Research: Story is Transforming IP into the Currency for AI

Below is a summarized version of The Block Research's Story: Transforming IP into the Currency for AI report. The full PDF versions of this report are accessible in English , Chinese , and Korean .

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has ushered in a new era where intangible assets, from data and code to images and text, have become pivotal to innovation. 

By many measures, intellectual property (IP) is the world’s largest intangible asset class, valued at more than $61.9 trillion. Historically, ownership and transactions have been complicated, with scattered legal frameworks and high costs keeping most IP locked away. Many creators and even large corporations struggle to monetize or fractionalize their IP efficiently, especially as the need for high-quality data in the AI era increases.

Story addresses this challenge by bringing IP on-chain and making it programmable. Through an automated framework of licensing and royalties, Story allows IP to be tokenized and seamlessly integrated into AI systems.

Story: The IP Blockchain for the AI Economy

At its core, Story provides the essential infrastructure that hosts IP assets for an AI-driven world. By combining an Ethereum-like execution environment with a robust legal layer known as the Programmable IP License (PIL), Story offers a unified on-chain registry that can cater to diverse needs.

Large IP owners can bring massive portfolios under one umbrella for easier management, while smaller IP owners can market their works globally without contending with traditional legal barriers.

Having raised over $140 million and reaching a $2.25 billion valuation, Story benefits from significant investor confidence, most notably from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z Crypto), which led multiple rounds of funding, an unprecedented move in its crypto investments. This strong backing underscores the growing recognition of IP as a major economic driver for AI.

With specialized data structures that track intricate IP relationships, the network supports what is often called an “IP graph,” where parent-child lineage and derivative works are meticulously traced.

The partnership with Stability AI is one clear illustration: AI-generated outputs from Stable Diffusion can be immediately registered as IP on the blockchain, securing verifiable ownership and traceability. This encourages a more equitable ecosystem where IP contributors receive fair remuneration for their works as these are integrated into various AI processes.

Technical Overview

Story’s functionality centers on three components:

• Story L1 blockchain
• Proof-of-Creativity (PoC) protocol
• Programmable IP License

The Story L1 uses CometBFT consensus with EVM compatibility, but it goes further by embedding specialized indexing and precompile logic to handle vast and fast queries across complex derivative chains.

Meanwhile, PoC sets out the rules for tokenizing IP, from how assets are minted, licensed and subjected to automated royalties or disputes. This component of Story is modular, enabling add-on contracts to handle everything from licensing logic to resolution of infringements.

Each IP asset is represented as an ERC-721 token with a token-bound account, meaning it can respond dynamically to external events, and instead of merely linking to a file, a tokenized IP asset can enforce licensing conditions, split revenues among multiple contributors and keep a detailed lineage of the derivatives it spawns.

For example, if an AI engine references a set of tokenized images, texts or research data from Story, any resulting output can be automatically tied back to the original IP owners for immediate compensation.

In cases where on-chain remedies are insufficient, the PIL ensures legal enforceability in traditional legal systems by bridging these automated transactions to recognized legal standards.

Meanwhile, Story’s Agent Transaction Control Protocol for IP (TCP/IP), extends its concept to machine-to-machine interactions.

As AI agents increasingly negotiate and exchange data with one another without human supervision, they need a transparent method for verifying asset ownership and respecting usage restrictions.

Agent TCP/IP standardizes the process, enabling self-directed systems to engage with tokenized IP in real-time while leaving a tamper-proof audit trail on the blockchain.

Use-Cases Takeaways

With Story in place, AI developers gain a single registry of tokenized, legally enforceable IP assets. They can license valuable datasets without hashing out separate legal agreements for every piece of content.

Enterprises can turn entire portfolios into programmable assets, collecting royalties from any corner of the world where their IP is used. Smaller IP owners would also have a way to monetize their works on par with larger IP owners, thanks to automated licensing flows and micropayments on-chain.

Beyond AI-specific scenarios, Story enables what it calls “IPFi,” an expansion of DeFi where IP becomes collateral for staking, borrowing or other financial activities. In effect, the on-chain revenue generated by these IP assets, be it from AI or derivative usage, could support a new class of financial products.

Since IP is the world’s biggest intangible asset class, Story’s programmable approach vastly enlarges the market for DeFi, drawing participants who might otherwise never have engaged with crypto.

A growing ecosystem of projects already illustrates Story’s capabilities. Platforms like Aria tokenize cultural IP and allow fans or investors to participate in otherwise exclusive revenue streams. Others, such as Mahojin, use AI to remix and generate derivative works with real-time royalty splits. Meanwhile, AI agent frameworks such as ai16z’s Eliza, Virtuals’ G.A.M.E., or Zerebro’s ZerePy embed the Story protocol so their AI agents can autonomously discover and license IP, further fueling a machine-centered IP economy.

At a higher level, Story aims to do for IP and data what Nvidia did for compute power, which is to become indispensable infrastructure for AI’s exponential growth.

Traditional IP enforcement falls short in a world where data can be ingested by models in milliseconds and outputs generated en masse. By bringing data and AI into a single on-chain environment, Story paves the way for a self-sustaining ecosystem of innovation.

IP owners can confidently make their assets available, while AI developers gain a transparent and legitimate pipeline of inputs. This alignment ensures that as AI continues to expand, it does so in a manner that fairly compensates those whose creations power it.