Milestone | Story Technology Roadmap Update

Story's mainnet launch marks the beginning of a greater journey. As the world's first blockchain designed for intellectual property, Story has just set sail. Our mission is: to make creation borderless, to make belonging worry-free, and to make collaboration seamless.

Intellectual property (IP) is the cornerstone of artificial intelligence (AI). As AI reshapes various industries at an unprecedented pace, IP is rising as the most important asset class of the 21st century --- a $61 trillion market encompassing training data, scientific discoveries, brands, and creative works.

Story proposes a brand new framework for intellectual property, aiming to create an open and programmable market for IP. As a peer-to-peer intellectual property network, Story is designed to transform IP into a programmable asset class, supporting permissionless trading, rights confirmation, and monetization across AI and the broader internet.

This roadmap is a dynamic document that evolves with our community.

Each update aims to enhance performance, unlock new possibilities, and strengthen the network.

Our Path to Building

At Story, we firmly believe that the roadmap should not stop at a list of updates --- it should be a vision shaped by the network's users. We collaborate closely with community members, research partners, ecosystem collaborators, universities, and developers to implement decisions that shape the future of IP.

We focus on two types of initiatives:

• Scheduled Releases: Specific features with clear timelines, quantifiable goals, and substantial impact.
• Cutting-edge Research: Pioneering explorations that push the boundaries of possibility.

This balance allows us to execute precisely while remaining flexible to seize new opportunities.

Scheduled Releases

Our development process is cyclical, with each cycle lasting several months. Each cycle introduces key improvements in three major areas:

🏁 Performance: Faster, more efficient, and more reliable

We are optimizing throughput and reducing block time to ensure seamless high-speed operation at scale.

🛠️ Product: Expanding the boundaries of possibility

From AI-driven execution environments to large file storage, we are unlocking new ways to create, share, and monetize IP.

⚖️ Governance: Transparent, decentralized, and continuously evolving

We are refining governance mechanisms to provide the community with better decision-making tools and streamlined upgrade processes.

Each feature must undergo rigorous testing, security audits, and real-world validation before release.

Q2 2025: Beta Product Release

This release focuses solely on the product layer, so no node software updates are required, helping to maintain network stability as larger ecosystems connect. The release emphasizes simplifying the IP onboarding process through two core components: the IP Portal and Story Certification Service.

• IP Portal (Public Beta): Story's "homepage," supporting a simple, code-free way to register IP on Story (and all applications built on Story). Additionally, it offers an elegant visual browsing experience, allowing anyone to intuitively view all IP registered on Story. This is a consumer-facing "GitHub for IP."
• Story Certification Service (Public Beta): A decentralized oracle network that authenticates the authenticity of each IP asset on Story by verifying social identities, IP infringement/similarity, and other real-world signals, with results recorded on-chain for users/developers. The certification results can be displayed in any application and will be prominently featured in the IP Portal.

Q3 2025: Comprehensive Technical Upgrade Release

The first major network upgrade after the mainnet launch will focus on enhancing performance and reliability. While introducing foundational improvements, we will minimize disruptive changes to ensure all users have a smooth experience. Additionally, we will launch the flagship product IPKit --- an integrated front-end application SDK with UI components designed to facilitate IP registration, retrieval, and monetization processes in any application.

🏁 Performance Optimization

• Consensus Mechanism Optimization: By optimizing consensus parameters and implementation schemes, we will shorten block generation time and increase the number of validating node seats by 10-20%. A new state snapshot feature will enable faster node recovery and synchronization speeds.
• IP Core Enhancement: Optimizing the IP core module to comprehensively improve the execution efficiency of IP graph-related operations.
• Dependency Upgrades: Updating underlying dependencies of the execution layer and consensus layer (CometBFT, EVM, etc.) for better performance and stability.

🛠️ Product Upgrades

• IPKit (Public Beta Release): Launching a sleek and elegant front-end SDK that integrates UI components, allowing IP registration, retrieval, and monetization functionality in any application with just a few lines of code.
• Passkey Support: Introducing passwordless authentication support for a smoother and more secure login experience for users.

⚖️ Governance Optimization

• Seamless Network Upgrades: Implementing a simplified upgrade process that allows nodes to switch seamlessly between different versions using a unified binary file, reducing complexity and security risks during the upgrade process.

Active Research

Some technical challenges require deeper exploration. We will collaborate with Stanford FDCI to advance research in the following cutting-edge areas:

Large-scale Performance Optimization

How to achieve maximum throughput for complex workloads? We are optimizing storage, execution concurrency, and pushing computation closer to hardware.

Next-generation Consensus Mechanisms

We are redesigning the consensus layer to reduce latency and support larger sets of validating nodes. We are experimenting with CometBFT upgrades, HotStuff consensus, and BLS signatures.

On-chain Storage

We are exploring native, cost-effective ways to store large files directly on the blockchain, providing alternatives to external services like IPFS.

Privacy Protection

We are researching efficient and practical methods to ensure privacy protection for on-chain IP transactions and royalty payments.

Future-oriented Governance

We are simplifying community participation processes, improving voting mechanisms, and refining system upgrade plans.

Looking Ahead

The mainnet launch is just the first day of our journey. Innovation never stops. Each update makes Story faster, smarter, and stronger. Co-building with the community aims to bring IP --- the collective knowledge and creativity of humanity --- on-chain.

This is just the beginning.