On February 5, Layer 1 IP blockchain Story officially released its whitepaper. Story aims to build a programmable knowledge and creativity marketplace, enabling all intellectual property (IP) assets to be registered on a universal ledger with customizable parameters.

Abstract

Story, a peer-to-peer intellectual property network, is committed to creating the world’s first programmable knowledge and creativity marketplace. On Story, scientific and creative assets can be registered on a universal ledger with customizable parameters. All assets feature standardized interfaces, making them accessible to any software application or AI model, thereby enabling the free flow and monetization of intellectual property. Story coordinates assets through a decentralized network graph: nodes represent independent IP assets, while edges represent the legal and economic commitments associated with those assets. Story also incorporates an asynchronous, decentralized verification mechanism, leveraging cryptographic economic incentives to assess asset uniqueness, ensuring fairness and transparency. Join Story to contribute to the growth of the world’s only open, permissionless repository of knowledge and creativity.

1. Introduction

The current intellectual property (IP) system heavily relies on centralized institutions to manage ownership and value circulation. From social media to pharmaceutical companies, a few unregulated entities tightly control the production and exchange of global knowledge, resulting in high transaction costs. Worse still, traditional IP systems struggle to cope with the massive generation and distribution of content in the AI era. Individual creators’ works are often scraped, trained, and utilized by AI without permission, attribution, or compensation. Meanwhile, AI companies cannot feasibly sign licensing agreements for vast amounts of content, leading to a lack of transparency and liquidity in the IP market.

We need a truly open, programmable, peer-to-peer IP marketplace where anyone can freely create, trade, and monetize without exploitation by monopolistic institutions. On Story, each IP asset embeds programmable licensing rules, enabling monetization and trading on any application. Story not only provides a global IP repository but also a programmable IP marketplace, driving exponential growth in human knowledge productivity.

2. Architecture Overview

Blockchain technology has evolved through multiple stages. Bitcoin[1] introduced decentralized ledgers, Ethereum[2] built a smart contract platform, and Solana[3] addressed scalability challenges. Despite the industry’s focus on balancing decentralization, scalability, and security, blockchain’s applicability and usability have been overlooked, hindering mainstream adoption. Therefore, we need a new blockchain that not only solves technical challenges but also creates programmable markets for complex new assets, making blockchain technology truly serve the real world.

Story is a decentralized blockchain designed with a multi-core execution environment. It consists of a main execution core and multiple highly customizable cores. The main core is equivalent to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), enabling rapid adoption of existing applications. The IP core, one of the dedicated cores, efficiently handles IP registration as a native asset class and optimizes operations on complex IP relationship graphs. While Story primarily focuses on intellectual property, its flexible architecture allows future cores to extend beyond IP applications.

Figure 1: Story’s Protocol Layers

Story operates on a network of decentralized nodes (validators) connected via a peer-to-peer network. These nodes work together to ensure consensus, transaction processing, and chain integrity, creating a secure decentralized network open to any participant following protocol rules. Following the principle of separation of concerns, the protocol is divided into three layers: execution, storage, and consensus.

2.1 Execution Layer

The execution layer is Story’s computational foundation, responsible for executing all transactions and smart contracts. It consists of the main core and multiple dedicated cores working in harmony. The execution layer aims to provide maximum flexibility and computational power for each core while ensuring network stability and activity.

Figure 2: Multi-Core Design of the Execution Layer

The main core is the default execution environment, fully compatible with the EVM. It processes all transactions and activates the corresponding dedicated core when a transaction involves contracts within that core. Each dedicated core is optimized for specific needs, such as processing speed, scalability, security, or privacy. For example, the way data is modeled, stored, and processed in certain applications directly impacts scalability and feasibility. The complexity of the multi-core design is invisible to users, as each dedicated core provides functionality through smart contracts, automatically activated during user interactions. All cores adhere to the following requirements:

• Determinism: The execution result of any method call must be deterministic.

• Measurable Resource Consumption: Each core must accurately calculate the expected resource consumption (e.g., gas fees) for all contract calls.

• Storage: Each stateful core can store data in its storage layer’s namespace as key/value pairs, with data commitments used for consensus.

Story’s initial release deploys three dedicated cores alongside the main core: one for IP asset storage and operations, another for connecting on-chain execution with off-chain data, and a third for cross-chain communication.

IP Core

In Story, IP assets are represented through multidimensional graphs, with various node types (e.g., IP assets, licenses) connected by edges representing economic and legal relationships. The IP Graph tracks the rights, licenses, and monetization processes of original and derivative assets.

Figure 3: IP Asset Diagram

The Proof-of-Creativity (PoC) protocol, deployed on the IP core, provides an open IP repository and modules for frictionless interaction with IP assets. PoC serves as both a standardized ledger for IP assets on Story and a digital marketplace for these assets and their rights. IP holders can register their IP on-chain, customize usage terms, and link IP accounts. Off-chain entities can monitor registrations, verify IP holder identities, and initiate decentralized dispute resolution in case of infringement.

Off-Chain Synchronization Core

The off-chain synchronization core natively supports oracles, enabling seamless integration with real-world data and services. One service deployed on this core is Story’s Orchestration Service (SOS), which verifies registered IP assets and licenses, authenticates creators’ social identities, and generates off-chain legal contracts.

Cross-Chain Communication Core

The cross-chain communication core provides essential components for efficient cross-chain messaging. By supporting cross-chain communication, Story promotes ecosystem interoperability, eliminating value silos and expanding application scenarios.

Future Core Scalability

Story’s architecture supports the addition of new dedicated cores, extending its functionality beyond IP. Potential future cores include an AI core for optimizing AI-related on-chain operations and a Zero-Knowledge (ZK) core for efficient verification of ZK proofs.

2.2 Storage Layer

The storage layer, located above the consensus layer, provides storage APIs to the execution layer and its cores. It simplifies data organization, encrypts data commitments, and determines the database used for data management. Inspired by NAND flash translation layers, the storage layer optimizes write performance and device lifespan while balancing performance, scalability, cost, proof size, and redundancy.

Figure 6: Story’s Storage Layer

The storage layer integrates on-chain and off-chain storage solutions (e.g., IPFS[7] and Arweave[8]), addressing fragmented user experiences. For example, when registering an ML model as an IP asset, metadata capturing content authenticity (e.g., C2PA[9]) is stored alongside the actual file for direct model inference when needed.

2.3 Consensus Layer

The consensus layer ensures network integrity, security, and stability by coordinating block generation among all network participants. Story initially adopts CometBFT, a modern implementation of Tendermint, offering Byzantine fault tolerance, liveness guarantees, instant finality, and modular design.

Figure 7: Tendermint’s Block Formation Cycle

Story’s consensus layer uses a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism, where validators stake IP tokens to maintain blockchain security and integrity. Validators are incentivized to operate honestly and efficiently, as malicious behavior results in penalties, including the loss of staked tokens.

3. Use Cases

Beyond Story’s technical architecture, we can envision various applications enabled by a peer-to-peer IP system. With the emergence of a universal IP repository and a programmable smart marketplace, we may be on the brink of a new renaissance. This section explores some of the most promising use cases, though many equally exciting applications remain unmentioned.

3.1 The Rise of Smart Markets

Bitcoin and Ethereum redefined money in recent decades, but progress in extending blockchain to other asset classes has been slow. Unstoppable digital markets are blockchain’s “killer app,” and purpose-built blockchains like Story are creating new markets starting with IP.

Traditional IP systems rely on complex centralized structures and intermediaries, resulting in inefficiencies in readability, trading, and monetization of this multi-trillion-dollar asset class. High transaction costs prevent knowledge and creativity from being converted into value, limiting the exchange and dissemination of ideas. Story breaks these barriers by enabling peer-to-peer IP trading and programmable IP.

Applications can integrate IP directories from pharmaceutical companies or media agencies as IP RWAs (Real World Assets) into Story. More excitingly, native programmable IP can combine with DeFi applications to create a new field—IPFi—where IP assets can be fractionalized, used as collateral, staked, or otherwise economically utilized.

3.2 The Foundation Layer for AI

Blockchain is an ideal foundation for AI interactions, providing a programmable medium for software to make hard commitments. Since AI agents train on IP as native input and produce IP as native output, Story serves as a foundational settlement layer for AI transactions, applicable to both training AI models and monetizing AI outputs.

Smart Chains

In AI, IP assets encompass databases, foundational ML models, fine-tuned models, and model tuning packages. By registering entire smart chains on Story, economic value can be distributed across network nodes. Story lays the groundwork for markets in high-quality databases and model tuning packages, driving the development of more efficient ML models.

Smart Agent Business Models

AI is evolving from standalone models to autonomous agent networks that perceive, decide, and act to achieve goals. Story’s Agent TCP/IP protocol provides a framework for standardized interactions between AI agents, enabling automated negotiation, authorization, and execution of agreements through on-chain smart contracts.

3.3 IP Tokens

Story’s native token, IP, coordinates all value flows within the peer-to-peer IP system. It serves as the network’s underlying medium of exchange, facilitating efficient transaction processing and fair resource allocation. IP also functions as a staking token, incentivizing validators to maintain network security.

Conclusion

We have introduced a peer-to-peer intellectual property system that eliminates reliance on centralized institutions. Story provides a dedicated network for creating a universal IP repository and a programmable marketplace for IP asset exchange. Its multi-core architecture offers the scalability and specialization needed for evolving applications and AI scenarios. As AI accelerates the volume and liquidity of intellectual property, Story’s network will become a pillar of the new smart economy. While Bitcoin serves as digital gold, Story provides value storage for all knowledge assets in the form of programmable intellectual property.

On February 5, Layer 1 IP blockchain Story officially released its whitepaper. Story aims to build a programmable knowledge and creativity marketplace, enabling all intellectual property (IP) assets to be registered on a universal ledger with customizable parameters.

Abstract

Story, a peer-to-peer intellectual property network, is committed to creating the world’s first programmable knowledge and creativity marketplace. On Story, scientific and creative assets can be registered on a universal ledger with customizable parameters. All assets feature standardized interfaces, making them accessible to any software application or AI model, thereby enabling the free flow and monetization of intellectual property. Story coordinates assets through a decentralized network graph: nodes represent independent IP assets, while edges represent the legal and economic commitments associated with those assets. Story also incorporates an asynchronous, decentralized verification mechanism, leveraging cryptographic economic incentives to assess asset uniqueness, ensuring fairness and transparency. Join Story to contribute to the growth of the world’s only open, permissionless repository of knowledge and creativity.

1. Introduction

The current intellectual property (IP) system heavily relies on centralized institutions to manage ownership and value circulation. From social media to pharmaceutical companies, a few unregulated entities tightly control the production and exchange of global knowledge, resulting in high transaction costs. Worse still, traditional IP systems struggle to cope with the massive generation and distribution of content in the AI era. Individual creators’ works are often scraped, trained, and utilized by AI without permission, attribution, or compensation. Meanwhile, AI companies cannot feasibly sign licensing agreements for vast amounts of content, leading to a lack of transparency and liquidity in the IP market.

We need a truly open, programmable, peer-to-peer IP marketplace where anyone can freely create, trade, and monetize without exploitation by monopolistic institutions. On Story, each IP asset embeds programmable licensing rules, enabling monetization and trading on any application. Story not only provides a global IP repository but also a programmable IP marketplace, driving exponential growth in human knowledge productivity.

2. Architecture Overview

Blockchain technology has evolved through multiple stages. Bitcoin[1] introduced decentralized ledgers, Ethereum[2] built a smart contract platform, and Solana[3] addressed scalability challenges. Despite the industry’s focus on balancing decentralization, scalability, and security, blockchain’s applicability and usability have been overlooked, hindering mainstream adoption. Therefore, we need a new blockchain that not only solves technical challenges but also creates programmable markets for complex new assets, making blockchain technology truly serve the real world.

Story is a decentralized blockchain designed with a multi-core execution environment. It consists of a main execution core and multiple highly customizable cores. The main core is equivalent to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), enabling rapid adoption of existing applications. The IP core, one of the dedicated cores, efficiently handles IP registration as a native asset class and optimizes operations on complex IP relationship graphs. While Story primarily focuses on intellectual property, its flexible architecture allows future cores to extend beyond IP applications.

Figure 1: Story’s Protocol Layers

Story operates on a network of decentralized nodes (validators) connected via a peer-to-peer network. These nodes work together to ensure consensus, transaction processing, and chain integrity, creating a secure decentralized network open to any participant following protocol rules. Following the principle of separation of concerns, the protocol is divided into three layers: execution, storage, and consensus.

2.1 Execution Layer

The execution layer is Story’s computational foundation, responsible for executing all transactions and smart contracts. It consists of the main core and multiple dedicated cores working in harmony. The execution layer aims to provide maximum flexibility and computational power for each core while ensuring network stability and activity.

Figure 2: Multi-Core Design of the Execution Layer

The main core is the default execution environment, fully compatible with the EVM. It processes all transactions and activates the corresponding dedicated core when a transaction involves contracts within that core. Each dedicated core is optimized for specific needs, such as processing speed, scalability, security, or privacy. For example, the way data is modeled, stored, and processed in certain applications directly impacts scalability and feasibility. The complexity of the multi-core design is invisible to users, as each dedicated core provides functionality through smart contracts, automatically activated during user interactions. All cores adhere to the following requirements:

• Determinism: The execution result of any method call must be deterministic.

• Measurable Resource Consumption: Each core must accurately calculate the expected resource consumption (e.g., gas fees) for all contract calls.

• Storage: Each stateful core can store data in its storage layer’s namespace as key/value pairs, with data commitments used for consensus.

Story’s initial release deploys three dedicated cores alongside the main core: one for IP asset storage and operations, another for connecting on-chain execution with off-chain data, and a third for cross-chain communication.

IP Core

In Story, IP assets are represented through multidimensional graphs, with various node types (e.g., IP assets, licenses) connected by edges representing economic and legal relationships. The IP Graph tracks the rights, licenses, and monetization processes of original and derivative assets.

Figure 3: IP Asset Diagram

The Proof-of-Creativity (PoC) protocol, deployed on the IP core, provides an open IP repository and modules for frictionless interaction with IP assets. PoC serves as both a standardized ledger for IP assets on Story and a digital marketplace for these assets and their rights. IP holders can register their IP on-chain, customize usage terms, and link IP accounts. Off-chain entities can monitor registrations, verify IP holder identities, and initiate decentralized dispute resolution in case of infringement.

Off-Chain Synchronization Core

The off-chain synchronization core natively supports oracles, enabling seamless integration with real-world data and services. One service deployed on this core is Story’s Orchestration Service (SOS), which verifies registered IP assets and licenses, authenticates creators’ social identities, and generates off-chain legal contracts.

Cross-Chain Communication Core

The cross-chain communication core provides essential components for efficient cross-chain messaging. By supporting cross-chain communication, Story promotes ecosystem interoperability, eliminating value silos and expanding application scenarios.

Future Core Scalability

Story’s architecture supports the addition of new dedicated cores, extending its functionality beyond IP. Potential future cores include an AI core for optimizing AI-related on-chain operations and a Zero-Knowledge (ZK) core for efficient verification of ZK proofs.

2.2 Storage Layer

The storage layer, located above the consensus layer, provides storage APIs to the execution layer and its cores. It simplifies data organization, encrypts data commitments, and determines the database used for data management. Inspired by NAND flash translation layers, the storage layer optimizes write performance and device lifespan while balancing performance, scalability, cost, proof size, and redundancy.

Figure 6: Story’s Storage Layer

The storage layer integrates on-chain and off-chain storage solutions (e.g., IPFS[7] and Arweave[8]), addressing fragmented user experiences. For example, when registering an ML model as an IP asset, metadata capturing content authenticity (e.g., C2PA[9]) is stored alongside the actual file for direct model inference when needed.

2.3 Consensus Layer

The consensus layer ensures network integrity, security, and stability by coordinating block generation among all network participants. Story initially adopts CometBFT, a modern implementation of Tendermint, offering Byzantine fault tolerance, liveness guarantees, instant finality, and modular design.

Figure 7: Tendermint’s Block Formation Cycle

Story’s consensus layer uses a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism, where validators stake IP tokens to maintain blockchain security and integrity. Validators are incentivized to operate honestly and efficiently, as malicious behavior results in penalties, including the loss of staked tokens.

3. Use Cases

Beyond Story’s technical architecture, we can envision various applications enabled by a peer-to-peer IP system. With the emergence of a universal IP repository and a programmable smart marketplace, we may be on the brink of a new renaissance. This section explores some of the most promising use cases, though many equally exciting applications remain unmentioned.

3.1 The Rise of Smart Markets

Bitcoin and Ethereum redefined money in recent decades, but progress in extending blockchain to other asset classes has been slow. Unstoppable digital markets are blockchain’s “killer app,” and purpose-built blockchains like Story are creating new markets starting with IP.

Traditional IP systems rely on complex centralized structures and intermediaries, resulting in inefficiencies in readability, trading, and monetization of this multi-trillion-dollar asset class. High transaction costs prevent knowledge and creativity from being converted into value, limiting the exchange and dissemination of ideas. Story breaks these barriers by enabling peer-to-peer IP trading and programmable IP.

Applications can integrate IP directories from pharmaceutical companies or media agencies as IP RWAs (Real World Assets) into Story. More excitingly, native programmable IP can combine with DeFi applications to create a new field—IPFi—where IP assets can be fractionalized, used as collateral, staked, or otherwise economically utilized.

3.2 The Foundation Layer for AI

Blockchain is an ideal foundation for AI interactions, providing a programmable medium for software to make hard commitments. Since AI agents train on IP as native input and produce IP as native output, Story serves as a foundational settlement layer for AI transactions, applicable to both training AI models and monetizing AI outputs.

Smart Chains

In AI, IP assets encompass databases, foundational ML models, fine-tuned models, and model tuning packages. By registering entire smart chains on Story, economic value can be distributed across network nodes. Story lays the groundwork for markets in high-quality databases and model tuning packages, driving the development of more efficient ML models.

Smart Agent Business Models

AI is evolving from standalone models to autonomous agent networks that perceive, decide, and act to achieve goals. Story’s Agent TCP/IP protocol provides a framework for standardized interactions between AI agents, enabling automated negotiation, authorization, and execution of agreements through on-chain smart contracts.

3.3 IP Tokens

Story’s native token, IP, coordinates all value flows within the peer-to-peer IP system. It serves as the network’s underlying medium of exchange, facilitating efficient transaction processing and fair resource allocation. IP also functions as a staking token, incentivizing validators to maintain network security.

Conclusion

We have introduced a peer-to-peer intellectual property system that eliminates reliance on centralized institutions. Story provides a dedicated network for creating a universal IP repository and a programmable marketplace for IP asset exchange. Its multi-core architecture offers the scalability and specialization needed for evolving applications and AI scenarios. As AI accelerates the volume and liquidity of intellectual property, Story’s network will become a pillar of the new smart economy. While Bitcoin serves as digital gold, Story provides value storage for all knowledge assets in the form of programmable intellectual property.