Story Protocol (Twitter: @StoryProtocol) announced a $54 million financing led by A16Z on September 6. In the eyes of the public, this is a very mysterious project, with no white paper, no demo, and even no Discord or tg community.
Why can such a large amount of money be raised with just a PPT?
What exactly does Story Protocol do?
What is Story Protocol
StoryProtocol is a forward-thinking project that aims to redefine how intellectual property is managed and owned in the digital age. The initiative aims to address the challenges surrounding intellectual property, content creators and the complexity of inclusive digital ecosystems.
Story Protocol has built a simplified framework to comprehensively manage the intellectual property development lifecycle, with features such as source tracking, seamless licensing and revenue sharing. For creators of various types of media (such as prose, images, games, audio, etc.), applications based on Story Protocol can help writers and artists clarify the provenance of their works and allow anyone to contribute and remix while maintaining the value of the works and their contributions.
Story Protocol aims to work with third-party developers to build a rich ecosystem that provides services such as crowdfunding, capital formation, IP discovery, licensing modules, AI content certification, and community development. By adopting an open modular architecture, any application can be connected to each other, eliminating the platform risk for ecosystem developers.
Story Protocol is building web3 technology to revolutionize the way narrative worlds are created. Its mission is to unleash an entirely new way to create, manage, and license on-chain IP, ultimately forming an ecosystem of “story Lego bricks” that can be remixed and recombined. Story Protocol provides a simplified framework to manage the entire lifecycle of IP development, supporting features such as provenance tracking, frictionless licensing, and revenue sharing. Designed for creators of all media (prose, images, games, audio, and more), applications built on Story Protocol enable writers and artists to track the provenance of their work, allowing anyone to contribute and remix while capturing the value of their contributions.
By building a system centered around creators and contributors, encouraging participation and ensuring clear IP ownership, Story Protocol helps creators grow their IP into a platform with network effects, where contributors play a key role. In a software platform, a network effect is created when each participant who joins the ecosystem adds incremental value to the entire ecosystem. What is the project doing?
The project is to create an ecosystem to protect the IP image. For example, the IP usage rights of Bored Ape NFT are exclusively owned by Yuga Labs. If a creator wants to create a secondary work or a new work based on Bored Ape's IP, they need to obtain authorization from Yuga Labs. The original work may also cause damage to the interests of the creator due to unclear signature.
Then the problem that Story Protocol needs to solve is to maintain the IP image through the ecosystem, hand over the IP image to the community for joint maintenance, safeguard the rights of the original creators through the consensus of fans, and increase contributions to all creators and works.
To achieve this vision, they aim to support a rich ecosystem of third-party developers building on top of Story Protocol, providing complementary tools and services including crowdfunding, capital formation, IP discovery, licensing modules, identity verification, and community development.
The entire infrastructure — data structures and modules — is built on the blockchain. As content proliferates on the internet, blockchain provides provenance and authenticity without the need for intermediary entities. Crucially, the decentralized nature of blockchain enables developers to create applications on the protocol without fear of interference.
Star Team
S.Y.Lee is the co-founder and CEO of Story Protocol. He previously served as the global strategy officer for Kakao Entertainment, a leading Korean entertainment company, creating and providing original content and IP across formats. S.Y.Lee is also experienced in the Web3 field. In 2021, S.Y.Lee was promoted to venture partner of Hashed, the largest blockchain fund in South Korea, which has invested in seed round investors in many web3 metaverse companies including Axie Infinity and Sandbox. In 2016, he became the first member of the Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 list and was subsequently named one of the All-Star Alumni. While studying at Oxford University, he was elected as the first Asian president of the world-renowned debating society Oxford Union.
Jason Levy is the co-founder and CEO of Story Protocol. Previously he was director of Pocket Gems, where he built and led the content team at Episode. Jason worked as a financial analyst at Apple for 5 years and founded the mobile entertainment startup Worlds Between Worlds. He received his MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a dual degree in Economics and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California, where he became a Renaissance Scholar.
Jason Zhao is the Protocol Lead and Co-Founder of Story Protocol and was previously a Product Manager at DeepMind, focused on producing Google's cutting-edge AI models across industrial and enterprise applications. He is an active angel investor in cutting-edge technology startups. Jason served as the founding editor of Stanford Rewired, a magazine focused on the intersection of storytelling and technology. As a Design Fellow at IDEO, Jason created and taught a course at Stanford University's d.school. Jason received a BA in Philosophy and an MS in Computer Science from Stanford University.
The Story Protocol team has been emphasizing the importance of the developer community. This is another ecosystem outside of the IP franchise, providing development and support in crowdfunding tools, IP discovery, licensing modules, asset authentication, and community development.
Estimated launch time: Q1 2024 (no lock-up)
Project name: Story Protocol
Section: On-chain IP protocol Basic section
Issued: 1 billion (small circulation)
Investment institution: a16z led the investment with US$25 million, totaling US$54 million
Other investors include: Hashed (South Korea’s largest blockchain fund), Endeavor (the agency behind Gu Ailing), Samsung Next, Foresight Ventures (a Shanghai-based crypto investment institution, Dao5 (a gaming company), Insignia Venture Partners (a Singapore-based venture capital firm), Alliance DAO, Mirana Ventures, and angel investors David Bonderman, founder and chairman of TPG Capital, and Roham Gharegozlou, founder and CEO of Dapper Labs.
Benchmark products:
This project belongs to the social data sector. Its services and market directions are different from those of the social products currently on the market, but they are basically the same.
Similar benchmark products include:
Galex (GAL) currently has a market cap of $131 million.
DecentralizedSocial (DESO) currently has a market value of $97.1 million.
Since there is no such financing background for projects in the same track, the view that it may be a leading project in the IP social sector. However, there are very few social products led by a16z, so the only competitor of Story Protocol in the social sector may be Galex.
Story Protocol’s recent $54M funding round, led by A16Z, marks a major milestone in the intellectual property ownership space, with significant funding and a visionary team.
Story Protocol is a groundbreaking approach to intellectual property management that gives creators the tools and opportunities to thrive in the evolving digital landscape. Promoting a brighter, more equitable future for content creators and intellectual property owners around the world.