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Case Study: ip.world on Story
Story
02 June 2025
Chillguy, Pepe, Doge: The Memecoin Market Failure
In October 2023, Phillip Banks created the Chillguy meme. By August 2024, it was generating millions of views and likes across social platforms, including a TikTok that hit 14 million views. Chillguy had fully entered the virality curve that fuels digital culture today.
By November 2024, a memecoin named $CHILLGUY skyrocketed to a $580 million market cap, propelled by the meme’s cultural dominance and a passionate community. Yet Banks, the creator of this global phenomenon, saw none of the financial upside. Like many IP owners, his work generated immense value—but not for him.
This isn’t an anomaly. Memecoins have evolved from an internet joke into a $100 billion market, driven by the cultural impact of memes and the communities that rally around them. However, the current memecoin economy suffers from a fundamental flaw: the creators who build the IP driving these markets are often shut out of the wealth they create.
This misalignment occurs because memecoins are typically launched by third parties who capitalize on viral content without compensating the creators. Without a way to claim ownership over their work, artists and innovators are left behind, even as their IP becomes the foundation of multi-million dollar assets.
To transform memecoins into a legitimate asset class, the underlying challenges of IP ownership and community participation must be solved. This is where ip.world comes in.
Redefining Memecoins: The ip.world Solution
ip.world empowers IP holders like Phillip Banks to transform their viral moments into programmable, monetizable assets. By leveraging ip.world, Banks could have grown Chillguy’s reach while capturing its economic potential.
“ip.world is building the missing layer between social media virality and financial upside. Every meme that spreads is a unit of mimetic value. Until now, that value was unmeasured, unmonetized, and unclaimed by its creator. We’re turning ip.world into the one-stop shop for SocialFi: a platform that lets you tokenize attention, capture the economic potential of a moment, and own your piece of internet culture.”
– Red, Founder and CEO of ip.world
How ip.world Works
ip.world turns memes into tradeable, programmable IP that integrates into ecosystems of shared value. Through Story’s infrastructure, ip.world ensures that IP holders can seamlessly monetize their work while maintaining influence over its use.
- Launch a token: Users pair their token with $IP on Story’s DEX with an initial market cap of $16,000.
- Associate the token with an IP: Creators link their token to a meme or brand, establishing its legitimacy.
- Unlock LP rewards: By verifying the IP and getting the owner to claim it, participants unlock liquidity provider rewards.
Story makes this possible by providing a decentralized registry where IP ownership is verifiable, programmable, and enforceable. By leveraging smart contracts and on-chain governance, creators retain control over their IP while ensuring its monetization aligns with their intent.
Had Banks used ip.world, he could have registered Chillguy’s IP, issued a memecoin, and earned 3% of each derivative token’s supply. Instead of being a spectator, he could have actively shaped Chillguy’s financial and cultural legacy.
ip.world x Story: Critical in the Era of AI Agents
The rise of AI has introduced a new paradigm to memecoins. AI agents can now generate viral memes, autonomously tokenize them, and drive value creation at unprecedented scale.
Take Truth Terminal, for example. Created by Andy Ayrey, this AI agent gained notoriety for its bizarre, pseudo-spiritual, and often shocking tweets. In 2024, it autonomously launched its own memecoin, Goatseus Maximus ($GOAT), which surpassed a $1 billion market cap. While Marc Andreessen provided Ayrey with a $50,000 no-strings-attached grant to support AI research, he explicitly distanced himself from any involvement with $GOAT.
This example highlights a fundamental shift: AI agents are becoming economic players, creating and capitalizing on cultural artifacts like memes. As AI-generated IP proliferates, we need a framework that ensures both human and AI creators benefit from their work.
ip.world ensures that all contributors—whether human or AI—retain economic rights over their creations. By enabling verifiable ownership, transparent monetization, and fair distribution of value, ip.world cements memecoins as a foundational asset class for internet culture.
“Story is the first solution that makes IP programmable and enforceable at internet speed. It gives us the tooling to verify ownership, distribute royalties, and launch tokens that are tied to real creative rights. Without Story, ip.world is just a concept. With Story, it’s a product.”
– Red, Founder and CEO of ip.world
Building the Future of IP-Driven Economies
ip.world is reimagining memecoins as vehicles that generate returns for all their value drivers: IP owners, consumers, and communities. By giving IP holders control over their assets, it transforms memecoins from speculative bets into programmable stores of cultural value.
In this new paradigm, the next Chillguy won’t be a missed opportunity—it will be a case study in how internet culture, finance, and ownership can align. With ip.world and Story, creators, communities, and AI agents can co-create markets where ideas thrive and value flows freely.
