Story Protocol Digest #061
Feb 3 - 10, 2026
Story is moving from theory to execution. This week connects agent-to-agent IP markets, K-pop royalties onchain, rights-cleared AI data, governance changes, and validator rebalancing, showing how infrastructure, culture, and economics are converging into a single IP-native stack.
Delegate IP stake to Chainflow:
Ecosystem updates
From Agent Negotiations to K-Pop Royalties: The Future of IP Takes Shape
Over a year ago, Story CPO Andrea Muttoni authored a thesis called Agent TCP/IP, predicting a fundamental shift in how AI agents would interact. That vision is becoming reality. As agents develop genuinely different architectures and capabilities, they’re moving beyond simple tools to become autonomous negotiators.
This represents a crucial transition from execution to coordination, where agents can negotiate, contract, and exchange IP directly, forming new markets without requiring human intervention. Watch the conversation between Andrea Devrelius and Fraction AI exploring this inevitable agent-to-agent economy, or dive deeper into the original Agent TCP/IP thesis.
K-Culture Comes Onchain: $3.2M+ in Real-World Assets Move to Story
Korean pop culture continues its global expansion, and now investors worldwide can participate directly in its success. WITCH Foundation has partnered with Story to issue and distribute real-world K-Culture IP assets through its WAVIST platform, which recently sold out over $3.2M in K-pop assets.
Each asset is registered onchain with automated revenue streams, ensuring clear value capture backed by genuine market demand. As one of the world’s top entertainment exports, K-Culture now has a new home for transparent, accessible investment powered by Story’s infrastructure.
RESCENE’s “Busy Boy” Brings Music Royalties to $APL Holders
Rising K-pop group RESCENE is releasing their new track “Busy Boy” through eco app Aria Protocol, marking a significant milestone in how music rights are structured and owned. This partnership with The Muze Entertainment represents Aria’s first recording rights collaboration, bringing newly released rights into the $APL portfolio and placing ownership at the very start of a song’s lifecycle, where culture and long-term value are formed.
Royalties and remix revenue will flow directly back to token holders, demonstrating a new model for how music is financed, supported, owned, and shared. A major remix reveal is coming soon.
ZenO Public Beta Launches: Rights-Cleared Data for Physical AI
The public beta for ZenO is now live, unlocking real-world data capture for physical AI development. Users can collect first-person audio, video, and images from smart glasses and phones, which ZenO anonymizes and structures for AI training.
Built on Story Protocol, the platform handles data collection, metadata management, rights-cleared provenance, and onchain revenue distribution. During the beta season, participants can earn XP by uploading video and image data, sharing about ZenO on X, and inviting friends.
The platform generates real-world revenue by selling safely anonymized data to physical AI companies and bringing those proceeds onchain.
Start contributing at app.zen-o.xyz
Ambassador Program Expands to Seven New Roles
What began with just two people, one focused on community and one on ecosystem, is evolving to meet Story’s next growth phase. The Ambassador program is opening seven new roles across ecosystem development, community moderation, developer relations, and OG support.
The current Ecosystem Representative will continue as the ecosystem scales throughout the year, while the Community Moderator role will expand across multiple leaders supporting OGs, the Adepts Lab, and broader community activities.
New Developer Representatives will bridge the community and developer ecosystem, fostering technical growth and collaboration. Some positions are already being eyed by standout OGs, while others remain open. First introductions of new ambassadors, alongside OG ascensions and descensions, are coming soon.
Sovereign AI Requires Verifiable Trust
As AI moves into healthcare, government, and other regulated domains, the bottleneck is no longer models or compute. It’s trust. The Poseidon team’s latest blog examines why proof of personhood, proof of skill, and verifiable provenance are becoming essential infrastructure for deploying AI where stakes are highest.
Medical AI, expert systems, and national AI initiatives increasingly require proof that data comes from real humans with verified skills, appropriate demographics, and enforceable consent, all while preserving anonymity and privacy. Expert-vetted platforms alone can’t scale to meet this demand. The future of sovereign AI depends on open, privacy-preserving data collection with built-in verification layers.
SIP-00009 Deployed: Story v1.5.2 (Horace) Now Live on Mainnet
Story v1.5.2 (HORACE) has been successfully deployed to mainnet, implementing the token emissions recalibration and locked staking multiplier adjustments outlined in SIP-00009. If you haven’t upgraded yet, immediate action is required. You’ll need to roll back and restart your Story client using the v1.5.2 binary:
./story rollback --engine-jwt-file /path/to/geth/data/jwtsecret
Full release notes and GitHub binaries are available here.
Summary of Validators’ Discussions
Foundation Delegation Program and Staking Changes
The FDP became a major point of concern as validators experienced unexpected changes to their active set status. Initially mistaken for technical issues, these changes were later confirmed as staking rebalancing across the active set. The situation grew more complex when staking rewards for locked tokens were sharply reduced, leaving validators uncertain about how the foundation would handle proportional redelegation.
While the program appeared to reach completion, validators were left waiting for final foundation approval. By week’s end, the community consensus was clear: rebalancing foundation delegation had become the most urgent priority.
Network Upgrade to Horace v1.5.2
The Story network underwent a major upgrade to version 1.5.2, codenamed “Horace,” which was executed at block height 14,017,000 on the Aeneid testnet.
Validators who failed to update their binaries in time encountered validation errors, specifically wrong AppHash values, which prevented their nodes from continuing block validation. The technical team provided rollback procedures for validators who got stuck at the upgrade height.
Node Synchronization and Technical Troubleshooting
Validators faced synchronization challenges, particularly those running outdated software during the upgrade window. The main issue manifested as AppHash mismatches, indicating nodes had diverged from the correct chain state. The community responded quickly, sharing updated snapshots from providers like Itrocket and Nodeshub to help them resynchronize without replaying the entire blockchain history.
Additional technical concerns included discrepancies between local node metrics and the network explorer regarding missed blocks, prompting questions about whether a hotfix would be needed. Questions were also raised about network economics, specifically whether block proposers share priority fees with their delegators or keep them entirely.
Technical Research and Community Development
Beyond immediate operational issues, validators engaged in deeper technical exploration and mutual support. Mon.cumulo.pro published research on CDR, creating simplified diagrams to make this complex feature more accessible to the community.
New validators received assistance with testnet tokens for gas fees, while established members shared resources and troubleshooting tips. Security awareness remained high, with some validators raising questions about potential centralization concerns when multiple validators might belong to the same entity.