Story co-founders defended the token unlocking delay, stating that the project needed "more time."

PANews reported on February 9th that, according to CoinDesk, Story Protocol co-founder SY Lee defended his decision to postpone the token unlock in an interview. The project has postponed the unlock of its first major IP token by six months to August 2026. Lee stated that the project needs "more time" to build use cases and pointed out that the current near-zero on-chain revenue is a "wrong metric."

He explained that Story's core business model lies in the offline licensing of AI training data, rather than on-chain transaction fees. The project is shifting from tokenized media content to "unscraped" human-contributed data and enterprise licensing agreements, which delays the visibility of on-chain revenue. Lee cited Worldcoin's precedent of extending the lock-up period in 2024, saying that this move signaled a long-term commitment, not a sign of distress.