Story (IP)
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Historical price evolution of Story
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Story Protocol emerges in 2022 when Seung Yoon Lee, former director at Pocket Gems, former analyst at Apple and former product manager at Amazon, together with Jason Zhao co-found PIP Labs in San Francisco. The project is born as a response to the proliferation of artificial intelligence models that consume creative content without compensating their authors, with the objective of creating a blockchain infrastructure dedicated to intellectual property.
During 2023, PIP Labs completes two important funding rounds. In May it closes a seed round of $29,300,000 led by a16z crypto, with participation from Polychain Capital, Hashed, 11:11 Media (Paris Hilton) and Samsung Next. In September it executes a Series A of $25,000,000, again led by a16z crypto, accumulating a total of $54,300,000 in funding.
On 21st August 2024, PIP Labs announces a Series B of $80,000,000 led by a16z crypto, with participation from Polychain Capital, Hashed and Foresight Ventures, reaching a post-money valuation of $2,250,000,000 and a total accumulated of $134,000,000. Six days later, on 27th August, it launches the testnet "Iliad", a public testing phase that registers approximately 5,000,000 daily transactions and nearly 19,000,000 active wallets.
16th December 2024 marks a technological milestone with the publication of the whitepaper of the Agent TCP/IP framework, which describes how AI agents can exchange intellectual property autonomously through smart contracts with legal validity. As a practical demonstration, Story hires the AI agent "Luna" to manage its official X account with an annual salary of 365,000 USDC. On 7th February 2025, Story Protocol publishes the tokenomics of the IP token, establishing a total supply of 1,000,000,000 tokens with 58.4% allocated to the community. On 13th February the launch of the public mainnet "Homer" takes place with the IP token, utilising Proof of Stake with instant finality via CometBFT.
During 2025 significant changes occur both in the team and in the market. In August, co-founder Jason Zhao resigns as CPO, being succeeded by Andrea Muttoni, whilst Sandeep Chinchali is appointed Chief AI Officer. In September, the IP token reaches a market capitalisation exceeding $1,400,000,000, to subsequently fall nearly 89% in December. In October a mandatory security patch is implemented to correct vulnerabilities detected in the protocol's smart contracts.
The first months of 2026 reflect operational and governance adjustments. In January two governance proposals are presented to reduce inflation and facilitate access to staking for small holders. In February some token unlocks for early investors and main contributors are delayed 6 months, originally scheduled for March 2026, temporarily reducing selling pressure, whilst PIP Labs executes a 10% workforce reduction. In April the testnet of "Confidential Data Rails" is launched for encrypted data flows oriented towards AI and healthcare, accompanied by the launch of Story Global Wallet to simplify access to the ecosystem.
Story functions as a layer 1 blockchain that combines Ethereum's virtual machine (EVM) with the Cosmos SDK and utilises CometBFT as consensus engine with instant finality. Its architecture is structured in three operational levels: each creative work is registered as an IP Asset through an NFT that complies with ERC-721 and ERC-6551 standards, which is automatically linked to an IP Account, a smart account capable of owning assets, collecting royalties and issuing licences autonomously without manual intervention.
The protocol operates through three interconnected smart contract modules. The Licensing Module manages usage terms and derivative works creating a graph of relationships between different registered IPs. The Royalties Module automatically distributes income amongst all creators participating in the derivation chain of a work. The Disputes Module allows users to challenge unauthorised uses through an on-chain staking system. The central element of the system is the Programmable IP License (PIL), an off-chain legal contract that complies with US copyright law and the Berne Convention, and which is directly reflected in the smart contracts to create a legally enforceable bridge between the real world and the blockchain.
Creators can define in the PIL specific parameters such as licensing fees, royalty percentages, remix rights and geographical limitations that are automatically executed through the smart contracts. The network's native IP token fulfils operational functions: it serves to pay transaction fees (gas), enables participation in protocol governance through staking and generates rewards for transaction validation on the network.
Data verified against external sources. Some values may have changed since the last update.