms, ensuring fair and timely profit distribution without third-party intervention. The programmable IP licenses (PIL) offer three templates: non-commercial use, commercial use with resale restrictions, and resale and development of derivative products.
· ATCP/IP Framework: Story Protocol introduces the ATCP/IP framework, with IP as the core asset, allowing multiple AI agents to autonomously trade IPs, including training data, creation styles, and investment strategies. This framework enables AI agents to directly interact, negotiate, and trade IPs without human intervention, driving efficiency and intelligence in AI operations.
3. Economic Model
The native token $IP has an initial supply of 1 billion, with 25% of this supply initially unlocked. Of this, 41.6% of the tokens held by early supporters and core contributors are still locked, and the unlocking will occur over approximately two years. The distribution and unlocking timeline for the $IP token is as follows:
· Ecosystem and Community: 38.4%, with 26% already unlocked, and the remainder will be unlocked linearly over four years.
· Early Investors: 21.6%, which are currently locked and will be unlocked linearly over two years.
· Core Contributors: 20%, which are currently locked and will be unlocked linearly over three years.
· Initial Incentives: 10%, fully unlocked at the time of Token Generation Event (TGE).
· Foundation: 10%, which has not been unlocked yet.
The $IP token serves multiple functions, including staking, paying transaction fees, and participating in community governance.
4. Team and Financing
The Story Protocol team boasts rich experience in media and politics, with notable mention of CEO SY Lee. He has previously interned in the U.S. House of Representatives and the South Korean National Assembly, was a partner at the renowned South Korean foundation Hashed, and founded the novel platform Radish, which was eventually sold for $440 million. Radish is an IP platform in the Web2 domain. Other founding team members, such as Jason Zhao, also come from prestigious backgrounds like Stanford University. This high-quality team has attracted significant investment from top VCs. According to community sources, Story Protocol attracted financing from a16z even before the product was officially launched, based solely on a PPT presentation. Some in the community have even labeled Story Protocol as a key blockchain investment by a16z, following Solana and Sui.
Since 2023, Story Protocol has completed three rounds of large-scale financing, with a total raised amount of $134 million. Each round was led by a16z, and the details are as follows:
· Seed Round (May 2023): Led by a16z, with investors including Hashed, dao5, and others, raising $29.3 million.
· Series A (September 2023): Again led by a16z, with investors including Hashed, Samsung Next, Foresight Ventures, and others, raising $25 million.
· Series B (August 2024): Led by a16z, with investors including Polychain, Cozomo de Medici, Adrian Cheng, and others, raising $80 million.
5. Operational Data
The Story Protocol mainnet officially launched on February 13, 2025. According to data from Storyscan, as of the time of writing, the total number of addresses on Story Protocol is 762,000, with a daily transaction volume of 231,000. Additionally, according to the staking page on the official website, Story Protocol has 37 mainnet validators, with a total staked amount exceeding 300 million $IP tokens, and an annual percentage rate (APR) of approximately 9.24%. However, the data indicates a significant decline in active accounts since the mainnet launch and token issuance, with the trend currently stabilizing.
According to the official website, Story Protocol’s ecosystem projects are mainly focused on IPFi, AI, and consumer applications, totaling 148 projects. However, it is worth noting that after conducting a full survey of these current ecosystem projects, the report found that most of them are still in the early stages. Among the 148 projects in the ecosystem, some have ceased operations, while others are striving to make a comeback.
Among these projects, interesting perspectives include incorporating Web2 IPs, such as combining with Korean pop culture to create a decentralized “Hollywood” and optimizing traditional UGC systems. These elements also bring more possibilities to Web3. In the following sections, this report will focus on key projects in the IPFi, AI, consumer applications, and infrastructure sectors.
II. Key Ecosystem Projects
1.IPFi
1.1 DeFi — Unleash Protocol
Unleash Protocol is a lending platform based on Story Protocol, with the primary goal of increasing the liquidity and leverage of IP assets. Currently, the assets available for borrowing on Unleash Protocol are limited, supporting only USDC.e, IP, and WETH. Among these, the IP asset offers the highest annual percentage yield (APY), reaching up to 12.31%.
Unleash Protocol ranks second in terms of total value locked (TVL) within Story Protocol’s DeFi ecosystem, with only a $1.2 million difference from the top-ranked protocol. As of the time of writing, the total DeFi TVL of Story Protocol is $30.99 million, and Unleash Protocol’s TVL is $12.59 million, accounting for approximately 40.6% of the total DeFi TVL.
It is worth noting that Unleash Protocol also manages Story Protocol’s first AI agent, Benjamin. Benjamin focuses on DeFAI, aiming to integrate DeFi and IPFi. However, as of the time of writing, Benjamin’s social media has stopped updating.
Overall, Unleash Protocol’s positioning is similar to Ethereum’s AAVE, and its long-term development mainly relies on the growth of the Story Protocol blockchain. Currently, the tokenomics of Unleash Protocol has not been disclosed, and the tokens have not yet been issued. Additionally, Unleash Protocol is conducting its third round of lending incentives, where users can earn $IP token rewards for participation. However, user engagement has been relatively low.
1.2 Perp DEX — Satori
Satori is a multi-chain decentralized perpetual contract exchange, currently integrated with 12 blockchains including ETH, BNB Chain, Polygon, Base, zkSync, and Scroll. Notably, Satori’s official website does not disclose any partnership with Story Protocol, only interacting and promoting through social media. On the backend, it has integrated Story Protocol chain trading pairs into its web app for trading.
In 2022, Satori raised $10 million in funding from top VCs, including Polychain, Blockchange Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and Jump Crypto. According to the official data, Satori has over 6.55 million users and a total trading volume exceeding $3.81 million. In terms of products, users can choose to trade via the web app or through Telegram, with leverage options up to 50x.
Satori’s token has not yet been issued, and it primarily uses points to incentivize users. Currently, Satori is running its second season of trading airdrop activities, but there is some skepticism within the community. Some users have yet to receive the point rewards from the first season’s activity.
At this stage, Satori seems to serve as a multi-chain infrastructure supporting Story Protocol, rather than being a native decentralized exchange (DEX). It remains to be seen how Satori will contribute to the development of Story Protocol’s IPFi ecosystem in the future.
1.3 IP RWAs — Aria和STR8FIRE
A.Aria
Aria’s core mechanism revolves around RWAs (Real-World Assets) and IP, focusing on token compliance and RWIP (Real-World IP). It aims to release liquidity for RWIP through secondary exchanges and lending markets. The main products of Aria are Aria SPARK and Aria PRIME:
Aria SPARK: Provides a distributed financing model where supporters and investors can fund creators in developing new IP assets, ensuring that the interests of all parties are aligned.
Aria PRIME: Focuses on providing institutional-level IP tokenization funds, bridging the gap for institutional participation in the IP-RWA ecosystem.
Aria has secured $10.95 million in liquidity incubation from @Stake_Stone and has signed IP deals with famous Korean artists such as BLACKPINK, JISOO, and BIGBANG for partial music copyrights. Additionally, Aria has recently signed Selena Gomez’s album “People You Know,” which has achieved over 370 million streams on Spotify and over 50 million views on YouTube.
B.STR8FIRE
STR8FIRE focuses on entertainment IPs and is an IP launch platform. It primarily addresses the pain points of traditional entertainment IPs, which are mainly controlled by studios and companies in terms of income, decision-making, distribution, etc., leaving fans unable to directly participate in the IPs. Therefore, STR8FIRE proposes to tokenize entertainment IPs, directly raising funds through TIPO, and implement community governance, allowing fans to have voting rights to decide on commercial activities related to the IP. STR8FIRE believes that the future of entertainment for fans is not only about watching but also about owning, participating, and benefiting.
In terms of token economics, investors can stake the native token $STRF to unlock access to high-quality IPs. Additionally, $STRF has a burning mechanism, which is activated after each new IP release. Future plans include expanding into the RWA market, IP funds, and flagship IPs. STR8FIRE is committed to creating an ecosystem where fans can benefit.
STR8FIRE positions itself as a decentralized Hollywood, with only seven IPs currently showcased on its official website. However, in the official documentary of Story Protocol, Balistyx, more entertainment IPs, including American actors and JD@DavidFaustino, will join in the future.
STR8FIRE launched in March 2024 and is one of the longer-operating projects within the Story Protocol ecosystem. It has received funding from @shimacapital, @GSR_io, @MVenturesLabs, and @Taisu_Ventures. Currently, the native $STRF token has not yet been issued.
2.AI
2.1 AI Generating Music IP — Solo AI
SoloAI is the first AI agent supported by the Story Protocol Foundation. It combines AI-generated music with the $IP token, helping creators open up new realms of music creation. SoloAI secured $2 million in funding from top VC Hongshan. The SoloAI project launched in August 2024 and already has a solid user base, with over 30,000 users participating in Solo badges and over 220,000 transactions on-chain during previous activities.
Its main features include three key aspects: customizable music creation, allowing users to generate music according to their specific needs; the DiT PPL framework, ensuring the generation of high-quality music; and lowering the barriers to music creation by providing an easy-to-use interface and API integration, enabling more people to participate in music production.
Solo AI enhances its AI training model through a recursive data collection method, aiming to create a fully self-hosted independent AI music generation system. All music generated by Solo AI is entirely AI-created, ensuring that it does not infringe on existing music. Looking ahead, Solo AI plans to achieve fully on-chain IPFI (Intellectual Property Financial Infrastructure) through SOLO AMM (Automated Market Maker), creating a vibrant ecosystem for music IP finance.
Overall, Solo AI centers around music IP, with the ultimate goal of building a music IP financial ecosystem. While Solo AI has received support from top VCs, the project has shown slow product updates and limited IP integrations. The creators currently partnered with the project have not yet brought significant new traffic to the platform.
2.2 IP Creation Platform — Playartsdotai
Playartsdotai is an AI agent based on Story Protocol, also supporting @arbitrum, @BNBchain, @monad_xyz, and more. It allows users to generate and edit works, tokenize them, and facilitate trading and value accumulation. Notably, Playartsdotai has joined NVIDIA Inception, which will provide additional resource support. Through Story Protocol’s ATCP/IP protocol, Playartsdotai enables autonomous interaction, negotiation, and IP transactions between AI agents, offering users a more convenient, secure, and fair creation experience.
Technically, Playartsdotai expands the AI ecosystem with a custom framework, image training data validators, and AI models with vGPU virtualization. Through detailed model customization, strict data validation, and efficient training methods, Playarts enables users to unlock new possibilities for AI-assisted creativity.
Playartsdotai was established in October 2024 and is currently primarily community-driven, with the official team regularly conducting community incentive-based activities. In February 2025, Playartsdotai joined the community AppWorks, focused on expanding into the Southeast Asian market, gaining additional resource support. According to official data, Playartsdotai currently has over 300,000 users, has generated over 320,000 artworks, and has a total of more than 1 million transactions on-chain.
2.3 IP Meme — WhatTheFreg
WhatTheFreg is the first ATCP/IP generated Meme on Story Protocol, and it is positioned as a competitor to $PEPE. Its main feature is the AI agent that mocks fake memes, positioning itself as the ultimate guardian of intellectual property. As a result, WhatTheFreg is referred to as the “Intellectual Property Batman,” with its image being a fierce protector and destroyer challenging false and derivative content in the chaotic Web3 environment.
As an AI-generated meme, WhatTheFreg is deeply integrated with Story Protocol and its ecosystem projects. For instance, in terms of token allocation, about 50% of WhatTheFreg’s native token, $WTF, is allocated to incentives related to the Story Protocol ecosystem. Additionally, WhatTheFreg conducts large-scale airdrops and encourages users to participate in staking to receive other token incentives within the Story Protocol ecosystem.
However, currently, the community atmosphere around WhatTheFreg is not strong, and the market sentiment lacks a strong triggering point, with relatively few users participating in community incentive activities.
3. Consumer Applications
3.1 IP NFTs Marketplace — Color
Color is the main NFT marketplace on Story Protocol, where users can create, trade, and browse IP assets, licenses, and more on its platform. Color is a good example of observing the ATCP/IP protocol, as activities such as IP registration and trading are based on the ATCP/IP protocol. There is limited publicly available information about Color, and the team is currently anonymous. The minting channel for Color’s native NFT, Color’s Cats, closed on February 19, with a total of 928 NFTs minted. Currently, Color’s Cats are live on the secondary market, with a floor price of around 12 $IP.
The Color project launched in August 2024. In its initial operational phase, Color participated in Story Protocol’s Iliad testnet event. During this testnet event, Color had over 40,000 users, nearly 80,000 NFT holders, and a total of more than 3.2 million NFTs minted.
Currently, the Color project has not seen frequent product updates, and the IP NFTs it created have not circulated widely in the market. From a community participation perspective, most activities are tied to projects within the Story Protocol ecosystem, such as receiving airdrops of other project tokens for holding NFTs, with no significant external traffic infusion.
3.2 IP Memecoin Launchpad — Spotlight Protocol
Spotlight Protocol believes that most Memecoins today are PVP (Player vs. Player), which is an unsustainable phenomenon. Therefore, Spotlight Protocol addresses this issue in two main ways. First, it asserts that Memecoins are not without value; like traditional IPs, Memecoins also hold value. The goal is to consolidate the value of Memecoins. Second, it points out the current divide between IP creators and the community in many Memecoins. For instance, in the previous BNB Chain narrative, CZ’s pet dog token $BROCCOLI created multiple tokens, leading to various PVP phenomena. Spotlight Protocol believes that multiple forces can create a win-win situation. Therefore, a single Memecoin can be built, where IP Meme holders decide which project has better development potential.
On the product side, Spotlight Protocol has released the AI agent @Spotty_IP and the Telegram bot Spotlight Bot. With @Spotty_IP, users can create IP assets or tokens with just a name and description. Spotlight Bot, on the other hand, is an intelligent tracking tool that allows users to access real-time data on tokens and IP assets.
Spotlight Protocol joined Story Protocol in October 2024 and also participated in Story Protocol’s testnet activities. While Spotlight Protocol identifies market pain points and proposes solutions, it has yet to offer a perfect resolution in practice. Currently, Spotlight Protocol has only a few lesser-known Memecoins addressing the divisions in actual Memecoins and lacks strong community consensus.
3.3 IP UGC Platform — BlockBook
BlockBook is a platform focused on user-generated content (UGC) that, through its integration with Story Protocol, helps creators gain more income and recognition. BlockBook shares a similar vision with Story Protocol, aiming to reshape the content creation and consumption ecosystem to make it more fair, transparent, and mutually beneficial.
BlockBook has joined the @OrangeDAOxyz incubation program, which will provide additional funding and resources. Currently, BlockBook is collaborating with actor @LaurenceFulle, where users can participate in visual or textual commentary on artworks to receive NFTs and token rewards.
In terms of its product, BlockBook is similar to Web2 UGC platforms. Users must register via email to log in and post content. Interestingly, users are required to pay a small fee to purchase points in order to participate in content creation on the platform.
Official data shows that BlockBook currently has over 200,000 users, with more than 530,000 content submissions and 21.12 million creators. However, in terms of actual community engagement, the number of active participants remains low. Currently, BlockBook has not issued its token, and users are mainly incentivized through a points system.
4. Infrastructure
4.1 Cross-chain Bridge — deBridge
deBridge is a multi-chain cross-chain bridge and a critical infrastructure in the DeFi space, supporting the transfer of data between different blockchains. The public chains supported by deBridge include major ones such as Solana, Ethereum, and others, with Solana being its native chain and Story Protocol being one of the supported chains. Notably, deBridge holds over 50% of the market share for cross-chain bridges in the Solana ecosystem, making it a vital piece of infrastructure on the Solana chain. Additionally, deBridge has secured $5.5 million in funding from ParaFi Capital, SkyVision Capital, GSR, and has garnered attention from CZ.
On-chain data shows that deBridge processes an average daily settlement volume of approximately $19.16 million. Since the issuance of its token, deBridge’s adoption rate has shown a steady upward trend. According to DefiLlama data, deBridge’s Total Value Locked (TVL) ranks ninth among all cross-chain bridge protocols.
In addition, deBridge is continuously expanding its business scenarios, which allows for the continued generation of revenue. In terms of adoption, deBridge is also extending its support to new public chains, including SonicLabs, HyperliquidX, and others. As a result, the community generally views deBridge as a cash cow project with positive revenue potential.
4.2 Developer Services — Gelato
Gelato is a decentralized bot network that allows Web3 developers to automate the execution of smart contracts on chains such as Ethereum, Polygon, and Story Protocol. Gelato has secured funding from Dragonfly, Hack VC, Animoca Brands, and others. It has been deeply involved in the developer services sector for years and has established a relatively complete suite of developer tools.
Based on Story Protocol, Gelato has created the unique Gelato Story. Gelato Story helps developers build IP applications with randomness automation without needing gas fees. It also offers more advanced features, including automatic royalty distribution, gas-free IP licensing, fair unlocking of high-quality IP, cross-platform royalty flow, and the automatic adjustment of expenses based on usage.
The native token of Gelato, $GEL, has a total supply of 420 million tokens, of which 97% have already been unlocked. The primary functions of the $GEL token are governance and staking. However, as of now, the frequency of ecosystem governance actions is relatively low, and the number of users participating in staking is also small. Overall, Gelato’s revenue generation ability is limited, and the incremental value that Gelato Story brings to Story Protocol still needs further observation.
III. Outlook
Story Protocol has opened a new track by bringing IP assets onto the blockchain, fundamentally changing the way creators interact with intellectual property. It offers a more open, transparent, and automated way to manage IP. This report believes that Story Protocol has a wide range of applications and significant market opportunities. However, it also faces challenges in areas such as incentive mechanisms, IP aggregation, and the implementation of AI agents. If Story Protocol can effectively address these challenges and promote the development of a standardized on-chain IP operation model, it has the potential to reshape the IP industry and bring new growth opportunities to creators, users, and developers.
1. Market Opportunities
Story Protocol’s application scope far exceeds that of the traditional IP industry, with RWA, GameFi, and even the metaverse benefiting from it. Game developers can issue on-chain IPs via Story and allow players to create derivative content, thus forming a true user co-creation economy. The entertainment industry, including film and music, can use Story for transparent revenue distribution, reducing intermediary fees. Brands can utilize decentralized IP licensing mechanisms to improve the flexibility of market dissemination. Overall, Story Protocol is likely to become a leading IP infrastructure in the Web3 space.
2. Risk Analysis
At the same time, Story Protocol faces several challenges. First, it needs to resolve the incentive mechanism issues between creators, contributors, and the platform. Second, Story Protocol faces challenges in IP aggregation. From the current situation, the introduction of Korean cultural influences or American IPs from the Web2 sector has not had a significant impact, and Story Protocol needs more top-tier IPs to drive its growth. Lastly, like other AI agents, the ATCP/IP framework faces implementation challenges, and only applications that address real user needs will succeed in the market.
3. Conclusion
Story Protocol represents an important exploration in the decentralized IP field and has the potential to become a key infrastructure in Web3’s future. Currently, Story Protocol’s ecosystem projects are extensive, but most are still in the early stages of exploration. The introduction of Korean cultural traffic and American film and TV IPs has not yet brought new growth points to the ecosystem. Its long-term success will depend on optimizing the token economic mechanisms, IP aggregation, and the application of AI agents. If Story Protocol can effectively address the current challenges and help the industry form a standardized on-chain IP operation model, it will have the opportunity to reshape the IP industry and create new growth opportunities for creators, users, and developers.
