Fees and royalties

Three separate money flows interact with a SealedIP auction:

• The marketplace fee SealedIP takes when an auction settles
• The Story royalty policy applied to commercial-use licenses
• Future downstream remix royalties if the license allows derivatives

Marketplace fee — 0% during the hackathon

SealedIP takes 0% of the winning bid amount during the CDR Hackathon (May 27 – June 5, 2026). Sellers receive the full winning bid in WIP at settle.

This is enforced in the contract: there's no fee logic in settle(). The seller transfer is exactly winningAmount.

Post-hackathon fees, if introduced, will be a separate contract upgrade and will be announced before applying.

The sealed reserve and the winning amount

Your reserve price is sealed — encrypted into a CDR vault and kept private from bidders throughout the auction. It is decrypted only inside the settle transaction, at which point the contract verifies your signature before applying the floor.

The winning amount is the highest valid bid that meets or exceeds your revealed reserve. If no bid clears the reserve, the auction ends as ExpiredNoWinner and all deposits are refunded. You receive nothing and the IP is unchanged.

Because the reserve is sealed, the winning amount you receive is at least the reserve you set, and bidders compete without knowing that floor.

Story Protocol fees

Story's own contracts charge:

• Gas for the IP registration, license attach, and license mint. Sellers pay gas for IP registration + license attach (the mint-and-list flow). The orchestrator pays gas for license mint (it happens inside settle).
• Possible LicensingModule fees for license token minting. The default minting fee for the SealedIP presets is 0, so this is currently zero. Sellers who pick a custom PIL terms id with a non-zero defaultMintingFee should be aware that the contract will pull that fee from the winner's deposit.

The mint cost is paid by the winner, not the seller. It's pulled from the winner's deposit at settle time.

Royalties on commercial-use licenses

Story Protocol's royalty policies are used by SealedIP's commercial-use presets:

• LAP (Liquid Absolute Percentage): used by Commercial · No remix, Commercial remix · 5% revenue, and Creative Commons · Attribution.
• LRP (Liquid Relative Percentage): an alternative policy for relative-value scenarios (not currently used by the default SealedIP presets).

LAP is required by the LicensingModule for any commercial license, even when the configured share is 0%. The policy contract handles the actual revenue routing when derivatives report revenue.

For SealedIP's auction itself, LAP doesn't take anything from the winning bid. The auction proceeds (the bid amount) are not derivative revenue; they're the price of acquiring the license, which Story doesn't tax.

Downstream royalties on remixes

Only the Commercial remix · 5% revenue preset configures a non-zero commercialRevShare. With it:

• Every derivative made from the IP pays 5% of its commercial revenue back to your wallet
• Derivatives inherit the same terms (derivativesReciprocal: true), so a remix-of-a-remix also pays 5% upward
• The percentage is enforced by Story's royalty policy, not by SealedIP

The revenue distribution is streaming, not lump-sum. Each derivative's revenue event triggers a flow through the LAP policy down to the original IP.

The other presets configure commercialRevShare: 0, so no future royalty flows from derivatives. (Some don't allow derivatives at all.)

Currency

All amounts are denominated in WIP (wrapped IP), the Story Aeneid ERC-20 that wraps native IP. The SealedIP contract holds WIP during auctions and transfers WIP at settle.

If you want native IP, unwrap your WIP at the WIP contract.

"What you take home" panel

The /create form's pre-submit summary makes this concrete:

• Marketplace fee: 0% — you keep the full winning bid
• If reserve is met, you get: your sealed reserve amount or more (paid in WIP)
• Future remix royalty: 5% of every downstream remix paid to your wallet via Story's LAP royalty policy (only when Commercial Remix is selected; otherwise "None — this preset doesn't take a remix cut")

This is the only money-flow disclosure in the seller form. There are no hidden fees.

Summary table

Money flow	Who pays	Who receives	When
Winning bid	Winner	Seller	At settle
Loser deposits	(no one)	Each loser	At settle (refund)
Gas: register IP	Seller	Network	At list (transaction 1)
Gas: attach terms	Seller	Network	At list (transaction 2)
Gas: create auction	Seller	Network	At list (transaction 3)
Gas: seal reserve	Seller	Network	At list (transaction 4)
Gas: settle	Orchestrator (or whoever calls)	Network	At settle
Marketplace fee	(none)	(none)	N/A (0% during hackathon)
Downstream remix royalty	Future derivative	Seller	Streaming