When first learning about Story Foundation it made my mind wander to a half-recalled extract from John Edwards' 1996 biography ‘Keating: The Inside Story’ covering former Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating.

In the biography, Edwards shares an anecdote from Don Russell, Keating's principal adviser and a former senior Treasury economist. Russell recounted during a seminar:

"he had heard the economy snap, not a slowdown or a steady decline, but an audible snap, something he heard in his office in Canberra not over a period but at a certain moment on a certain day towards the end of 1989. Paul (Keating) heard it sometime towards the end of 1989 too".

That is to say, sometime towards the start of 2025, “at a certain moment on a certain day”, the global intellectual property structures may elicit the same “audible snap”.

Story Foundation

The Story Foundation is building the internet's first native intellectual property (IP) infrastructure, through the purposeful combination of code and law. Story Protocol establishes a standardised system of modules for tracking the origins of creative works and provides intuitive licensing tools that allow anyone to safely adapt, share, and monetise their own or others' creations.

Functioning like Git for IP, Story automates tracking and attribution at scale, rewarding creators every time their work is reused or extended, either through attributions or compensation. Similarly, it allows for the cultivation of an authentic history; a 'story' of the progression of intellectual property from its first conception onwards as its utility and purpose expands beyond any pre-planned confines.

Under the hood, Story’s EVM-compatible design and IP-specific optimisations track provenance in real-time, map usage rights to off-chain legal structures, and automate royalty flows for everything from a single remix to large-scale franchise expansions. 

Rethinking Intellectual Property As Two Essential Layers

Modern IP systems can be split into two layers to reflect today’s technological and commercial realities:

1. Infrastructure (Framework) Layer

This layer is open access and emphasises collaboration (e.g., Linux and Ethereum) and provides essential tools and frameworks for innovation and modern commerce. It thrives on transparency, donations, and collective recognition.

2. Commercialisation Layer

This layer focuses on branding, monetisation, and market impact and acknowledges that replication is inevitable but stresses brand and value delivery. It transforms transparency, recognition, and raw ideas - often intangible assets - into an asset that holds tangible, accessible value.

Many legacy IP frameworks such as the World Trade Organisation's TRIPS Agreement, the Madrid Protocol, and the various jurisdictionally isolated IP registration and administration bodies limit access for smaller entities and developing regions, hampering accessibility for innovation protection. 

Consideration of concepts like the Innovation Value Chain highlights that these modern IP systems remain somewhat incomplete at their core. Where the value of innovation is to naturally progress from its initial discovery and development phases into a delivery phase, few technologies seamlessly allow such a transition. If there is only focus on the infrastructure layer (the discovery and development phases) without consideration for the delivery phase (the commercialisation layer) then the value is unable to accrue efficiently.

By decentralising IP registration, tokenising assets, and standardising processes, Story enables a more inclusive, automated system that empowers both layers.  

With Story’s AI-driven, standardised protocol architecture, creators can:

• allow their IP to remain dynamic, instead of a static concept that struggles to evolve alongside technology (such as the current growth of artificially intelligent autonomous agents);
• register and timestamp their work in an immutable ledger;
• detect copyright breaches in real time;
• empower ideas to be commercialised in new markets without repeated applications for copyright in other jurisdictions;
• build a brand around their IP first and foremost; and
• make traditional licencing a more streamlined process, while allowing internet native management for artificially intelligent autonomous agents.

Because the protocol aligns with established IP frameworks (like WIPO’s global registration systems or the Madrid Protocol), the evidence it provides (e.g., clear records of ownership, transfer history, and licencing terms) satisfies most legal requirements for enforcement. This integrated approach streamlines protection and enforcement, reducing the manual burden on creators while leveraging existing legal remedies.

Historically, it was difficult to transfer information as fast or as well as humans can now, which is why these systems popped up. Much of the world’s IP, from traditional knowledge to local innovations, is stuck with isolated holders who lack access to markets or frameworks to leverage their rights.

Story Protocol - Bridging Infrastructure and Commercialisation

To underpin this dual-layer IP model, Story Protocol introduces protocol architecture combining:

1. Data Structures ("Nouns")

Data structures serve as the "nouns" of the system, capturing and standardising IP metadata as "IP legos." They ensure provenance and attribution through a structured, global standard, enabling consistency and reliability. Functioning like widely recognised protocols such as HTTP or HTML, these data structures streamline and accelerate the adoption of Story’s approach to IP by providing a common framework for managing and sharing intellectual property.

2. Modules ("Verbs")

Modules, act as "verbs," and enable a wide range of operations regarding IP assets, from licensing to revenue generation. They support programmable and transparent licensing processes, offering a dynamic alternative to traditional negotiations. By facilitating simple IP extension, these modules unlock opportunities for creating derivative works and accessing global markets, enhancing the adaptability and reach of intellectual property.

By integrating these elements, Story Protocol empowers creators to operate within both the infrastructure and commercialisation layers, transforming IP into a dynamic, accessible, and equitable ecosystem. You can read more about the way that the Story protocol works in detail here.

Use Cases

Ultimately, humans have increasingly trended towards more complex databases, interacting with each other in more complex ways, like the early trust-based value transfer chains like the "hawala" system. The commodification of intellectual property through decentralised databases is fundamental to a modern economic actor’s ability to be competitive in the global economy and protect, facilitate global trade, and enable liquidity for consumers and market participants.

One of the most discerning traits of what has unlocked the International economy in recent centuries is the capability to interact with almost any concept as an asset. Music, water, future crop yields... but ideas - a finite, economic concept - have yet to be expressed in forms that allow for this same true market freedom.

There is inherent IP that is stuck with isolated IP holders without rudimentary marketplaces to make leveraging those inherent rights simple. The commodification of artist copyright in physical art is a huge green field. The music industry has mature systems in place for long-term IP value accruals and hypothecation, however, it is reliant on legacy Web 2 systems to transact, but even that was a carve-out in music publishing and recording contracts dated before 2003 (pre-iTunes).

Bring that IP on-chain, verify its ownership, trade the hell out of it, and give creators cash. Record labels manage music commercialisation well for themselves. YouTube covers the protection of artist IP through automatic matching algorithms and “take-down” notices. Story can build on, and with, those giants.

AI Autonomous Agents and the Story Protocol

As artificial intelligence increasingly plays a role in content creation, governance, and commercialisation, the need for an adaptive and automated intellectual property framework becomes urgent. Story Protocol enables AI-driven autonomous agents to register, track, and manage intellectual property dynamically, ensuring that AI-generated works can be transparently attributed, licensed, and monetised without reliance on traditional, human-driven intermediaries. By embedding smart contracts and programmable licensing, Story allows AI agents to engage in IP transactions, whether creating, remixing, or distributing works, while maintaining compliance with global IP standards. This capability unlocks new market efficiencies, allowing AI-driven creators to not only produce intellectual property but also negotiate and enforce rights autonomously, heralding an era where creativity and ownership extend beyond human actors.

Reasonable Readjustments

What excites Pier Two about Story is that it doesn’t reinvent the wheel; it builds on what works in a sense and makes it more accessible across a broader number of modalities. Systems like Spotify’s distribution, YouTube’s content protection algorithms, and WIPO’s legal frameworks can all integrate with Story to create a next-generation IP marketplace that is more equitable, transparent, and scalable. This coalescence will solve the two major inefficiencies that IP today suffers from: 

• it’s locked up in isolated places; and
• most industries lack the marketplace infrastructure to allow IP to be leveraged effectively.

By creating a decentralised IP Graph, Story provides the tools to unlock, verify, and commericalise IP seamlessly, bringing liquidity and accessibility to markets that have historically been out of reach for many creators.

Take, for example, the commodification of artists' copyrights in physical art. As aforementioned, despite the music industry's relatively mature IP systems, their continued reliance on legacy databases and technology has left them incomplete. Their inability to truly leverage new technology and expand the IP market leaves an enormous green field space for Story to fill. Connective Web 3 projects like Story allows users to not just verify ownership, but to trade the IP itself, giving creators access to liquidity and long-term financial benefits. The market is freer and fairer when its isolation is removed and the infrastructure improved.

10 Years Later

In the next decade, Pier Two can see a reality where the Story influenced IP Graph addresses two things:

• smooths out the broad structural novation inherent in current IP systems; and
• facilitates new marketplaces regarding fractionalised IP commercialisation.

First, the IP Graph can act as a universal infrastructure layer, an open-source, decentralised registry that integrates with systems like WIPO, TRIPS, and PBR but eliminates the barriers of bureaucracy and cost at the registration layer. Creators and innovators could register IP instantly, tokenise it, and automate licensing via smart contracts. This would make IP protection and monetisation accessible to everyone, from a country musician in Innisfail, Australia to a farmer collective in Papua New Guinea commercialising a water-resilient vanilla bean crop.

Second, the IP Graph would drive the commercialisation layer. Right now, there’s a massive amount of IP, patents, trademarks, and art copyrights that are stuck outside the markets or being freely used within the markets without benefiting the creator. Imagine a world where that IP can be fractionalised, traded, and hypothecated. A painting could be tokenised, with its rights sold in fractions to investors. A song could pay real-time royalties every time it’s streamed, with no intermediaries required¹. Even agriculture could transform, as locally developed seeds are no longer licensed out to corporations but sold directly to global buyers by the creators.

Ultimately, ideas themselves can be rented to produce a consistent return in the same way labour can be. Revenue can be raised and the profitability of the future, yet to be yielded, intellectual property can then be traded on allowing for innovation to proceed without cost barriers.

Next Steps

The IP Graph’s future isn’t about ownership per se, but also about accessibility, liquidity, and equity that can be leveraged by proof of creation (or origination). It is this asset that for so much of history has been intangible, often sitting as framed sheets of paper that adorn proud walls of achievements, that can now transform for a Web 3 and artificially intelligent future.

Story is developing the tooling to make this happen, and Pier Two is grateful to be part of the infrastructure layer that, “at a certain moment on a certain day,” snaps the legacy systems to democratise intellectual property protections, in a better way to creators.

Please note: John Edwards made no money from this article making use of a quote from his book, but future writers may if the Creative Commons framework incorporates Story’s protocol infrastructure.

1. Kobalt Music Group lead the closest version of real-time royalties, which allowed them to grow marketshare very quickly https://www.kobaltmusic.com/who-we-are/