Grayscale, the world's largest digital asset investment platform, today announced the establishment and launch of the Story Trust ("Grayscale Story Trust"), which aims to provide investors with investment exposure to $IP, the native token of the Story network.

Story is a blockchain network serving the AI era. Its core concept is to bring real-world data into the realm of programmable intellectual property, making it traceable, verifiable, and tradable. Designed specifically to address the demands of AI development, the rise of the creator economy, and digital rights management, the Story Network is committed to building a secure, scalable, and easily integrated intellectual property infrastructure. Through Story, intellectual property and real-world data, including music, media, characters, videos, and audio, can be traced, enforced, and monetized on-chain.

Story's vision is to assetize and blockchain-based intellectual property and real-world data, building the underlying architecture for the global intellectual property economy. According to relevant reports, the global intellectual property market has a potential value of up to $80 trillion. Against this backdrop, Story is a pioneer in promoting the full integration of intellectual property into the blockchain ecosystem.

The traditional intellectual property system has long suffered from severe fragmentation, reliance on intermediaries, and a difficulty adapting to the rapid development of digital content and artificial intelligence. Story Network seeks to disrupt this legacy system and propose a novel solution. Its core approach is to assetize intellectual property through smart-contract-driven non-fungible tokens (NFTs), embedding licensing mechanisms, attribution rules, and royalty distribution logic within these tokens. These mechanisms, built upon existing intellectual property laws, aim to enable creators, businesses, and even AI agents to legally register, recreate, and monetize their intellectual property.

Story is currently accelerating its adoption across multiple cultural and technological ecosystems, from top international artists and brands to next-generation AI platforms. Its ecosystem continues to expand. To date, the Story network has processed over 1.7 million intellectual property transactions and boasts over 200,000 monthly active users, demonstrating strong market demand for "programmable intellectual property" infrastructure. The network's content includes works by artists like Justin Bieber and BLACKPINK, commercial partners like Adidas and Crocs, and participation from AI organizations like Stability AI.

Story has also independently launched original projects such as "Poseidon," dedicated to integrating real-world data into AI systems for cutting-edge technologies such as service robotics, surgical assistance, and autonomous driving. These collaborations and projects fully demonstrate the broad applicability and far-reaching impact of the protocol.

“Grayscale Story Trust provides investors with access to the Story Protocol, a key builder of the foundational layer of intellectual property for the Information and AI Ages,” said Rayhaneh Sharif-Askary, Head of Product and Research at Grayscale. “This encompasses not only creative content but also the real-world data resources that power today’s most advanced intelligent systems.”

SY Lee, CEO and co-founder of PIP Labs and an early core contributor to Story, also noted:

Story is designed to support the entire intellectual property lifecycle—from music and media content to the real-world data that powers intelligent systems. The establishment of Grayscale Story Trust not only marks a key step for programmable intellectual property (IP) to enter the institutional market, but also highlights the growing recognition that intellectual property is becoming one of the most strategically important core assets in the age of artificial intelligence. By including $IP in Grayscale's trust products, investors can now directly participate in the protocol layer that will build the future of information infrastructure.

Disclaimer: Story Foundation is an investor in Grayscale Story Trust.

Grayscale Story Trust is now officially open, and eligible individual and institutional investors can subscribe on a daily basis. This trust follows the basic structure of Grayscale's single-asset investment trust, with its sole investment being $IP, the Story Protocol's native token. For information on the trust's initial funding and any differences in its investment structure from Grayscale's other single-asset trusts, please refer to the relevant Private Placement Memorandum.

This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities in any jurisdiction, nor shall it constitute an offer to buy securities in any jurisdiction in which registration or compliance with applicable laws would be unlawful.

Definition of “accredited investors”: Pursuant to Rule 501(a) of Regulation D of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, accredited investors include, but are not limited to, the following:

Individual annual income exceeds $200,000 for two consecutive years (or exceeds $300,000 with a spouse);

Net worth exceeding $1 million (excluding owner-occupied residence);

Hold a specific financial qualification (such as Series 7, 65 or 82);

The institution has total assets exceeding US$5 million, or all of its equity owners are accredited investors.

Grayscale may attempt to obtain secondary market approval for new products, but success is not guaranteed. While some products have been approved for trading in the over-the-counter (OTC) market, this does not guarantee the same approval for all new products. Regulatory agencies (such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)) may raise questions about the product structure, potentially impacting the listing process. Therefore, investors should be fully prepared to hold trust units for the long term and assume the liquidity risk that comes with it.