Overview

The initial incentive program is specifically designed to reward Story end users and community members with the $IP token distribution plan. We will implement strict anti-farmer and anti-witch measures on the first day of the public mainnet launch to ensure that more rewards can be fairly distributed to community members in future initial incentive activities. The initial incentive program starts on the launch day, but this is just the starting point of the plan. In addition to the initial incentive program, we will also introduce other token distribution plans that will provide long-term support for the ecosystem.

Story Incentive Philosophy

The incentive philosophy of Story is based on three core pillars:

1. Reward real users

2. Incentivize practical applications and innovative use cases

3. Ensure long-term alignment of goals

Let’s briefly explore the logic behind these three principles.

A strong incentive mechanism is one of the most exciting and promising advantages of blockchain-based products. However, in recent years, there has been a proliferation of ineffective incentive mechanisms in the crypto space. Initially a powerful launch mechanism, it has now turned into an unhealthy expectation, forcing projects and their communities into zero-sum conflicts.

The natural state of a healthy project is a strong long-term alignment between the community and core contributors. Despite this natural harmony, we believe that the current unhealthy opposition is due to the emergence of a third type of actor: those who are neither truly aligned with the long-term interests of the community nor with the overall interests of the project—these individuals are the Farmers.

Farmers create a false tension between the project and its real users by siphoning rewards from users who are aligned with long-term goals and leaving the project immediately after the rewards are distributed, thereby harming the interests of both users and the project. These exploitative behaviors create an unnatural and inefficient zero-sum environment right from the project's inception.

Based on these lessons, Story will filter out Farmers to ensure true alignment of goals between the project and the community, thus creating a positive feedback loop: users bring meaningful actions to the network and are fairly rewarded for it.

From Witch Attacks to User Redistribution

All token distribution amounts saved through Story's anti-witch measures will be 100% redistributed to real users in future initial incentive programs, ensuring that Farmers cannot encroach on the rewards of participants aligned with long-term goals within the Story network.

In fact, we will increase the reward quantity in the initial incentive pool by staking all unclaimed tokens (which are preserved by filtering out unclaimable witch attackers) to validators from the Story rewards platform. Through the staking rewards obtained during the initial claiming phase, we ensure that the user incentive pool continues to grow as the initial incentive program expands, and all these rewards will be redistributed to the community.

Story's Initial Incentive Program

The initial incentive program accounts for 10% of the total supply of $IP tokens, all of which will be used to reward end users and community members. This portion of tokens will reward users for their valuable activities and contributions during the launch phase of the Story ecosystem (starting from the first day of the public mainnet launch until the network matures).

However, the initial incentive distribution is just a small part of the overall distribution of $IP tokens, with more tokens specifically allocated to support the Story ecosystem, community, users, and developers.

Initial Incentive Distribution Details

All initial incentives will ultimately be distributed to users and the community.

These rewards will be distributed to users through two channels:

1. Direct claiming

2. Ecosystem project allocation (based on ecosystem incentives)

Direct Claiming: Half of the initial incentives (5%) will be distributed to users through direct claiming. Direct claiming includes rewards distributed through ongoing initial incentive activities on the first day of the public mainnet launch and in the following months.

Ecosystem-Based Incentives: The other half of the initial incentives (5%) will be allocated to ecosystem projects, with a clear stipulation that all rewards must be distributed to end users. The advantage of the ecosystem-based incentive model is that the Story community can earn broader rewards through a range of actions across different ecosystem applications. In the future, this portion of incentive distribution may exceed 5%, funded by the tokens unclaimed by filtered witch attackers during the claiming period on the launch day.

Ecosystem-based incentives will apply to various application categories on Story, including AI, IPFi, and consumer applications. Initially, these incentives will focus on IPFi activities, covering applications from decentralized exchanges (DEX) to IP RWA protocols to lending protocols. Each project will announce its incentive plan separately, and all rewards from the initial incentive pool will be directly distributed to users, with the projects themselves retaining no rewards.

It should be noted that Story's core contributors will not be able to claim any initial incentives now or in the future.

Launch Day Story Reward Claiming

There will be multiple rounds of rewards distributed in the initial incentive program. The first round starts on the first day of the public mainnet launch and remains open for 30 days.

The initial incentives on launch day will be allocated to the following groups:

1. Odyssey Badge Holders

2. Chronicles NFT Holders

• Limited to users holding the Odyssey badge simultaneously

• Snapshot time: February 9, 2025, 11:53 PM Pacific Time

1. Active Story Community Members

• OG roles

• Other community roles

• Genesis IP creators

1. Social Rewards

• Kaito Genesis NFT Holders

• Snapshot time: February 10, 2025, 9:00 PM Pacific Time

• High-quality Story Yappers

• Based on data since 2023, prioritizing long-term contributors over short-term content Farmers

• Other users initiating high-quality discussions around IP (based on Kaito data)

• Regional contributors and community leaders

1. Exchange-Related Programs

• Binance wallet rewards

• OKX wallet rewards

• Bybit wallet rewards

1. Validator Rewards

• Validators participating in the Odyssey testnet validator competition, including those who did not make it to the final 64

7. Ecosystem-Based Incentives

• IPFi rewards (e.g., PiperX, Story Hunt, Verio)

• IP ecosystem rewards (e.g., Aria)

These rewards will be distributed through a method independent of the Story reward claiming platform.

In addition to the claiming activities on launch day, we have developed and will continue to develop plans to regularly reward users. Through our robust anti-witch measures (detailed below), we will reclaim a significant amount of initial incentives from harmful witch attackers and Farmers to reward real users and the community in future activities.

We plan to continue providing initial incentives in the early stages of the Story network and will launch more reward programs in the future that adhere to our principles: rewarding real users and long-term contributors.

Anti-Witch Attack Strategy

To ensure that rewards can be fairly distributed to real users and communities aligned with long-term goals, we have invested significant team resources and efforts to filter out witch attackers. We have also engaged three independent companies to analyze and advise on on-chain and off-chain behaviors to maximize our ability to detect witch attackers while minimizing the chances of misjudging real users. Based on Passport data estimates, assuming a similar participation rate of Farmers, we are able to filter out approximately three times more witch attackers than similar projects (as a percentage of all eligible wallets). This does not include the significant number of Farmers we expect to filter out on the launch day of Story reward claiming.

Our overall process begins with filtering witch attackers based on clustering algorithms. We combine various clustering techniques, including on-chain and off-chain data, to filter out the witch attacker group. We also investigate badge behaviors to verify authenticity, especially in cases where large groups collect the same badge in the same order at the same time. We have also studied activities on other EVM chains as reference factors, conducting more thorough investigations on wallets that have no activity on Ethereum, Base, Polygon, BNB, Optimism, Arbitrum, and other popular EVM chains. Funding source patterns have also been taken into account, with large group wallets that repeatedly receive funds from the same source at the same time being removed.

These methods are used in combination and mutually validated to clearly distinguish between real users and Farmers. In most cases, the differences in activity and intent are very apparent. However, these clustering algorithms are not infallible, and in cases of any doubt, we still allow these wallets to participate in the launch day Story reward claiming.

To further verify these wallets and filter out witch attackers, the Story reward claiming platform will require most wallets to provide a relatively low Passport score to prove their uniqueness and authenticity. Any user either already has such a score or can easily obtain one. We expect this will further filter out a significant number of witch attackers during the claiming period, which will last for one month starting from the first day of the public mainnet launch.

Other Ecosystem and Community Plans

In addition to the initial incentive distribution (aimed at launching a strong and goal-aligned ecosystem in the short term), there are many other distribution plans aimed at providing long-term support for the ecosystem. Some of these plans have already been launched, including hackathon rewards and ecosystem funding.

Ecosystem Funding has already been launched, and funding has been provided to the following projects:

Hackathon Rewards have been initiated, with rewards distributed for the following events:

• Story's Alpha Hackathon (2023)

• Story's Beta Hackathon (2024)

• ETHDenver (2024)

• ETHGlobal SF (2024)

• Cursor Hackathon (2024)

• Livepeer/Encode Hackathon (2024)

• Autonomous Hackathon (2024)

• Agent to Agent Payment$ Hackathon (2025)

• TartanHacks (2025)

• AI Agents Bounty (2025)

• AI Framework bounties (2025)

• Sozu House (2025)

• EthDenver Hackathon (2025)

• Super Agent Hackathon (2025)

• Safe's Agentathon (2025)

Towards a Vibrant Ecosystem

We firmly believe that incentive mechanisms are the core element in launching a vibrant ecosystem and the key differentiating advantage for blockchain products—provided that these mechanisms can be executed in accordance with principles. While many may disagree with our approach, we believe it maximizes the likelihood of Story achieving its user-centered, long-term aligned vision: making IP accessible, open, and programmable, thereby unlocking and expanding a trillion-dollar asset class.