We've always been community-first. From the start, our focus has been on quality over quantity and signal over spam. Small creators have been a big part of that. Your effort matters. We're actively working with @KaitoAI to figure out the best flow for our leaderboard while keeping quality as our main filter. Thresholds are important for this. They make sure the content that rises is worth seeing. That said, we are also actively looking for high-quality creators to add to the allowlist so their work gets noticed, even if they do not meet default thresholds. Here is how the next steps look: 1. The initial rollout of the first month's rewards will happen on September 1st. 2. We took initial snapshots of the creators on our leaderboard and have already added most to the allowlist. These changes will reflect soon. 3. We will continue to scrape the leaderboard in future updates and track content manually. 4. Our weekly theme competitions and best content rewards have been running for the same reason - to reward quality creators outside of the main leaderboard. 5. If you want to make sure your work is tracked efficiently, join the community and post your content there: https://t.co/YNElEK1Fvl This approach is tentative, and we want to hear your feedback before making it permanent. The best suggestions from the community on how we can improve the leaderboard while keeping the focus on quality will be rewarded with 500 $XION split between the top 3 distinct ideas. We've been tracking. We've been watching. We will continue to put the community first.

< $IP Goes Mainstream with $IP Strategy > Today I’m excited to announce that we are doing a DAT, and by doing so giving equities investors direct access to Story and our AI-Native Infrastructure for the $80T IP economy. @HeritageDistill ($CASK), a NASDAQ-listed company, has announced a $360M strategic reserve centered around $IP, the native token of Story, with $220M in PIPE financing ($100M in cash and $120M in $IP tokens). $82M of proceeds will be used to purchase $IP tokens from Story Foundation. The Foundation will use 100% of this cash proceeds to strategically repurchase $IP tokens on the open market within the 90 days following the sale. We’re not doing this just because everyone else is. Our reason is clear: our story needs to be told beyond crypto. There’s no better way to do that than by building a presence in the world’s largest capital market, the US stock market. Story sits at a rare intersection of crypto, AI, and IP. We’re not a DeFi protocol chasing immense yields. We’re not another “faster chain” focusing purely on TPS. We are a blockchain network tackling real problems in IP and AI with tech that only crypto can enable. 1. We’re unlocking an $80T asset class spanning AI training datasets, entertainment franchises, biomedical patents, and more. 2. We’re making that asset class programmable so anyone can build on it with attribution, traceability, and fair compensation baked in. 3. AI’s next frontier won’t be won with faster chips or clever model tweaks. Compute is table stakes. Architectures are commoditized. The next central battlefield is data. Programmable IP makes it ownable, traceable, and monetizable. We have a story that must be told to equity markets that clearly have an insatiable demand for foundational architecture for AI. We believe building scalable tech for data through programmable IP is the next big unlock for AI, as you have seen our focus on real-world data with our announcement of Poseidon (@psdnai ). We’ve built a Layer 1 blockchain with a full-featured IP-native protocol now securing hundreds of thousands of IPs onchain — from songs by Justin Bieber, Blackpink, and BTS via @Aria_Protocol , to global brands like Crocs and Adidas through @ABLO_Official. With partners like Stability AI, and millions of creators active through platforms like Magma, Story is already proving how programmable IP can scale in the real world. And the past month has been huge for us: - Published our Chapter 2 vision: AI-Native Infrastructure for the $80T IP Economy - Welcomed Sandeep Chinchali @SPChinchali as Chief AI Officer - Launched Poseidon @psdnai , building the data infrastructure for AI that Scale AI missed - Saw @Grayscale launch the Story Trust for accredited investors - Listed $IP on @Official_Upbit , pushing us to within striking distance of ATH - Formed our Security Council to move toward progressive decentralization We’ve also got huge AI partnerships that are around the corner. This DAT gives us a way to share our Chapter 2 vision to the public markets and the mainstream, audiences that want to find out whether there is more to crypto than a faster chain, new dev language, or high performance casino. We see the Heritage deal as historic: the largest DAT ever for a top 50 altcoin on @CoinMarketCap , backed by top-tier investors like @a16zcrypto and banks like Cantor Fitzgerald. It will accelerate our roadmap, bring liquidity to attract high-value IPs onchain, and enable stronger incentives for real-world data to flow into the network. Chapter 2 demands $IP Strategy.