Lombard, the leading Bitcoin DeFi platform, and Story, the first Layer-1 blockchain purpose-built to make intellectual property programmable, today announced a strategic partnership to redefine how creators protect and monetize their work through Bitcoin-backed financial products. Despite the surge in digital content creation, most creators still face slow, opaque, and platform-dependent payout systems that limit attribution, speed, and fair compensation. This partnership introduces a model built for transparency, global access, and lasting value guaranteed by Bitcoin.
Redefining IP Value Distribution with Bitcoin
Story is pioneering programmable intellectual property, turning copyrights, data, and creative assets into programmable, on-chain primitives that can be automatically licensed, remixed, and monetized. As it scales into the core IP infrastructure for the internet, integrating with Lombard’s Bitcoin infrastructure extends Story’s capabilities into finance, allowing creators to not only license but also receive and secure value directly in Bitcoin.
"Access to the global IP economy shouldn’t depend on geography or intermediaries. By integrating Lombard’s Bitcoin infrastructure, Story enables creators and developers to license, settle, and secure IP value instantly and globally. With Lombard, that value can now flow across the world as Bitcoin, the most trusted and durable digital asset. Bitcoin’s neutrality and permanence make it one of the most efficient store of value for intellectual property, and opens up access for IP holders while aligning the world’s intellectual capital with its strongest monetary network" SY Lee, CEO & Co-founder of Story.
Lombard has demonstrated early leadership in Bitcoin finance, transforming Bitcoin from idle capital into productive trading, collateral, and yield-generating assets. Through LBTC, its flagship BTC asset, Lombard has onboarded over $3 billion previously idle BTC onchain, achieving $1 billion in total value locked in just 92 days – the fastest growth trajectory of any yield-bearing token in crypto history. LBTC is integrated into 14 chains and 75+ protocols, with more than 80% of LBTC supply actively deployed in DeFi applications.
“The creator economy has lacked financial rails built for scale—Bitcoin provides that foundation. Our partnership with Story will provide global creators with tools to monetize their intellectual property with Bitcoin, and provide Story with Bitcoin-backed crypto-economic guarantees for IP assets in a first-of-its-kind application. The alliance demonstrates how Bitcoin can serve as the foundation for complex financial products that serve real-world use cases across diverse industries." said Jacob Phillips, Co-Founder of Lombard.
The partnership will introduce two critical innovations to the Story ecosystem:
- •Bitcoin Revenue Distribution: Creators and entertainment studios often wait months for royalty payments or rely on intermediaries that take large cuts. Through Lombard’s Bitcoin infrastructure, Story can route royalties directly to creators in Bitcoin instantly, borderlessly, and without banking delays. Longer-term receivables can also be denominated in BTC, protecting IP owners against inflation that traditional fiat payouts cannot. This aligns with a broader shift in entertainment and sports where top names increasingly request Bitcoin compensation to preserve value globally, and Lombard makes that possible at scale.
- •Crypto-Economic IP Security: In a first-of-its-kind application, the partnership will explore the use of Bitcoin collateral to provide crypto-economic guarantees for IP assets. By tying IP rights to Bitcoin collateral, IP owners get a financial backstop that enforces royalty claims. If a licensee defaults or disputes arise, the collateralized guarantees can automatically trigger payouts. If a licensee defaults, the collateral is liquidated onchain, which turns slow and costly legal enforcement into an instant, automated resolution. The result is insurance-like protection for creators with transparent settlement. Bitcoin is the only asset that is large and liquid enough to serve as reliable collateral, transforming IP into an asset class with built-in economic guarantees.
Korean Market Leadership
The partnership holds particular significance for the Korean market, one of the world’s most advanced creator economies, where both organizations are positioned to drive transformative change. Story is strategically positioned to capitalize on Korea's world-leading creator economy and intellectual property landscape, where cultural IP exports, including music, gaming, film, and animation, reached $13.6 billion in 2024 Coming off the back of Origin Summit during Korea Blockchain Week, where Story announced the onboarding of major Korean IPs including Solo Leveling (a global phenomenon with over 10 billion views across its webtoon, anime, and gaming adaptations), Barunson Studio (the producer behind Parasite), and the AI-powered gaming platform Verse8, the integration with Lombard further cements Story’s position at the center of Korea’s rapidly expanding creator and digital-asset economy.The country's creators and entertainment companies are increasingly seeking innovative solutions to protect and monetize their intellectual property across international markets.
Meanwhile, Lombard has established strong momentum with the $BARD token rapidly becoming one of the most actively traded BTCFi assets on major Korean exchanges Upbit and Bithumb, demonstrating significant retail and institutional appetite for Lombard's innovative Bitcoin-focused products.
Building on this success, Lombard recently announced a strategic alliance with Korea Digital Asset (KODA), the country's premier institutional custodian backed by KB Kookmin Bank, to develop compliant access and distribution channels for Bitcoin yield products in regulated financial markets.
About Lombard
Lombard is the leading Bitcoin finance protocol, accelerating Bitcoin's evolution from idle capital to the foundation of productive trading, collateral, and yield generation. Through its flagship LBTC asset, Lombard has onboarded over $3 billion of BTC across 14 chains and 75+ protocols, achieving the fastest growth trajectory to $1 billion of any yield-bearing asset. Lombard has established strategic partnerships with leading institutions globally, including KODA, Franklin Templeton, Galaxy Digital, Kraken, Upbit, Bybit and more.
About Story
Story is a Layer-1 blockchain purpose-built to make intellectual property programmable. Backed by $136 million from a16z, Polychain, and Samsung Ventures, Story launched its mainnet in early 2025 and has quickly become a leading infrastructure for tokenized IP. The network enables creators, developers, enterprises, and AI labs to register content as on-chain assets with embedded rights, turning media, data, and AI-generated works into legally enforceable digital property. By bridging the gap between outdated legal frameworks and the realities of the AI era, Story makes it possible to track provenance, automate licensing, and unlock new markets for ideas. As the foundation for IP’s evolution into an internet-native asset class, Story powers a more open, equitable, and composable creative economy.