DATA Network Shuts Down Blockchain, Migrates to Sui With $30 Million Investment

DATA Network Migration to Sui Brings $30 Million Investment

DATA Network is retiring its independent blockchain and migrating to Sui blockchain, backed by a $30 million investment from Sui Foundation announced on October 12, 20261

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. This strategic partnership makes Sui Foundation the largest institutional investor in DATA Network, alongside existing stakeholders PIP Labs and DATA Foundation3

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. The AI data protocol will operate natively on Sui after the upgrade, ending its independent chain operations while preserving all token holder rights and economics.

Trace Registry Joins Sui With 250 Million Verified Receipts

The migration brings DATA Foundation's Trace registry, an onchain registry for AI training data, into Sui's infrastructure4

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. Trace has registered more than 250 million contributions since its June launch and currently processes over 3 million receipts per day on average3

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. The registry records the origin of each data contribution, tracks associated rights, and settles payments to contributors. Applications writing to Trace include Kled, the largest opt-in human data marketplace onboarding over 1.5 billion records, along with Numo and Oto, which already license data to frontier AI labs and robotics companies3

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Walrus Becomes Default Storage for Rights-Cleared AI Training Data

Walrus, a decentralized storage platform with integrity proofs anchored on Sui, will become the default storage layer for applications operated by DATA Foundation1

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. The integration strengthens data provenance guarantees by enabling Trace to hold encrypted, immutable reference copies of contributed files. This allows applications to regenerate record hashes from the underlying data itself rather than relying solely on application-supplied metadata4

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. Developers can verify later processing of files against originals, providing stronger evidence against unauthorized changes.

Why DATA Network Chose Sui for AI Data Protocol Infrastructure

Sui's architecture represents every asset as a programmable object, allowing datasets and licenses to be managed onchain like tokens3

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. Independent transactions execute in parallel and settle in under a second, making the network capable of handling millions of daily data registrations. Walrus extends this capability to large files, storing massive AI datasets efficiently while ensuring data remains readable only by licensed buyers3

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. Adeniyi Abiodun, co-founder and chief product officer at Mysten Labs, stated that Sui and Walrus can support AI data storage, licensing and payments at scale while bringing substantial volumes of rights-cleared AI training data already serving leading AI laboratories4

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Supply Chain for AI Training Data Addresses Regulatory Requirements

The next generation of AI models faces constraints accessing real-world data as the open internet has been largely scraped3

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. Future models require data sourced from people with consent and data provenance that regulators and legal teams will accept. The EU AI Act and ongoing litigation over training data have made data origin verification a procurement requirement for labs3

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. The data AI models need includes healthcare accounts, dashcam recordings, industrial maintenance footage, and customer service calls—personal and often regulated information belonging to the people who generated it4

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Token Migration Preserves Holder Economics and Governance Rights

The existing DATA token will migrate to Sui on a one-to-one basis, meaning each DATA token holder receives one DATA token on the new network2

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. Token holders will retain equivalent or better governance rights and token economics4

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. Locked tokens and token vesting schedules will carry over unchanged with the new plan2

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. The existing DATA Network will continue operating until the blockchain migration completes, with both organizations planning to publish a detailed timeline and holder transition plan prior to the upgrade1

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Story Protocol Rebrand Led to Focus on AI Training Data

DATA Network was formerly known as Story Protocol, a blockchain built around intellectual property licensing1

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. In June 2026, Story Protocol rebranded to DATA Foundation, shifting its strategy from general intellectual property licensing to building a full stack for AI training data2

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. The project faced difficulties recruiting large intellectual property holders who wanted stricter control over their data, prompting DATA Foundation to focus on infrastructure for sourcing and validating data used to train AI models2

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. As part of the strategic partnership, SY Lee, Chairman of Poseidon and CEO of PIP Labs who played a key role in developing Story Protocol, will join Sui Foundation as Strategic Advisor2

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