- Prior to the testnet deployment, PIP Labs cofounder Jason Zhao said that blockchain can replace “a medieval, antiquated system.”
In order to develop Story Protocol, a layer-1 network for licensing and protecting intellectual property in the digital age, PIP Labs announced $80 million in Series B fundraising on Wednesday.
If the original proponents of cryptocurrency aimed to eliminate financial middlemen from online transactions, Story has targeted attorneys, a frequent source of conflict for creatives. One of PIP Labs’ top focuses is empowering artists, but the company also aims to address concerns related to artificial intelligence, as businesses are using the internet to gather massive amounts of data in order to train models.
Leading VC firm Andreessen Horowitz led PIP Labs’ Series B funding round, which also included participation from Polychain and investment from notable figures in the NFT field, including executive Scott Trowbridge of Walt Disney Imagineering and the alias Cozomo de’ Medici.
The most recent round of funding, which brings PIP Labs’ total to $140 million, comes after the initiative was announced the previous year with support from Samsung Next and 11:11 Media, owned by Paris Hilton. The prior round was also led by Andreessen Horowitz.
According to a news release from Andreessen Horowitz Managing Partner Chris Dixon, PIP Labs is constructing the infrastructure required for a new covenant in the AI era. Large-scale economic coordination is ideally suited for blockchain technology, and Story’s platform guarantees that creators are paid.
Next week, Story’s public testnet goes live, giving users a sneak peek at the technology and allowing them to register intellectual property and access other people’s creations while also establishing guidelines for licensing and revenue. Jason Zhao, co-founder and chief product officer of PIP Labs, said that Story Protocol might offer a more profitable option than conventional IP models when it comes to workmanship, such as viral memes.
He remarked, “Your pen and paper lawyers—that’s just a medieval, outdated system.” Yet an IP system built on blockchain technology can genuinely grow and potentially even take part of that value.
Decentralized finance, or DeFi, has taken off in the cryptocurrency space as programmers aim to make programmable systems for lending and exchanging assets. Zhao sees an ecosystem similar to this one, but one in which intellectual property assets are exchanged, dubbed IPfi. Eventually, Story will use NFTs to represent IP assets, and fungible tokens will be used to represent licenses.
Can I give Thanos the license or the rights in exchange? Zhao enquired. Is it possible to tokenize global creativity and develop novel markets and funding models?
It might be novel for the financial markets to use memes as loan collateral. PIP Labs acknowledges that a blockchain-based protocol won’t be able to completely replace attorneys just soon.
If creatives find themselves exploited outside of the network, Zhao clarified, they will be able to obtain what is known as a “programmable IP license.” Creatives can pursue legal action or make deals in the real world because the network essentially provides access to legal documents related to registered intellectual property.
Zhao spent two years as an employee at Google DeepMind, a division and research center of the internet giant. Consequently, Story’s push is heavily focused on AI. Big language models can also be registered as intellectual property (IP) using Story, according to Zhao, allowing developers to combine and match components.
In addition to paying creatives, Story would supply tech businesses with data free from legal worries. For instance, the New York Times sued OpenAI last year, claiming the tech company used the publication’s protected content to train its AI model.
Regarding user-generated information on the internet, such as Yelp reviews and Reddit posts, Zhao claimed that some companies simply take it for free before charging users to utilize their services. In essence, artists lose all motivation to produce anything if this keeps up.
Disclaimer : This article was created for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. An asset’s past performance does not predict its future returns. Before making an investment, please conduct your own research, as digital assets like cryptocurrencies are highly risky and volatile financial instruments.
