DATA Network retires its chain for Sui after $30M investment

DATA Network is abandoning its independent blockchain and moving its AI training data protocol to Sui, backed by a $30 million investment from the Sui Foundation. The announcement, reported by Cointelegraph, makes the migration the project’s main infrastructure decision: DATA will consolidate its operations onto one external chain rather than continue paying to operate its own.

The move covers more than the base network. DATA Network’s Trace registry, launched in June, will join the Sui ecosystem, while Walrus, a decentralized storage platform in that ecosystem, will become the default storage layer for applications operated by DATA Foundation.

For DATA holders, the stated token mechanism is a one-to-one move of the existing DATA token to Sui. The Sui Foundation will also become DATA Network’s largest institutional holder, according to The Block’s report. The fact sheet does not provide a detailed upgrade schedule or explain how existing holders will complete the transition, so the operational deadline remains undisclosed.

The change follows a rapid expansion of Trace. Cointelegraph reported more than 270 million registrations in roughly four months after the June launch. That works out to an average of at least 67.5 million registrations per month: 270 million divided by four. The Block separately reported that the registry recorded more than 250 million contributions and currently processes more than 3 million receipts per day on average. Those figures use different categories, so they should not be treated as a single activity total.

DATA Foundation, formerly Story Foundation, rebranded in June as the project shifted from intellectual property licensing toward what it described as a “full stack for AI training data.” Trace tracks the origin and licensing rights of training data.

The foundation’s stated reason for moving is infrastructure reuse. “Building storage and access control at that scale ourselves would have meant rebuilding what Sui already has in Walrus and Seal,” a DATA Foundation spokesperson said, as quoted by Cointelegraph.

Sui Foundation’s Adeniyi Abiodun, co-Founder and chief product officer at Mysten Labs, framed the deal around data access and rights. “The AI industry has reached the point where the open internet has been read, and the next frontier is defined by access to datasets with the consent and provenance that regulators require.”

Abiodun added that “The migration of DATA Network and Trace to our stack now brings massive volumes of high-quality, rights-cleared data that is already serving the world’s frontier AI labs.”

The announcement establishes the destination and investment, but not the migration date, holder procedures or the wider terms of the partnership.