What is Story Protocol? How does it help the development of the smart property ecosystem?

Recently, Story Protocol raised $54 million in a Series A funding round led by a16z. They aim to provide a new way for existing creators to enhance their intellectual property rights. The vision is to create a new ecosystem for content creation and become the new standard in the intellectual property industry.

The Pain Points of Intellectual Property

In the past, intellectual property rights relied on the operation of the judicial system, but in reality, there are many inefficient processes and even problems within it. The team believes that while the internet has seamlessly and efficiently connected most users, intellectual property has not benefited from this. Traditional intellectual property business operations are both opaque and slow, leading to various issues such as rampant piracy and creators being constrained by existing systems that do not allow them to receive their fair share of profits.

Copyright has always been a controversial issue in the Web3 industry. Story Protocol attempts to address the problem from different perspectives. While the exact amount of earnings for creators remains unanswered, Story Protocol aims to change the structure of existing market business models in a more efficient manner.

Introduction to Story Protocol

Story Protocol helps creators to put their intellectual property rights certificates on the blockchain, assists in managing versions of creative works, and provides more efficient licensing mechanisms. According to the whitepaper, Story Protocol consists of two parts:

• IP Repository: Provides creators with the ability to put their work's copyright certificates on the blockchain
• Powerful Modules: Offers efficient composability of works

In simple terms, the IP Repository is a foundational protocol deployed on the blockchain that turns intellectual property, including articles, music, videos, special effects, 3D objects, and other media assets, into on-chain certificates, integrating decentralized attributes into intellectual property.

On the other hand, the IP Repository adds a "version control" function to its on-chain certificates, linking derivative works of creative works with clear copyright relationships. For example, when a podcast audio asset is logged into the IP Repository, and a fan creates a derivative transcript in text form, also logged into the IP Repository, the original podcast and the derivative transcript have a linked relationship. When derivative works generate revenue due to certain commercial activities, smart contracts will automatically realize authorization and profit-sharing to the original work.

The Powerful Modules provide more interactive behaviors using the certificates created by the IP Repository. These include functions such as authorization, transfer, sale, profit-sharing, and other intellectual property attributes, allowing creators to more easily engage in various commercial activities with their works and receive returns.

Future Vision

The author believes that once there is infrastructure regarding copyrights, when the metaverse, games, derivative communities, or even AI computations need to use any intellectual property material, they can quickly and easily make purchases, increasing the liquidity of the material.

For example, if a creator in The Sandbox wishes to use Mario's material to create game content, the original process would involve negotiating copyright with Nintendo's physical entity or local agents, making the process complex. If Nintendo puts the Mario material certificate on Story Protocol, any creator can use a standardized approach to quickly and easily obtain copyright authorization.

In the future, when AI develops to a certain extent and uses artificial intelligence to automatically construct metaverse scenes or stories, it can automatically access Story Protocol materials and pay copyright fees.

Potential Issues

The author believes that this protocol may have some potential issues, with the most critical being whether users of the material are willing to put usage information on the chain. For example, if someone uses material without informing the owner, even with a well-established infrastructure by Story Protocol, it would be useless.

Story Protocol resolves issues of increasing efficiency in intellectual property rights interactions, including authorization and profit-sharing, but it does not address how to prevent piracy. It still requires users of the material to have a good understanding.

On the other hand, there are regulatory risks concerning the legal effectiveness of smart contracts' automatic execution. For example, if a creator, after authorization, decides to charge or adjust fees again, the enforceability remains unknown, posing a risk to buyers' protection.

Lastly, there is a user threshold issue. Existing material brokers have market advantages, and the difficulty of getting creators to try new methods, such as putting their copyrights on the chain, will affect their willingness, testing the team's product capabilities and business development.

Story Protocol is not yet online, but to become an industry standard, it will require strong product capabilities and business development. How to launch from zero will be the most critical challenge for the team and the protocol's future.