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DATA Network to migrate to Sui, retire own chain
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- DeepHorus
DATA Network, formerly known as Story, will retire its independent blockchain and migrate its AI training data protocol to Sui, the project said Monday. The move is backed by a $30 million investment from Sui Foundation. As part of the migration, DATA Network’s Trace registry, launched in June, will join the Sui ecosystem. Walrus, a decentralized storage platform in the Sui ecosystem, will become the default storage layer for applications operated by DATA Foundation and its partners.
The decision follows Story Foundation’s rebrand to DATA Foundation in June, when the project pivoted from intellectual property licensing to building a "full stack for AI training data." It also launched Trace to track the origin and licensing rights of training data. As Trace grew to more than 270 million registrations in about four months, running an independent blockchain for a single use case no longer made sense, a DATA Foundation spokesperson said. The spokesperson told Cointelegraph that maintaining a dedicated chain 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 $30 million investment from Sui Foundation was a separate part of the partnership, the representative added, rather than a direct factor in the migration decision. DATA Network will continue to operate until the upgrade is complete. A detailed timeline and holder transition plan will be published prior to the upgrade, the partners said.
The migration highlights a broader trend among app-specific blockchains, which often struggle with the expense of securing a dedicated network for one use case. By moving to Sui, DATA Network aims to offload storage and access control to existing ecosystem tools. Walrus is positioned to handle decentralized storage, while Seal provides access control capabilities. The shift could reduce operational overhead and allow DATA Foundation to focus on its AI training data protocol.
The $30 million backing from Sui Foundation signals confidence in the partnership, though the spokesperson stressed it was separate from the migration rationale. DATA Foundation’s Trace registry has already achieved significant scale, with over 270 million registrations since June. That growth made the case for retiring an independent chain more compelling. The migration also reflects consolidation within the blockchain industry, where general-purpose networks increasingly absorb specialized applications.
DATA Network’s existing chain will remain live until the upgrade is finalized. The partners have not announced an exact migration date. They said a detailed timeline and holder transition plan would be released before the upgrade. The transition could position DATA’s AI data protocol within Sui’s expanding ecosystem, potentially benefiting both projects as demand for verifiable AI training data grows.
