Conceived at ukiyo Labs · built at Story Protocol · concepts fed ip.world
2023–2025 · Protocol Contributor
IPSwap
A decentralized marketplace for intellectual property — patents, characters, music rights, scientific discoveries — built on the Story blockchain.
The story
Problem
Intellectual property is valuable, illiquid, and impossible to trade.
Patents, characters, music rights, and scientific discoveries sit locked inside institutions. There was no credible way to prove, transfer, and license fractional ownership of IP on-chain — the same ownership-and-trust problem ukiyo identified for real-world assets, applied to intangibles.
What I built
From ukiyo’s IP thesis to a working alpha on Story.
The IP-monetisation thesis started at ukiyo Labs. After ukiyo wound down, I carried it forward at Story Protocol — blockchain infrastructure for registering, licensing, and tracing intellectual property. I built IPSwap on the Story blockchain as a standalone blueprint: marketplace model, on-chain licensing flows, interface, and a working alpha.
Along the way I built the first protocol “Frame” on Farcaster — experimental on-chain social primitives that put protocol actions inside the social feed. IPSwap’s concepts fed into ip.world, now a core product in the Story ecosystem, where I continued contributing through 2025.
The product
The marketplace
Trade intellectual property the way you’d trade tokens or NFTs. Browse, create, sell and share IP — patents, characters, music rights, scientific discoveries — with search across both live IP and open funding proposals.
Discovery
Browse by category
IP sorted into patents and inventions, software and AI, research, merchandise, characters, writing, audio and video — with a live ranking of the most-backed proposals.
Licensing
Licence terms, priced on-chain
Each asset carries explicit terms — non-commercial remix versus commercial use — with creator earnings, sale windows and pricing in ETH, so rights are legible before purchase.
Funding
Proposals that assemble IP
Creators raise against a proposal, bundling the IP assets a project needs. Backers see required funding, established assets and provenance links to the chain explorer.
Alpha demo — walkthrough
My role
Protocol Development
- First protocol Frame on Farcaster
- IPSwap architecture
- On-chain IP primitives
Product & Design
- IPSwap interface and alpha build
- Protocol UX
- Brand & identity
Research & Writing
- IP licensing models
- On-chain rights frameworks
- ip.world contributions