We carried out a major upgrade of the STORY system, significantly improving its performance, stability, and user experience. The frontend design was completely redesigned and the code optimized, making the platform faster and more intuitive for users.

A completely updated interface, reworked code, and deep optimization under the hood have made the platform noticeably faster, more reliable, and more user-friendly. We’ve kept everything you loved and added what was missing — speed, smooth navigation, and stability even under heavy load.

Our goal is for STORY to be not just a network explorer, but an indispensable tool for validators, developers, and everyone following the network’s activity. We’re continuing to evolve the platform to make your experience even better — and this is just the beginning.

As part of this, we’ve focused on developing two key products: Labs and IppyAI (AI assistance), which we’ll introduce in more detail a little later.

Ecosystem

Many users still aren’t aware of how actively the Story ecosystem is growing. To change that, we’ve created the Ecosystem section — it’s already available on the platform and helps you quickly see which projects, teams, and services are building the network from within.

Nodes: all node information in one place

The Nodes section isn’t just a node map — it’s a powerful navigation tool for developers and validators. In real time, you can find active RPC, REST, and GRPC nodes, EVM RPC endpoints, monitor synchronization status, check for indexing availability, and access technical details for each node. Validators also get a list of up-to-date peers they can use to sync their own nodes.

All this data is gathered by the RPC Scanner — a special module that automatically scans the STORY network, detects active nodes, and performs a deep analysis of their status. Before displaying results, we carefully verify the data to ensure users won’t end up connecting to inactive or faulty nodes.

One of the most important features is EVM RPC support — a critically needed resource for Story developers. Here, you can find independent, instantly available, unrestricted RPC endpoints, which is especially useful during development and debugging.

Smart contracts

The Smart Contracts section is available to all Story users. Here, you can track deployed contracts, view their addresses, events, interactions, and verify source code directly through the interface.

This is especially convenient for developers: the system is built on our own custom indexer, which allows us to flexibly adapt to the needs of the community. We can easily add new features on request — without limitations or external dependencies. This makes working with contracts in Story not only transparent but truly convenient.

Edit validator

Previously, Story didn’t have a full-featured metadata system for validators — aside from the moniker, it wasn’t possible to add a description, links, or any visual customization. We’ve fixed that. Now, every validator can set up a public profile: upload a banner, avatar, add contact details, and include links to social media, a website, and GitHub.

The verification process is transparent and secure. To confirm ownership, you simply need to sign a message — this can be done via Metamask or manually using our detailed guide.

This makes validators more recognizable, increases transparency, and builds greater trust within the community.

We’ve also eliminated old technical risks — previously, there were occasional cases of data loss. In the latest update, we implemented a centralized storage system and regular backups, completely preventing such issues from happening again.

🔥 We’re already seeing an active response from the community: most major staking providers have updated their profiles, and many validators are enthusiastically customizing theirs. This confirms that the feature is truly in demand and brings real value to the ecosystem.

🔥 Labs: a workspace for Story validators and developers

Labs is a new section within the STORY Explorer, designed primarily for validators who need a fast, convenient, and streamlined way to work with network infrastructure — without relying on extra tools.

It brings together all the essential features: from installing and configuring nodes to checking RPC endpoints and monitoring node status. The killer feature is that you don’t need to switch to other services — you can stay right inside Storyscan, within the explorer itself.

‼️ We clearly understand the challenges validators face: inactive peers, outdated or inaccurate guides, broken snapshots, and — most importantly — the lack of clear instructions during network updates. The recent STORY update confirmed this: many validators simply didn’t have access to up-to-date information, which led to delays and mistakes.

Labs solves this problem.
Now we have a dynamic workspace with up-to-date guides, automated node checks, and constant support from the STAKEME team.

One of Labs' key technical advantages is that it’s not just a showcase for our own services. We integrate data from STAKEME and other trusted providers, so users can access verified, reliable information in one place — without wasting time on research and getting the results they need quickly.

📌 What Labs offers:

The well-designed Labs Dashboard is a unified space that brings together everything needed to work with the network. We’ve equipped it with key tools:

• 🔧 Up-to-date commands — everything node runners need: quick copy, clear instructions, no clutter.

• 📅 Next snapshot status — now you always know when the next snapshot will be available for fast synchronization.

• 📘 Sections for Installation, API & Sync, Upgrade, Validator Guide — step-by-step guides with clear structure, current parameters, and commands.

• ⚙️ Interactive components — the dashboard displays important events: if a network upgrade is planned, you’ll see it immediately.

All elements are flexible, regularly updated, and tailored to the real needs of validators and node operators.

Node installation

We aimed to strike a balance between beginners and experienced users when creating the Node Installation section.

Everything is designed to be clear and straightforward for everyone: no extras — just a precise, step-by-step guide with explanations and the ability to set your own variables. You immediately see exactly what you’re changing and where.

Not sure how many resources you’ll need to run a node? We’ve made that clear. The latest version of the binary files? Always right at your fingertips. Everything is designed to make setting up a STORY node easy and as error-free as possible.

💡 In the future, we plan to add installation guides using Kubernetes (k8s) for more experienced node runners.

API & Sync

In this section, you’ll find everything you need for proper node setup and synchronization: up-to-date peers, working endpoints, and key parameters. Special attention is given to snapshots from STAKEME — we show their type (light or archive), database format, and other important details so you know exactly what you’re connecting to.

We’re already working on expanding the list of providers, giving users more choices and the ability to get the most suitable and reliable snapshot.

Our goal is to create a unified portal where everything needed for synchronization is available in one place—no need to consult multiple sources.

Upgrade

As we mentioned earlier, the STORY network lacked clear and structured update instructions for a long time.

Validators often faced confusion about which update applied to what and when to implement it.

In this section, we show only the current update (if there is one), and also keep a history of all previous updates so you can always navigate confidently and be sure you’re taking the right actions.

🤩 AI assistent

The most exciting integration in Storyscan is StoryAI, an internal assistant who knows everything about the STORY network. Not sure how to set up a node? Have a technical question related to the Story blockchain? Just ask Lumi — it will not only give you a clear answer but also immediately suggest useful links.

To ensure the assistant provides accurate and relevant answers, we train it using data from key community resources:

Forum

Discussions, answers to popular questions, technical cases.

🔍 Prompt: What is Story doing to improve execution performance and validator scalability?

Response:

Story is working on execution improvements such as stateDB optimization, parallel execution, and IP-core enhancements. They are also exploring hardware-level performance with Stanford FDCI. For validator scalability, upgrades to CometBFT are being tested, alongside research into HotStuff and BLS signatures to reduce latency and support more validators.

🔗 Link: https://forum.story.foundation/t/technical-roadmap/36782

🔍 Prompt: What’s the validator status for Week 21? Any major issues?

Response:

Week 21 Summary: Most validators maintained 99.9–100% uptime, though 8 dropped below 99% due to an issue with Story Client v1.2.0. Two validators, Cipherowl and Blockmaster, are currently jailed.
Voting Power saw a net increase of 168,931 VP, with 901k staked and 732k unstaked.
The number of delegators increased by 7, reaching a total of 767.

🔗 Link: https://forum.story.foundation/t/week-21-status-for-validator/37070

Discord

A real conversations and solutions from validators, developers, and the team.

🔍 Prompt: Is there an API to get the list of token IDs (PILs) owned by a specific user, or do I need to scan all blocks manually?

Response:

You don’t need to scan all blocks manually. Use the List LicenseTokens endpoint to fetch a paginated and filtered list of LicenseTokens, including those owned by a specific user.
More info: List LicenseTokens API.

Just pass the user's address as a parameter like this: POST /api/v3/licenses/tokens

This will return the token IDs associated with that address. Let me know if you’d like help forming the full request.

Docs & GitHub

An official documentation for the network and components, information on releases, pull requests, changelogs, and repository activity.

🔍 Prompt: How do I create and register an AI Agent on Story and use the docs as training data?

Response:

To create and register an AI Agent on Story, first register it as IP to give it a unique network identity. Then, add License Terms to define its interaction and content generation rules. Use the combined .md file from ‘Train on Our Docs’ to train your agent with all available documentation. For advanced features, implement the ATCP/IP protocol enabling agents to transact and communicate, as detailed in the whitepaper.

🔗 Link: https://docs.story.foundation/ai-agents/overview

We regularly parse these sources, update the dataset, and automatically enrich StoryAI’s knowledge base. This means you always get fresh, verified information — without having to sift through dozens of links yourself.

StoryAI isn’t just a chat; it’s a context-aware assistant built directly into the Explorer, making working with the network faster, easier, and smarter.

StoryAI is built on a customized version of the Qwen 2.5 architecture, which we actively adapt to meet the ecosystem’s needs. We don’t use external providers — everything runs locally and without limitations. StoryAI has no usage caps, giving you stable, fast access to the assistant right inside the platform.

StoryAI is just the beginning. We see it as a major growth area and will consistently develop both its functionality and the quality of its responses. All updates will be community-driven — we listen, adapt, and improve.

The STAKEME team is committed to creating accessible and user-friendly infrastructure products and tools for the community and developer ecosystem.

The integration of Labs and AI into Storyscan is another step toward making it easier, faster, and safer for every user, developer, or validator to work with the Story network.

We actively contribute to the growth of the Story ecosystem, which offers unique opportunities for tokenization and intellectual property management in the AI era.

We thank the Story project for the inspiring collaboration and the opportunity to advance web3 together!

STAKEME Developments