Kim Seo-joon, head of global Web3 venture capital firm Hashed, said that in the future age of artificial intelligence (AI), the competitiveness of intellectual property (IP) will depend less on a finished piece of content and more on how its universe is expanded.
Hashed said on the 27th that it published an article addressing the shift in IP competitiveness after the spread of AI and the challenges of the secondary-creation ecosystem. Kim said that in an environment where Generative AI has driven the creation expense to virtually zero (0), the moat of IP is moving from "linear narrative" to the "density of the universe" that fans want to expand. An IP moat refers to a strategy by which corporations secure a competitive edge with IP and raise barriers to entry.
Kim said, "In an era when a single line of prompt can produce video that is hard to distinguish from the original, the essence of IP is being redefined," adding, "If once the core asset of IP was the power of a single finished story (content) with a beginning and an end, going forward the universe itself—where characters, aesthetics, rules, and collective memory are condensed—will determine competitiveness."
To explain AI's shift, the concept of total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (DeFi) was expanded and proposed as a metric applicable to IP called total value of the world (TVW). According to Hashed, while TVL estimates the total amount of asset locked in a protocol, TVW measures how much imagination and participation are accumulated in a single world. For example, in the cases of Marvel and Pokémon, the "universe density" that cannot be explained by the success of individual works alone is envisioned as the basis for long-term value.
However, Kim noted that the more a universe is expanded by fans, the more copyright infringement structurally increases. This is because approaches that try to block secondary creation at the source are practically unworkable amid the spread of open-source Generative AI image and video engines, models that run locally, anonymous servers, and cross-border prompts.
He said, "The music industry could not completely stop illegal downloads, and the industry eventually regrew as a lawful distribution structure emerged," proposing that "the question should shift from 'how to block' to 'how to open wisely.'"
As a solution, he did not limit it to simple revenue sharing. He emphasized that multiple challenges must be solved at once, including the status of fan-made secondary IP, community-based quality and direction management, and protection of the original creator's creative intent and universe consistency. To that end, he said a transparent ledger infrastructure is needed that can track contributions, prove rights, and automatically distribute rewards. As an alternative, he judged that Blockchain can play a suitable role.
Kim said, "If AI drives the creation expense to zero, Blockchain will become the layer that settles the value of creation," predicting, "At the point where the two technologies meet, the next chapter of the IP industry is likely to be written."