On September 9th (Beijing time), Story Protocol's token saw a single-day surge of nearly 40%, reaching nearly $12. This represents an eightfold increase from its initial price of $1.35 after listing on exchanges, and a nearly fourfold increase from its low of around $2.4 in mid-June. However, compared to the recent surge in the price of "monster coins," the rise in IP (and its token) has been relatively modest.

With this surge, Story Protocol's FDV has surpassed $10 billion. According to CoinMarketCap data, Story Protocol's current circulating market capitalization ranks 40th among IP tokens, higher than APT (Aptos) and the recently skyrocketing MYX, but lower than ETC (Ethereum Classic) and ONDO.

Story Protocol is a protocol focused on intellectual property (IP) assetization and is one of the few projects that a16z has invested heavily in in the past two to three years.

Two years ago, on September 6th, Story Protocol announced the completion of a $29 million funding round led by a16z Crypto. Combined with the $29.3 million funding round completed in May of the same year, Story Protocol's total funding raised at the time exceeded $54 million. Nearly a year later, in August 2024, Story Protocol announced the completion of an $80 million Series B funding round, also led by a16z Crypto. TechCrunch, citing sources, reported that the Series B round valued the company at $2.25 billion. Foresight Ventures also participated in both rounds.

Story Protocol aims to build a massive ecosystem for "on-chain IP," and both the ecosystem itself and the projects within it have garnered significant investment. In late June of this year, Story Protocol and OKX Ventures announced the establishment of a $10 million fund to support early-stage teams working at the intersection of intellectual property and artificial intelligence. In July, Poseidon, a decentralized AI data layer project built on Story Protocol, completed a $15 million seed round led by a16z.

Earlier at the end of last year, Sekai, a generative AI narrative platform based on Story Protocol, announced the completion of a $3.1 million seed round of financing, led by Hashed and participated by a16z CSX.

I learned from insiders that some Story Protocol members were introduced by a16z, transferring from the ZKsync team to Story. It seems a16z helps new projects achieve rapid growth by assigning executives from relatively mature projects in its portfolio to new projects.

Let’s get back to the token IP itself. After the token was officially launched in February this year, the IP’s trend has experienced a roller coaster ride, and it hit the bottom when Bitcoin hit a new high in May, and then it has been fluctuating upwards ever since then.

The starting point for this surge was the aforementioned joint establishment of an ecosystem fund with OKX Ventures. In July, Grayscale updated its "List of Proposed Assets" and "List of Assets Holding by Current Products," and among the newly included projects under consideration was Stroy Protocol's token IP. At the end of July, Grayscale officially launched Grayscale Story Trust, which positively attracted real money buying.

Subsequently, the launch of IP DAT and the Story IP buyback program brought the market to a climax. A month ago, Nasdaq-listed Heritage Distilling announced it had secured $220 million in PIPE financing ($100 million in cash and $120 million in IP tokens) to build a $360 million fund focused on IP. Investors included lead investors such as Story Foundation and a16z crypto. Heritage will allocate $82 million in proceeds to purchase IP tokens from the Story Foundation at a fixed price of $3.4. The Story Foundation will use the $82 million in token sale proceeds to strategically repurchase IP tokens on the open market within 90 days of the sale (August 15th to November 16th).

Two weeks after the official announcement, Heritage Distilling completed another $223.8 million in private funding, with participation from Story Foundation, a16z Crypto, and others, continuing its reserve program. Yesterday, just as IP prices surged 40% in a single day, Heritage Distilling announced the official launch of its "IP Strategy," which reserves Story's native token IP.

The real buying brought by DAT and Grayscale Fund is the biggest driving force behind this round of rise, but the reason why IP did not fall all the way after going online like some tokens is also because this track is indeed one of the opportunities that the financial field is paying attention to.

Prior to this, the Story ecosystem had seen the emergence of numerous valuable projects, primarily focused on AI and music IP monetization. While the "Web 3 + AI" narrative remains to be validated by the market, monetizing the intellectual property of AI algorithms and collaborating with AI projects to empower creators on related platforms is certainly a direction worth exploring.

Progress in the assetization of music IP is more concrete. Earlier this year, Aria, a Story-based IP RWA protocol, launched its first RWAIP asset: Justin Bieber's single "Peaches," with a maximum deposit limit of $7 million. By depositing the corresponding funds, users can obtain partial producer rights, management rights, and copyright for the single. This asset has achieved full chain liquidity through StakeStone.

Aria subsequently targeted the music copyrights of more prominent artists and groups, including Korean groups BLACKPINK and BigBang, as well as Western pop stars Katy Perry and Maroon 5. Story also previously announced it would host the Origin Summit during Korea Blockchain Week, with attendees including the CEO of BTS's agency, HYPE; the CEO of The Black Label, the new label representing BLACKPINK and BIGBANG members; the CEO of SM Entertainment; and the CEO of SK Networks. Story's founder had previously hinted at upcoming partnership announcements, making the event at the end of this month even more noteworthy.

In the past two or three years, music asset securitization has become a hot commodity on Wall Street. Alpha Factory Research Institute published an article titled "More Attractive Than Corporate Bonds? 'Music Asset Securitization' Takes Over Wall Street," noting that investors such as Blackstone, Carlyle, and the Michigan State Pension Fund have raised at least $4.4 billion in debt financing secured by song copyrights this year. According to an analysis by the Financial Times, debt financing secured by music copyrights in 2025 will exceed the $3.3 billion in 2024. Only $300 million in such transactions were completed in 2021, and no such transactions were recorded in 2020.

Intellectual property securitization, and even tokenization, are promising sectors in the future as high-quality assets become increasingly scarce. With the rapid development of RWA tokenization and Nasdaq's application to the SEC for trading tokenized stocks, we believe that more high-quality tokenized assets will enter the public secondary market.