Story co-founders responded to the token unlocking delay, stating that the project still needs time to build use cases.

Story Protocol co-founder SY Lee responded to the project's decision to postpone its first large-scale IP token unlock to August 2026, stating that the blockchain network still needs "more time" to build real-world use cases. This six-month extension will keep team and investor tokens locked to reduce short-term circulation pressure. Lee explained that the current near-zero on-chain revenue doesn't accurately reflect Story's business situation; its business model doesn't rely on gas fees but rather on providing licensed services for human-generated data to AI training through off-chain methods. He pointed out that the project is shifting from tokenized media content to "unscraped" human-contributed data and enterprise-level licensing partnerships. While this adjustment reduces short-term visible on-chain revenue, it helps release long-term commitments and alleviate token supply pressure. (CoinDesk)