Once heavily backed by a16z, Story's token price has performed exceptionally well since TGE, with its FDV soaring to $7 billion, earning it the title of 'web3 Hollywood.' However, many have not considered what variables this combination of Korean Wave power and AI Agents might bring to the Crypto ecosystem. Below, I will share my personal observations.
1. It is evident that Story's TGE launched under a chorus of skepticism, but surprisingly, after its launch, it did not continue the market trend of VC tokens plummeting towards zero. Instead, it became the 'king of market manipulation' for this round of VC new tokens, thus being hailed as 'web3 Hollywood.'
Market manipulation is just a surface phenomenon. In my view, Story's choice to go against the trend for TGE and the outstanding performance after its launch are attributed to its discovery of the core narrative of 'AI Agent.' This is because Story was initially designed as a layer 1 public chain specifically for intellectual property (IP), aiming to move the management and trading of intellectual property on-chain to promote the web3 prosperity of vertical industries such as culture and art.
In order to promote the grand narrative of AI Agents, at the end of 2024, Story specifically launched a set of AI Agent trading frameworks (ATCP/IP), enabling AI Agents to autonomously exchange intellectual property assets, including AI Agent identity IDs, artistic creation incentives, and traceability verification networks, AI autonomous investment decision-making legal personalities, and IP licensing frameworks, among others.
In simple terms, relying on the framework and standards defined by Story in terms of IP, combined with the application and narrative attention on AI Agents, Story has naturally bridged the gap that appeared in its narrative on NFT digital artworks, using a new on-chain IP backend framework standard + AI Agent front-end practical applications to continue pursuing its on-chain cultural renaissance dream.
Imagine, when AI Agents possess legal personality and can achieve steps such as 'information requests, terms formulation, negotiation, acceptance, information transmission, confirmation of receipt,' through off-chain legal encapsulation and on-chain contract execution. Meanwhile, AI Agents can freely price and trade their trained fine-tuned data, algorithms, and models, allowing artists to create more efficiently with the help of AI Agents, thus forming a decentralized intellectual property market that can share profits with other AI Agents.
In fact, since the launch of the Story mainnet, it has indeed made some new features in the direction of AI Agents and IPFi.
1. SoloAI, as the leading AI Agent project in the Story ecosystem, focuses on transforming music works created by AI Agents into on-chain assets for free circulation within the ecosystem. Compared to the overly MEME-like state of most AI Agents in the Solana ecosystem, SoloAI grabbed the vertical direction of AI music creation as soon as it appeared, aiming to explore the possibilities of practical implementation for AI Agents, which is similar to the exploration of AI multimodality by web2 projects like HeyGen. The token $SONA has already been launched, but it has not been excessively FOMOed.
2. Verio is the IP trust engine of the Story Protocol, aimed at providing a financial and legal governance system for the newly proposed IP system of Story. It adopted a dual-staking model upon launch and designed a verification and governance mechanism to help creators and investors ensure the authenticity and value of IP assets.
3. PiperX/StoryHunt, similar to Solana ecosystem's radium and jupiter, are all leading decentralized exchanges in the ecosystem, allowing for the operation of on-chain yield systems such as MEME trading, DeFi liquidity mining, and IPFI earnings. If the Story ecosystem takes off in the future, the value of its core DEX ecological position will naturally be reflected.
4. Aria, a protocol based on Story for IP RWA, focuses on tokenizing top IP resources, ultimately enabling musicians and artists to create IP-based on-chain assets, allowing songs, books, movies, artworks, patents, brands, AI training data, AI prompts, etc. to be tokenized, launched, circulated, and traded. Today, Aria announced the acquisition of the debut hit (Black Mamba) by the South Korean girl group Aespa and partial copyright of the single (The Truth Untold) by the globally top boy band BTS in collaboration with Steve Aoki, and it has been tokenized. Other songs include works from globally top artists like BLACKPINK, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa, Katy Perry, BIGBANG, etc., which truly solidified the value of 'Korean Wave has arrived' on Story.
In addition, since the launch of Story, the ecosystem has rapidly expanded to include various categorized projects such as WTF, Mimboku NFT, ip.world, Spotlight, Unleash, Lewis, etc. Undoubtedly, there will be some flaws, but fortunately, the siphoning potential of its ecosystem has already begun to show.
In fact, the enthusiasm of the young community in South Korea for Story's Shill is becoming popular, with many considering Story as an opportunity to change their fate, even leading to exaggerated statements like 'without Story, I can't afford a house.' This actually reflects Story's strategic plan in community building, leveraging South Korea's mature star fan economy system and the digital frenzy of everyone trading coins to attempt to deeply integrate project ecological construction with Korean Wave culture, which can continuously bring in incremental users, and perhaps even give birth to innovative web3 cultural product forms. Completing the listing puzzle for exchanges like Upbit is probably just a matter of time.
That's all.
Returning to the beginning, why do I say that the combination of 'Korean Wave + AI Agent' will be a new variable under the trend of AI Agents? The crux lies in whether AI Agents can be implemented in practical applications.
Currently, from the perspective of ecological distribution projects and development potential, there is a trend towards bringing a new 'Utility' practical implementation for AI Agents. We can glean a glimpse from the performance of projects like SoloAI and Aria, but whether Story can compete with the Solana ecosystem in the direction of AI Agents still requires more time to ferment and observe.