DATA Network to Retire Standalone Blockchain in Sui Migration Backed by $30M Investment
Key Takeaways
- •DATA Network, formerly known as Story, will retire its independent blockchain and migrate to Sui's layer-1 network under a partnership that includes a $30 million investment from the Sui Foundation.
- •Trace, the provenance registry launched in June to track the origin and licensing rights of AI training data, will move into the Sui ecosystem, with Walrus serving as the default storage layer and Seal handling access control.
- •A DATA Foundation spokesperson said operating a dedicated chain for a single use case no longer made sense after Trace surpassed 270 million registrations in roughly four months, citing validator, security, and infrastructure costs.
- •The existing DATA Network chain will keep running until the upgrade is complete, and a detailed timeline along with a holder transition plan will be published before the migration, though no dates have been announced.
- •According to the foundation, the $30 million from the Sui Foundation was a separate component of the partnership rather than a factor that drove the migration decision.
DATA Network, the AI training data protocol formerly known as Story, plans to retire its independent blockchain and migrate to Sui, a layer-1 blockchain, backed by a $30 million investment from the Sui Foundation, the partners said on Monday.
Under the move, Trace — the registry launched by the project in June to track the origin and licensing rights of AI training data — will join the Sui ecosystem. Walrus, a decentralized storage platform within the Sui ecosystem, will become the default storage layer for applications operated by the DATA Foundation. Seal, which the project cited as Sui's existing access-control layer alongside Walrus, rounds out the stack the foundation had weighed building on its own.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, a DATA Foundation spokesperson said running a dedicated blockchain for a single use case meant carrying the costs of validators, network security, and infrastructure.
"Building storage and access control at that scale ourselves would have meant rebuilding what Sui already has in Walrus and Seal," the spokesperson said.
The decision followed Story Foundation's June rebrand to DATA Foundation, which marked a pivot from intellectual property licensing toward building a "full stack for AI training data."
As Trace grew to more than 270 million registrations in roughly four months, maintaining an independent blockchain for a single use case no longer made sense, the representative said. For a registry whose value rests on provenance records, the migration means those registrations will live on Sui's shared infrastructure rather than a dedicated chain, with storage running through Walrus.
The DATA Network chain will keep operating until the upgrade is complete, and the partners said a detailed timeline and a holder transition plan will be published ahead of the migration. Those forthcoming documents are the immediate items to watch, since they will spell out how and when existing holdings carry over — no dates have been announced.
Asked how much the Sui Foundation's investment influenced the decision, the representative said the $30 million was a separate component of the partnership.
The announcement is detailed in an official Sui Foundation blog post.
Related: Story Protocol rebrands to DATA Foundation in AI pivot
Source: Cointelegraph
