DATA Network, previously operating under the name Story, has announced plans to retire its independent blockchain and transition its flagship artificial intelligence training data protocol to the Sui ecosystem. The strategic migration is bolstered by a substantial $30 million investment from the Sui Foundation, marking a major consolidation effort within the broader blockchain and decentralized infrastructure sectors.
According to project partners, the move will integrate the network’s Trace registry—which officially launched in June—directly into the Sui ecosystem. Simultaneously, Walrus, a decentralized storage platform native to the Sui network, is set to become the default storage layer for applications operated by the DATA Foundation. The announcement was made jointly by the project stakeholders, highlighting a shift away from isolated, single-use-case infrastructure toward high-performance, multi-tenant layer-1 ecosystems.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, a representative for the DATA Foundation explained that maintaining a dedicated, independent blockchain exclusively for a single use case carries heavy, ongoing operational burdens. Specifically, the foundation had to absorb the recurring financial and computational costs associated with maintaining a network of validators, ensuring robust network security, and supporting underlying infrastructure from the ground up.
Elaborating on the engineering rationale behind the migration, the spokesperson noted that building advanced storage architecture and comprehensive access control at a competitive scale independently would have been redundant. They pointed out that such an undertaking would have essentially forced the team to rebuild capabilities that Sui and its adjacent protocols already natively provide through technologies like Walrus and Seal.
The decision to migrate comes on the heels of a significant strategic pivot by the project. Originally known as Story Foundation, the organization underwent a major rebrand to DATA Foundation in June. During that transition, the project shifted its primary focus away from traditional intellectual property licensing toward constructing a comprehensive, full-stack infrastructure specifically tailored for AI training data. As part of that pivot, the team launched Trace, a specialized registry designed to transparently track the provenance, origin, and licensing rights of complex datasets utilized in machine learning and artificial intelligence models.
The trajectory of Trace heavily influenced the scaling considerations that led to the current migration plan. In the approximately four months following its launch, Trace experienced explosive growth, expanding rapidly to record more than 270 million registrations. Representatives for the project noted that managing this immense volume of data on an independent blockchain dedicated to a singular use case was no longer economically or technically practical. As the protocol scaled to meet the massive data demands of the modern AI industry, the overhead of running a bespoke chain threatened to impede further expansion, prompting the search for a high-throughput, highly scalable underlying network.
Despite the impending migration, the DATA Foundation emphasized that the existing DATA Network chain will remain fully operational until the upgrade process is completely finalized. Project leadership has committed to publishing a comprehensive timeline and a detailed token holder transition plan well in advance of the actual migration event to ensure clarity and stability for the community.
When questioned about the financial dynamics of the partnership and the extent to which the funding influenced the transition, the DATA Foundation representative clarified that the $30 million investment from the Sui Foundation was negotiated as a separate, distinct component of the overarching partnership rather than a direct transactional incentive for the chain shutdown. The capital injection is instead expected to fuel the continued development and scaling of the DATA Foundation’s AI training data tools within their new operational home.
The DATA Network will continue to process transactions and maintain its current operational state on its native chain until the technical groundwork for the upgrade is complete. Both the DATA Foundation and the Sui Foundation reiterated that all necessary documentation, timelines, and transition protocols for existing token holders and network participants will be released publicly prior to the execution of the network migration.
