Intellectual property has become a hot topic in recent years, boosted not only but mainly by the advent of generative artificial intelligence. Currently, the management of intellectual property relies almost exclusively on a few centralized and unaccountable entities, which slows down and increases the cost of intellectual property processes.
Moreover, the traditional system cannot keep up with the world of artificial intelligence, where ideas can be created and distributed with marginal costs at a scale never seen before.
That leads to individuals having their creative output used to train models without compensation and AI companies not being able to feasibly generate millions of individual licensing agreements.
To create an open market for peer-to-peer intellectual property, the Story Foundation proposes Story, a decentralized blockchain where users can monetize their intellectual property.
Story overview
Story is a Layer 1 solution powered by a multi-core execution environment consisting of three layers: an execution layer, a storage layer and a consensus layer.
Execution layer
This is the computational foundation of the network, which handles the execution of all transactions and smart contracts.
This layer currently houses three different cores but it is flexible and can expand to other cores in the future.
The intellectual property core
This is where the Proof of Creativity (PoC) protocol is deployed. PoC allows users to register their intellectual property and define usage terms and royalty structure using template contracts.
The Offchain Synchronization Core
By default, blockchains are isolated from the "real world," and when there is the need to connect with real-world data and/or assets, oracles are necessary.
This core extends PoC protocol by attesting to the authenticity of registered IP assets and licenses, verifying the social identities of creators, receiving offchain payment, and generating legal contracts for offchain usage.
The Cross-Chain Communication Core
The cross-chain communication core allows IP holders to leverage their IP across across different blockchains, accessing various marketplaces, platforms, and services while maintaining consistent ownership coordination and monetization terms.
This completes the overview of the Execution Layer and its cores. Now, moving on to the next layer.
The Storage Layer
The storage layer implements data placement strategies to balance performance, scalability, cost, proof size and redundancy across heterogeneous storage systems. The storage subsystems automatically adjust to handle various data types efficiently, adapting based on their size, how often they're accessed, and durability requirements.
The Consensus Layer
The consensus layer ensures network integrity, security, and stability by orchestrating block formation among all network participants. Story uses a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism where validators stake tokens to secure the network.
The IP Token
$IP (to differentiate from the abbreviation IP, which stands for Intellectual Property) is Story's native token and it's used to pay for transaction costs on the network and also as collateral by validators, who stake $IP to maintain network security.
Validators process transactions and maintain the integrity of the blockchain. In return, they are rewarded with $IP based on performance.
Final thoughts
AI is built on intellectual property and it's being developed at a much faster pace than the traditional IP management systems can keep up with. That creates all kinds of problems for individuals who produce intellectual property and AI companies which use that IP.
Story Foundation seeks to bridge that gap by creating an environment where IP can be programmatically exchanged. Story blockchain and its Proof of Creativity protocol are novelties that can potentially help individuals monetize their ideas and AI companies train their models while being compliant with intellectual property regulations.