Some of the most successful projects in web3 were the least expected, from AMMs to NFTs, so we are always open to innovative and bold ideas.
That said, there are some projects we are very interested in seeing built on Story Protocol. We are putting our money where our mouth is with a grant program we will release in the coming months to support amazing teams taking on some of the challenges listed below (rewards range from $25k to $250k)
(Instagram filter before the social part)
Instagram didn’t set out to compete with existing giant social networks from day one. Instead, they offered one hyper-focused feature and ensured it was the best in the market - the photo filter app. This differentiating value prop drove millions of users to download it within a year. However, differently from the earlier-mover competitor Hipstamatic, the first popular photo filtering app, Instagram presented two key additions:
Story Protocol is particularly suited for large-scale remixing with attribution, providing rich IP graphs for creators to see all remixes and derivatives of their content in one place. We envision a consumer-friendly, simple mobile app allowing anyone to upload original content (video or digital art) with authorized remix/derivative licensing. It can provide creator tools and easy export functionality to existing social platforms. The core differentiation for this app is the rich IP graph. Creators can check the entire remix graph for all of their original content, similar to how one can easily check all nested comments under a post. Like a Twitter comment or quote link, no matter which downstream asset link gets shared, a user can always browse back to the original content that kickstarted it all.
(WordPress/GitHub meets Fandom)
GitHub revolutionized content management for software projects. WordPress did the same for web content. We believe a new CMS powered by Story Protocol can become the default solution for creative IP.
Story Protocol provides all the building blocks to capture the atomic components of each IP on-chain, with a comprehensive suite of extensible modules to address the needs of a growing IP franchise. However, Story Protocol is the underlying Git equivalent infrastructure, thus we need a platform like GitHub to become the default go-to for IP owners to register and publish their work, set contribution terms, or create commercial licenses for their IP. Ideally, this platform can handle distributed contributions from collaborators and community members like GitHub, including version control, while still providing the project owner the final control of what to accept and merge into the canon.
Some additional features:
The traditional way of licensing IPs requires a tedious multi-month legal process and 1:1 negotiations only justified for outcomes in the high five figures or multi-millions. That limits access to many smaller or upcoming IPs that could otherwise benefit from opening their world to other collaborators or co-creators.
With the advent of new ways to bootstrap community-centric or outright community-owned IPs, we see untapped opportunities to reduce friction in the licensing process. We envision an IP platform or marketplace where any project, storytelling universe, game, animation, or PFP can provide licensing opportunities that are internet native. With the platform, projects can easily present promising licensing deals to their community holders or set up commercial terms that interested collaborators can acquire with a few clicks.