Story Protocol (IP) co-founder leaves venture, guarantees to stay on as ‘strategic advisor’

Discover key highlights within the Crypto house. This article dives into: “Story Protocol (IP) co-founder leaves project, promises to remain on as ‘strategic advisor'”.

Traders accuse Story Protocol co-founder Jason Zhao of strolling away with $281 million after asserting his departure from the corporate’s core staff, sparking backlash from the group.

Summary

• Story co-founder Jason Zhao proclaims that he’s leaving the venture to deal with AI and robotics.
• The transfer sparked group backlash from merchants who accuse the co-founder of rug-pulling the $2.2 billion venture.

On August 16, Story founder Jason Zhao introduced that he will probably be stepping down from his function as a co-founder and staying on as a strategic advisor for the protocol. This transfer sparked a wave of unfavorable feedback from the crypto group who consider he’s strolling away with the bag.

Prominent blogger and co-owner of the Bankless podcast David Hoffman responded with shock, merely writing “Bro what” underneath Zhao’s departure submit.

Founder led rug-pulls are a recurring story in crypto, however not often do they occur after capital commitments from the likes of well-respected venture-capital corporations like a16z.

Though it stays to be seen how this can have an effect on the staff’s core product and improvement, a number of commenters on Zhao’s submit have harkened this to a founder led-exit, prompting many on-line to accuse him of rug-pulling the venture.

According to the unique whitepaper, Zhao and the opposite three co-founders maintain 20% of the full 1 billion token provide or round 250 million tokens. At present costs, if Zhao holds 5% of the tokens and does promote his holdings he might doubtlessly make a revenue of round $281 million.

Not solely that, traditionally Story Protocol has secured roughly $134.3 million in fairness funding. These rounds embrace a Seed spherical in May 2023 that raised $29.3 million, a Series A in September 2023 bringing in $25 million, and a big Series B in August 2024 led by Andreessen Horowitz or a16z crypto that contributed $80 million. This values the corporate at round $2.25 billion.

Additional influential traders the joined the funding spherical for Story Protocol embrace Polychain Capital, Samsung Next, Hashed, Mirana Ventures, Alliance DAO, and distinguished figures like Cozomo de’ Medici and Balaji Srinivasan.

Story Protocol additionally secured an $82 million token-based funding from Heritage Distilling, a publicly traded firm, as a part of a strategic initiative to determine an IP token treasury inside a broader $360 million IP token reserve technique.

One X dealer posted a SpongeBob meme, calling Zhao’s exit as “another shameless VC softrug.” When one other dealer defended Zhao’s choice, the X dealer retaliated by saying that the protocol co-founder ought to “consider posting even one single good trade before trying to drum up exit liquidity.”

“Story just got started and you are stepping out?” requested one dealer.

“Curious how much money you pocketed,” mentioned one other X person.

Why is Jason Zhao leaving Story Protocol?

One of the unique builders of the venture, Jason Zhao mentioned that his departure stems from his involvement in Poseidon, a full-stack knowledge infrastructure layer created by the protocol to unravel AI’s long-tail knowledge bottleneck.

“I rekindled my original passion from my DeepMind days: applying AI to frontier industries like science and space. It’s time for me to fully pursue this path,” mentioned Zhao in his submit.

He defined that humanity is reaching a “crucial inflection point” that he likened to a brand new industrial revolution, which is constructing upon web3 know-how and the deployment of artificial intelligence in numerous area together with robotics, biopharma, house exploration and extra.

“Looking back, building Story (IP) has been the most meaningful experience of my life. What began as a whiteboard sketch when I was 22 turned into more than I could have imagined,” mentioned Zhao, including that the Story IP has change into the spine protocol for IPs like style model Balmain and Ok-pop group BTS in South Korea.

He additionally used the chance to announce the brand new management that will probably be taking on the helm. According to Zhao, Story is ready to embark on a second part led by S.Y Lee and a brand new CPO Andrea, who beforehand labored on Amazon’s conversational AI.

Story’s IP worth evaluation

According to knowledge from crypto.information, Story’s native token IP has fallen by greater than 15% prior to now week and 22.35% prior to now month. Zhao’s exit announcement has led to the token falling even deeper by 4.7%,

At press time, the token is buying and selling palms at $5.58 prior to now 24 hours with a market cap that has fallen by 3.39% to $1.7 million. Since its launch in February 2025, IP has proven excessive volatility; surging from an all-time low of $1 to highs above $7.3 inside weeks after its launch. Just at the moment, the token has managed to flirt with the $7 threshold earlier than falling decrease to across the $5.55 vary.

Though currently, the token has been in a stoop that’s been pushed decrease on account of Zhao’s departure from his management function in Story. Not solely that, the buying and selling quantity for IP has fallen by greater than 75%, indicating a big lower in market exercise.

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