Onchain IP turns static, illiquid rights into transparent, tradable assets, transforming games like My Pet Hooligan fans from passive consumers into real economic stakeholders
The entertainment industry has long treated intellectual property like the paranoid owner of a rare painting, locked in a private vault. It is extremely valuable, but static, illiquid and only accessible to the person who holds the key.
The traditional framework for registering intellectual property such as film franchises, songs and video games has been broken, especially in a world where virtually all entertainment has gone digital. Yet the underlying legal infrastructure that secures ownership is still stuck in the 20th century.
The problems with IP
The structural problems of traditional IP start with inaccessibility. Access to high-quality IP investments is generally limited to a small circle of institutions that can afford to hire lawyers to search registries, negotiate licenses and structure sales, effectively excluding the people who value IP most: the fans and creators who generate its value and drive its growth.
Take the Star Wars film franchise. Licensing the likeness of a character like Chewbacca is eye-wateringly expensive, yet that image would be worth nothing without the film’s loyal, fanatical audience keeping it relevant for decades.
Entertainment IP is also extremely illiquid. Trademarks and similar rights are “lumpy” assets that are difficult to price and even harder to sell, sometimes taking weeks or months for transactions to close. The model also suffers from weak alignment, as brands rarely reward communities for their role in making a property successful; for example, the most dedicated players of a video game earn nothing from the global breakthrough, apart from the privilege of continuing to play and pay within a closed system.
Blockchain offers a better way
Bringing IP on-chain is the obvious upgrade. Rather than being locked in a vault, rights can live in a transparent, liquid, global marketplace where success and value are measured by real engagement rather than opaque internal accounting.
On-chain IP enables immutable, verifiable ownership. If anyone has a $NFT By granting defined rights to a piece of IP, no one can quietly take those rights away, and anyone can verify who owns what, see what revenue it generates, and bid to acquire or license it through open, decentralized mechanisms. Because these rights reside on programmable infrastructure, they can be traded in real time, distributed among multiple parties, or packaged into new financial and creative products.
Evidence that this model works is already present in projects like AMGI Studios’ My Pet Hooligan, a blockchain game built around 8,888 unique 3D characters living as NFTs on Ethereum. AMGI has transformed dozens of characters, weapons and accessories into player-owned assets, going beyond the dominant free-to-play model where users effectively lease ‘skins’ from a closed server.
AMGI’s approach effectively turns its My Pet Hooligan IP into a new kind of real-world asset. If the game goes viral and more people start playing, demand for those NFTs should increase, rewarding early adopters who took the risk of supporting the ecosystem before it went mainstream. The assets provide in-game utility, and their scarcity and desirability are visible down the chain via price, volume, and engagement metrics on marketplaces and analytics dashboards.
Music, film and more
The same logic extends far beyond gaming. Musicians can bypass traditional labels by issuing NFTs or tokens that encode royalty rights, enforce revenue splits through smart contracts, and allow fans to buy directly into future streaming revenue. Independent filmmakers can sell tokens that entitle supporters to a share of box office, streaming and licensing revenue, turning their communities into both financiers and evangelists.
Such systems create an entirely new asset class in which discoverability becomes meritocratic and value is easier to assess simply by looking at the involvement and cash flow in the chain. Compared to the current black-box IP regime, on-chain IP is more open, transparent, and accessible to anyone with an internet connection and a wallet.
For entertainment, the logic is hard to ignore. Blockchain-based IP protects creators, empowers consumers and provides a standardized framework for participation, transforming audiences from passive consumers to active stakeholders. As adoption increases, expect the walls of today’s media empires to erode and be replaced by open ecosystems where every song, movie, and video game character has a fair chance to find its market.