What Is Story Protocol? A Comprehensive Guide to IP on the Blockchain

12 Min Read

Crypto projects often bring new innovations and solutions to the fore. Their aim is to resolve existing issues in various domains while utilizing blockchain technology. Story Protocol is one such mechanism brings streamlines the usage of Intellectual Property. That’s right, handling intellectual property is no cakewalk. It includes lots of paperwork, multiple parties and various procedures. All of this makes management of valuable documents vulnerable to various threats.

So how does Story IP solve all these issues exactly? Story’s ecosystem leverages ERC-6551 to turn intellectual property into programmable assets. Using this Ethereum standard, it enables owners to set rules and terms for the management of a firm’s copyrights. On many fronts, this project solves many challenges organizations faced earlier. Especially the startups and growing enterprises that can’t afford big-budget legal advisory. 

Story IP replaces paperwork with blockchain and makes the security far better. It also brings transparency while removing all the middlemen from the process. Moreover, it encourages collaboration among the members in managing the ownership. The decentralized system makes tracking of assets very quick and effective. Not only does it secure the trade secrets, it also opens up new means of earning for the companies.

Understanding the Need and Potency of Story IP

Protecting intellectual works is a big challenge for creators. Furthermore, the existing system doesn’t provide a reliable safety net for these assets. Creative pieces like fan fiction, remixes, and games often become victims of plagiarism. The centralized mechanisms don’t provide adequate security to these possessions. Mostly, it’s the small creators that suffer due to these frailties in the current structure.

What Is Story Protocol? A Comprehensive Guide to IP on the Blockchain

Even if they want to safeguard their intellectual property, the cumbersome processes make it hard and expensive. Story Protocol presents an effective solution to this problem. It brings a blockchain-based system that tokenizes intellectual property. Besides the tokenization, it also optimizes the whole management of such assets. Removing the intermediaries makes the processing of licensing agreements faster.

Story’s system is capable enough to assign royalties to the participants based on pre-determined terms. It brings the ERC-6551, which bolsters the whole ecosystem. The robust token standard also tackles derivative tokens and sub-assets while granting ownership. It makes the arrangement and distribution of assets almost flawless. Simplifying the safety and possession of the property makes things much easier for small-scale artists and firms.

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Wrap Your Mind Around the Story’s Working and Components

Story Protocol makes creators and owners of IP familiar with smart contracts. Utilizing decentralization, it empowers them to track the valuables in real time. In addition to setting terms, the ecosystem also registers every asset to a token or set of tokens. These tokens bear important information about assets like usage rules, creation date, etc. Only dApps and AI tools that adhere to the pre-determined conditions can access this metadata.

Important Components of Story Protocol

The below-mentioned factors play a pivotal role in Story Protocol’s operations.

Programmable IP

When intellectual property gets “programmable”, it gets integrated directly into a software-like program. In this case, it gets embedded into the blockchain. For instance, a creator could place their program, painting, video, or character into a Story token. Also, they can decide how their content will be accessible to other users. The conditions of access could include restrictions to mature themes, royalty percentage, or mandatory credit.

Due to their on-chain existence, it’s impossible to tamper with the terms of these assets. Only the members can do it without removing any records of their doing. The third parties accessing these assets have to follow the guidelines mentioned by creators. This system gives absolute control to the creators while making their revenue stream steadier and longer-lasting.   

ERC 6551

ERC 6551 is the standard powering the Story IP’s structure. It’s the same protocol that creates NFTs and gives them their “account”, too. Similarly, it enables the Story tokens to be dynamic and secure. It transforms the current ownership and asset management norms. At the same time, it allows the creators to manage derivative tokens and sub-assets. 

Licensing and Agreements Automation

With smart contracts, the licensing and agreement get a new upgrade. The decentralized system eliminates all the labor-intensive and multi-partied practices. Using this system, the creators get payments directly to their wallets. Apart from that, it gives them safety from all threats of copyright and plagiarism. It creates a perfect system of creators in which they could flourish in the long run.

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Composability for Collaboration and Derivation

Story Protocol paves the way for collaboration and derivation. It allows a child IP asset to inherit characteristics from its parent’s token. The mechanism streamlines the credit and royalty distributions while heightening security. While maintaining predefined percentages, it keeps building an extension of the original work. It keeps the revenue streams steady, letting them generate more assets as well.  

IP Registration and Ownership Verification

Before registering their content, creators must give proof of ownership. It could also be a timestamped record confirming their rights. However, it needs to be done through a dApp that rolls out a token representing the asset, too. The system maintains ownership records on-chai,n making the verification process absolutely secure.

Merits of Using Story Protocol

Story makes things better for creators on multiple fronts, giving them chances to grow and earn more.

Increased Monetization

Story optimizes the royalty management system, making revenue streams for creators more reliable. With this system, they don’t have to rely on middlemen or manual payouts. Their payouts are instant and direct from the buyers’ wallets. Also, the predefined terms help them get what they want and how they want it.  

More Collaborative Opportunities

Here’s another front where on-chain composability does its magic. The decentralized platform makes it very easy for project owners to share their work here. First, they don’t have to fear someone stealing their ideas. Then, the interlinking of derivatives to the parent tokens keeps royalty and credit influx on.

Better Licensing and Ownership

On Story, every licensing term is recorded on a public ledger. This enables the interested parties to see the ownership, cost, and terms of the intellectual property. The transparency makes things easy for everyone while eliminating any chances of disputes.

After learning its merits, one must know some of its challenges too. So let’s dig into some factors that prevent Story from being more prevalent.

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Challenges That Story Protocol Faces

In order to become a go-to choice for creators, Story will have to work on these aspects.

Tricky User Interface

Currently, the Story offers hardcore dApp user-experience with which most people aren’t familiar. A complex interface could become a detractor for many creators. There are many who don’t want to deal with the unnecessary complications of blockchain.

Overdependence of Governance

While it establishes a secure ecosystem, it also makes things rigid. Often, platforms need to bring in some flexibility to make things easy for users. If this happens to Story, they’ll need to do something about this issue. Otherwise, it could disappoint many creators.

This danger is looming above all crypto-based projects, and IP is no exception. Though there are no clear laws so far, the world is gradually opening up to crypto. Hence, the Story protocol will have to be ready to adapt to new regulations and practices.

Not Handy for Large Projects

The mechanism is designed to support small-scale projects right now. The platform isn’t capable yet of handling a large volume of transactions. Also, if it wants to attract bigger artists or enterprises, it may have to give more control to them. Handling that while upscaling the protocol could become a big issue.

Restriction in Adoption and Scalability

The esoteric nature of blockchain and dealing with intellectual property makes it less scalable. The platform may still grow and become more popular among its target audience. Still, it may face some problems integrating other technologies or offering other solutions.

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A Peak Into Story’s Own Prospects

Story Protocol was launched with a fair and egalitarian approach. The project didn’t allow any individual or group to earn staking rewards in advance. Only in the “Singularity Phase” do token buyers stake or delegate their $IP. Furthermore, they didn’t get any rewards for it immediately. After that period, the Story allowed stakers to accrue the rewards equally.

The biggest chunk (58.4%) of token sales goes to the organizational development of the protocol. It will encourage platform upgrades, education, marketing, and community events. The remaining 20% and 21.6% go to core contributors and early backers. The project aims to bring “programmable assets” to the limelight while leveraging Layer 1 blockchain.

Conclusion

Story Protocol has certainly made it big in the intellectual property space. It streamlines licensing, sharing, and earning through copyright. It definitely establishes a better ecosystem in which creators can protect their work and flourish. Simultaneously, it makes sharing of ideas and cross-project collaboration highly secure. Story empowers creators with on-chain ownership and steadies their revenue streams, too.

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Shubham sahu is a freelance crypto writer and strategist based in India. He is passionate about the world of cryptocurrency and the endless possibilities that technologies like Blockchain, web3, AI, and others offer.