# Tokenized IPs ### IP Inside Onchain Labs Intellectual property is one of the core asset types that an Onchain Lab holds. When a research team creates an Onchain Lab, the Lab's Token Bound Account becomes the custodian of the project's IP assets — alongside its data references, treasury, and other holdings. The tokenization system consists of two complementary primitives. **IP-NFTs** represent ownership of intellectual property as non-fungible tokens. **IP Tokens (IPTs)** are fungible tokens created from an IP-NFT that enable fractional ownership, fundraising, and governance. Together, they create a path from a research idea to a liquid, tradable, and collectively governed scientific asset. The relationship forms a clear hierarchy: the Lab is the persistent container that holds IP-NFTs representing specific inventions or research outputs. Those IP-NFTs can be tokenized into IPTs, distributing ownership stakes to funders and community members. Revenue generated by the IP — through licensing, dataset access fees, or eventual sale — flows back through the Lab's treasury for distribution to IPT holders. ### IP-NFTs An IP-NFT is a non-fungible token that represents ownership of intellectual property rights. It is the onchain representation of a specific piece of scientific IP: a drug candidate, a research methodology, a dataset, a patent application, or any other form of protectable intellectual output. Each IP-NFT contains metadata describing the underlying research, assignment agreements that define the legal rights transferred to the token holder, and data references linking to supporting research materials stored in the Lab's data layer. In the V3 architecture, IP-NFTs are held by Lab TBAs rather than by individual wallets or multisigs. This means the IP-NFT's ownership is governed by whoever controls the Lab — initially the LabNFT holder, and potentially an IPT holder community through governance modules. When the LabNFT is transferred, the new holder gains control of the Lab and all IP-NFTs inside it in a single transaction. Ownership of an IP-NFT carries the legal rights defined in its assignment agreement. When an IP-NFT changes hands (whether directly or through the transfer of the parent Lab), the associated legal rights follow. This creates a liquid market for scientific IP that was previously locked in institutional tech transfer offices, research agreements, and licensing bureaucracies. ### IP Tokens (IPTs) While IP-NFTs represent whole ownership of intellectual property, IP Tokens unlock fractional ownership and liquidity. IPTs are ERC-20 tokens created by tokenizing an IP-NFT through the Tokenizer contract. When an IP-NFT holder tokenizes their asset, they generate a supply of fungible tokens that represent governance rights and economic exposure to the underlying intellectual property. Tokenization enables broad participation where anyone can hold a stake in scientific research they believe in, fundraising where research teams raise capital by selling IPTs through crowdsales, governance where token holders participate in decisions about the IP's development and the Lab's direction, and liquidity where IPTs trade on secondary markets, creating price discovery for early-stage science that traditionally has none. The IP-NFT holder controls the IPT supply and can issue additional tokens to raise further capital or permanently cap the supply to protect existing holders from dilution. ### Revenue and Licensing IP-NFTs are not just static ownership records. They are programmable assets that can generate ongoing revenue for their parent Lab. The V3 architecture supports IP licensing through rentable NFTs using the ERC-4907 standard. A pharmaceutical company or research institution can rent an IP-NFT for a defined period — gaining the legal right to use the IP for internal R\&D — by executing a single onchain transaction. Rental fees are paid in stablecoins and automatically routed to the Lab's treasury. Royalties are distributed to the original scientist, the institution, and other stakeholders via ERC-2981. Beyond licensing, Labs generate revenue through dataset access fees (paid by collaborators who access gated research data), milestone payouts (from funding organisations when research targets are met), and eventual IP sales or acquisition events. In all cases, revenue flows into the Lab's treasury and can be distributed to IPT holders according to the Lab's configured fee routing. This model creates a liquid, low-friction market for early-stage IP — generating value for Labs long before full commercialisation. ### From Idea to Liquidity The lifecycle of tokenized IP follows a progression: **Create** — A research team creates an Onchain Lab and uploads their research data, establishing the Lab's scientific foundation. **Mint** — The team mints an IP-NFT within the Lab, linking their intellectual property to an onchain asset with embedded legal agreements and data references. **Tokenize** — The IP-NFT holder creates IPTs through the Tokenizer contract, generating a fungible token supply that represents fractional ownership. **Fundraise** — IPTs are sold through crowdsales to fund the research. Supporters receive tokens that give them governance rights and economic exposure to the IP's success. **License** — As the research matures, the IP-NFT can be licensed to industry partners through rentable NFT mechanisms. Licensing revenue flows to the Lab's treasury. **Govern** — IPT holders participate in key decisions: approving milestone completions, voting on licensing terms, directing treasury allocation, and potentially initiating clawback proceedings for stalled projects. **Trade** — IPTs circulate on secondary markets throughout the process. As the research progresses and generates revenue, the market reprices the tokens based on the project's scientific and commercial trajectory. Every step is recorded onchain through the Lab's Token Bound Account, creating an immutable provenance trail from initial idea to commercial outcome. ### Legal Framework Tokenized IP carries real legal weight. The system bridges onchain assets and real-world intellectual property law through a structured legal layer. Holders of IP-NFTs digitally sign assignment agreements that define exactly what rights transfer with ownership: usage rights, licensing terms, revenue sharing obligations, and governance participation rules. These signatures are verified onchain using EIP-191 (for externally owned accounts) and EIP-1271 (for smart contract wallets like Lab TBAs), creating an auditable, tamper-evident record of consent. The assignment agreements embedded in each IP-NFT are the legal instruments that give the onchain token its real-world force. Without them, an IP-NFT would be a pointer to research with no enforceable rights. With them, the token becomes a transferable, licensable, and governable representation of intellectual property. ### Why Tokenize Science? Scientific intellectual property has historically been illiquid, opaque, and inaccessible. Promising research sits locked in university tech transfer offices for years. Early-stage biotech requires enormous capital investment with no path to liquidity until a drug candidate reaches clinical trials or an acquisition event — a timeline measured in decades. The deeper problem is that traditional IP valuation only recognises value at the point of commercialisation. The years of hypothesis formation, experimental validation, negative results, methodology development, and data accumulation that precede a commercial outcome are treated as cost, not as value. Researchers cannot monetise intermediate discoveries. Funders cannot exit early if their thesis changes. Collaborators cannot easily invest in specific research directions. By representing scientific IP as programmable onchain assets held within persistent Onchain Labs, Molecule creates infrastructure where intermediate research value is capturable and tradable, where researchers can fund their work through community-driven mechanisms without surrendering full control, where funders gain liquid exposure to scientific progress at every stage, and where intellectual property flows efficiently to those best positioned to develop it — whether that is a university lab, an industry partner, or a decentralised research community. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.molecule.xyz/core-concepts/tokenized-ips.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.