DATA Network to Retire Its Blockchain and Move to Sui After $30M Investment

Sui Foundation is investing $30 million in DATA Network, the AI training data project formerly known as Story, as the protocol prepares to shut down its standalone blockchain and run natively on Sui. The two foundations announced the agreement on October 12, 2026, according to Coincentral and Crypto.news. Sui Foundation will become the network’s largest institutional holder, joining existing stakeholders PIP Labs and DATA Foundation.

Under the plan, the existing DATA token migrates to Sui on a one-for-one basis, so holders will not need to exchange at a different rate. DATA Network keeps operating until the upgrade is complete; the original chain is retired afterwards. Neither foundation has given a migration date. Both said a detailed timeline and a holder transition plan will be published before the upgrade begins, and as of Monday those details had not been released.

Key facts

• Sui Foundation is putting $30 million into DATA Network and will become its largest institutional holder, with PIP Labs and DATA Foundation remaining involved.
• The DATA token moves to Sui on a one-to-one basis, and Crypto.news reported that locked tokens and vesting schedules transfer without changes, with governance rights and economic benefits at least equivalent to current arrangements.
• Trace, the project’s registry for AI training data origin and usage rights, launched in June and has recorded more than 250 million contributions while processing over 3 million receipts per day on average, per DATA Foundation.
• Walrus, a decentralized storage protocol in the Sui ecosystem, becomes the default storage layer for applications operated by DATA Foundation.
• SY Lee, chairman of Poseidon and CEO of PIP Labs, will join Sui Foundation as a strategic adviser.

Why the project is dropping its own chain

The move follows a strategic shift earlier this year. Story Protocol rebranded as DATA Foundation in June 2026, changing focus from general intellectual property licensing toward a full stack for AI training data, with the original IP token renamed DATA. A DATA Foundation spokesperson told Coincentral that running a dedicated blockchain for a single use case carried the costs of validators, network security and infrastructure, and that this became harder to justify as the project narrowed.

The spokesperson also said building storage and access control at that scale internally would have meant rebuilding what Sui already offers through Walrus and Seal. Sui Foundation described the $30 million as a separate part of the partnership, a point the spokesperson made when asked by Cointelegraph whether the money influenced the decision to move.

Source figures on Trace’s activity differ. Cointelegraph reported more than 270 million registrations in roughly four months, while the statement shared with The Block cited more than 250 million contributions since launch. Crypto.news separately cited the 250 million figure and noted that the numbers were supplied by the foundation and had not been independently audited in the materials it reviewed.

What changes for data contributors and AI labs

Trace records where training data came from, the rights attached to it and payments owed to contributors, who can be paid when their data is licensed through participating applications. Crypto.news reported that those applications include Kled, a marketplace where people choose to contribute information for AI development, as well as Numo and Oto. The Sui announcement said Kled was onboarding more than 1.5 billion records, while Numo and Oto were supplying licensed information to AI laboratories and robotics companies.

After the integration, the registry is expected to support encrypted copies of original datasets stored on Walrus, letting authorized users verify records against the original files while access stays restricted. Andrea Muttoni, CEO of DATA Foundation, said the organization intends to develop beyond maintaining a transaction record, pointing to encrypted file storage and possible future verification tools for AI evaluations and model training. Walrus Foundation previously raised $140 million in a March 2025 round led by Standard Crypto, and io.net integrated Walrus for encrypted AI model storage in June 2025.

Adeniyi Abiodun, co-founder and chief product officer at Mysten Labs — the original contributor to Sui and Walrus — said the open internet has been read and the next frontier is defined by access to datasets with the consent and provenance regulators require.

Why it matters

The decision removes a separate validator set from the equation and folds data licensing, storage and settlement into one technology stack, which lowers the operational burden on DATA Foundation while giving Sui a live pipeline of rights-cleared training data. Token holders keep their positions at the same ratio, but they now depend on Sui’s network security and on Walrus remaining the default storage layer. For AI labs, the arrangement offers a documented source of licensed data at a time when provenance requirements are tightening.

What to watch

The next concrete step is publication of the migration schedule and token holder instructions, which the foundations have committed to release before the upgrade. Also unresolved: whether exchanges, custodians and other service providers will handle the token transition automatically, and the investment’s valuation and token count, none of which have been disclosed. The existing blockchain stays live until the upgrade finishes.

Disclaimer: This article is for information only and is not investment, financial or trading advice. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile. Always do your own research.

Sources: CoinCentral, Crypto.news