Let’s talk about Story’s new IP trading market Color: highlights, problems to be solved, and future prospects

Original title: "Let's talk about Color, Story's new IP trading market: highlights, problems to be solved, and future prospects"

Original author: Sleepy, founder of WeirdoGhostGang

Editor's note: On August 21, Programmable IP (PIP) Labs, the developer of the intellectual property blockchain Story Protocol, completed a $80 million Series B financing, led by a16z Crypto and participated by Polychain Capital. This brings the total financing amount of Story Protocol to $140 million. Such a high amount of financing naturally attracted widespread attention from the community. Today, Story Protocol's newly launched IP (intellectual property) market Color has landed on its test network. Users can buy, sell and discover IP assets and licenses on the platform, and mint colorful commemorative NFTs for free. WeirdoGhostGang founder Sleepy gave a detailed introduction and analysis of Story and Color on X, including potential airdrops and future development potential. BlockBeats reproduced the full text as follows:

In the current market environment, Story is definitely a hot project. The transformation from Protocol to public chain, excellent financing capabilities, and strong investor background all remind us how worthy of attention this project is.

I have been following Story for a long time, and I am also very curious about what they want to do and to what extent. Today, Story launched the IP trading market Color on its test network. With a curious attitude, I also experienced it as soon as I saw the news. This article is not a promotional article, but only a sharing of user experience and personal opinions, so you can rest assured.

Potential airdrop?

First, let me share the part you may be more concerned about.

Color has launched a commemorative NFT. You can go to Mint. There may be future airdrops. Just go to the testnet faucet to get the test coins and mint them. It’s free. I use the OKX wallet plug-in, which can directly click to jump to the website to get the test coins.

Product Introduction

The entire Color platform can be roughly divided into two parts, NFT asset trading and IP authorization.

There is not much to talk about the NFT asset trading section, which is similar to other platforms.

Collection list

Collection details, with some data dashboards and floor sweeping functions

Next, let's take a look at the IP authorization section.

First, in the big menu, users can filter according to different collections and select a certain NFT IP in the collection for authorization.

But when I wrote this article, this function seemed to be not ready yet and could not be used.

In addition, clicking the yellow button on the right will bring up the Magic Select option, which is quite interesting. Users can check the options below according to their needs and filter out IP assets that meet their needs on the platform.

Avoid the trouble caused by users not understanding professional legal terms

After clicking into the IP asset details page, we can see the IP licensing terms, which make basic statements on whether it can be commercialized, whether it can be disseminated, whether derivatives can be produced, and revenue sharing.

At the same time, through the query on the Story blockchain browser, these terms and conditions are stored on the chain, which ensures that if infringement occurs, the information on the chain can be used to provide evidence and apply it to the judicial process.

Also interesting are the derivatives and License Tree parts in the authorization details. Currently, these two functions have not been launched. In the future, they should be able to show which IP assets are derived from this asset, which can be traced back to the original IP and intuitively display the extension of the IP. With a complete link traceable, the rights and interests of the creators will theoretically be more secure.

Problems to be solved

I have always paid close attention to Story and I agree with their vision, but from my perspective and past practical experience in the IP industry, there are indeed some problems to be solved.

When I was communicating with a lawyer and content creator friend, she believed that the platform needed to conduct an audit when the IP was uploaded and published to ensure that there was no infringement problem in the first step of the entire link. Only on this basis can the entire model run, otherwise the creator and the infringer need to solve the infringement problem in the Web2 judicial system in the first step.

Whether the uploader owns the copyright, whether there are any restrictions on the tools used by the creator in the creation process, and a series of other issues are very complicated and difficult to track automatically. If they are strictly manually reviewed, it will inevitably affect the project's dissemination, marketing and other aspects. How to balance will be a difficult problem.

Then someone may ask, can we open it first and solve the dispute when it arises? It just so happens that the information on the chain can also be used as evidence. If the real creator can prove that the creation time is earlier than the time of chaining, can't the problem be solved?

This step is indeed OK, but for the party that violates the rules, the cost of infringement is very low. The anonymity of the blockchain makes it difficult for the infringer to be punished in substance, and it is difficult for the infringed party to have any compensation. To put it bluntly, the person who is infringed does not know who to sue the infringer if he wants to sue the infringer, because the only information he can get is a string of characters starting with 0x, and it is very likely that the platform will be sued in court.

The second issue is the sharing of revenue. The vision is good, through on-chain information tracing and profit sharing through smart contracts, but in the current world, most of the revenue generated by IP licensing should be in Web2. Therefore, if you want to make the vision work, you need IP parties + brand parties with advanced ideas. The stage is set up, but someone is willing to perform.

But this will involve compliance issues and legislative issues, which seem to be things that cannot be solved in a short time. Unless some brands with advanced ideas are willing to try directly, there are very few brands with such flexibility and action, and most of them are not large enterprises, so it is difficult to form scale and network effects.

In addition, based on our practical experience in IP commercialization operations, I have some doubts or concerns about IP licensing automation.

You can understand it with an example. Merchants selling e-cigarettes and vaping products overseas once contacted us and wanted to license the IP of Little Ghost, but we refused because we were worried that it would affect the IP image and thus affect subsequent brand cooperation.

If it is automated, it may be difficult for us to constrain specific partners, and such detailed and special restrictions may not be thought of before encountering, and it is difficult to write them on the chain in advance. IPs are redundant in this world. You can see a large number of IPs from all over the world at various IP exhibitions, and many of them are of very rough and poor quality; high-quality IPs are scarce, and the reason why they are high-quality is closely related to what content they have made and what companies they have cooperated with.

Expectations for Story

I am very optimistic about the field that Story is working on and have high expectations. Next, let's talk about what I expect to see on Story.

I hope there can be a matchmaking platform for brands and IPs, and introduce some well-known brands and IPs. Story itself may already have reserves in this regard, and we can get a glimpse of it from the financing situation. For example, if this platform has the IP of Pokémon, then there is no need to worry about whether the brand is willing to do IP licensing business through Story; for example, if Nike releases IP licensing cooperation needs through Story, there is no need to worry about creators having no motivation to release their own IP here. In this way, the entire ecosystem can operate better, and then promote the transformation of the IP industry to the Web3 field.

On this basis, the ecosystem should support high-quality IP, both in terms of content and business resources. This track actually determines that the way of ecological construction must be differentiated from other public chains, because a big difference/advantage of IP compared to other asset types is that IP can make money outside of Web3. Therefore, I think it is not meaningful to roll up TVL, DeFi, etc. The entire ecosystem should be supported and built around high-quality IP, content, and operation tools, focusing on the attention economy, consumer ecology, and resource integration and breaking the circle of Web2Web3.

In short, I am looking forward to the future development of Story. If there are any deviations in my understanding of the above content, please correct me, and welcome everyone to discuss with me.

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