A couple years ago, I had an idea for a story. I wrote it down in a Google Doc, shared it with a friend, forgot about it. Six months later, I saw something eerily similar show up as someone else's project.
Could have been a coincidence. Probably was. But I had no way to prove I'd come up with it first. Just a document I could have edited at any time. No timestamp, no proof, nothing.
That's the problem with creativity in the digital age. It's easy to create. It's also easy for someone else to claim credit, or for your work to get scraped and fed into some AI model without your knowledge.
At v03, I'm building Celluloid Protocol to fix this. To give creators a way to actually own and protect what comes out of their minds.
Why creative work needs protection
The internet made it easier than ever to create and share. That's good. But it also made it easier than ever to steal, copy, and exploit creative work.
I've watched friends who are writers have their blog posts scraped for AI training data. Artists see their styles replicated by generators. Musicians find their songs used without credit or payment.
And now with AI, it's gotten worse. Your creative work isn't just content anymore. It's training data for systems that will compete with you.
Unless you can prove you created it first, you don't have much recourse.
What Celluloid does
Celluloid Protocol gives you a proof-of-creation layer. When you save a piece of creative work — a script, a design, a song, whatever — it gets timestamped onchain. Cryptographically. Permanently.
You can prove you created it. You can track who you've shared it with. You can license it with transparent terms. You can collaborate with others and have a clear record of who contributed what.
At v03, I'm integrating this into creative workflows. A screenwriting app where saving automatically timestamps your work. Collaboration tools where multiple creators can co-sign a project. Licensing systems that live onchain instead of in some lawyer's filing cabinet.
The goal is to make IP protection invisible. You just work like normal, and in the background, you're building a permanent record of your creativity.
Why this matters now
I think creativity is about to become both more valuable and more vulnerable. AI can generate text, images, music — things that used to require human originality.
Which makes actual human creativity more important. But also more at risk.
If you can't prove something came from you, it's just data. Anyone can use it. Anyone can train a model on it. Anyone can claim it.
At v03, I'm building tools so creators can protect what they make. Not by locking it away, but by having a verifiable record that can't be faked.
Because the world needs creators who actually own what they create. And in the age of AI, that ownership matters more than ever.