Sui Foundation commits $30 million as DATA Network retires its own chain for Sui

DATA Network is giving up its own blockchain. The project, previously known as Story Protocol, will be rebuilt to run as a native protocol on Sui, and its independent Layer 1 chain will be shut down.

The Sui Foundation is backing the move with a $30 million investment. For a project that launched as its own chain less than two years ago, that is a notable change of address.

What is actually changing

The migration was revealed on October 8, 2026, by Eman Abio, identified as a co-founder of Sui, at Sui ecosystem events. The core of the plan is simple: DATA stops maintaining separate infrastructure and moves its operations onto Sui.

DATA will also integrate with Walrus Protocol, a decentralized storage layer, to handle storage and data coordination.

That product focus is AI data. DATA now concentrates on services around data provenance, licensing and auditing. Its auditing tool, called Trace, is meant to help track where data came from and whether it can be used.

The numbers behind the network give some sense of scale. DATA has logged over 250 million on-chain data registrations through applications built on it, including Kled and Numo, as of October 2026.

Kled, the flagship integration, has separately recorded over 1.5 billion user-contributed data records. The network’s design registers provenance on-chain without exposing the underlying raw datasets.

From programmable IP to AI training data

DATA did not start life as an AI data company. It launched in February 2025 as an EVM-compatible Layer 1 chain, built to support programmable intellectual property and automated licensing.

Then the strategy shifted. On June 25, 2026, the project rebranded from Story Protocol to the DATA Foundation. Holders of the IP token were migrated to the new DATA token on a 1:1 basis.

The rebrand came with a pivot toward infrastructure for AI training data. According to the research findings, the change responded to rising demand from AI developers for datasets that are verifiable and gathered with consent.

What this means for Sui, Walrus and DATA

The $30 million commitment reflects a broader pattern in the industry. Chains increasingly compete not just for users but for entire applications, and foundation money is one of the main tools for winning those migrations.

If DATA’s registrations and datasets flow through Walrus for storage and coordination, the migration could drive more data activity and storage demand on that protocol.

Token holders will have practical questions. The June 25, 2026, swap from IP to DATA was handled on a 1:1 basis. How the DATA token functions once the independent chain is retired is a key detail to watch as the migration proceeds.

Developers building on DATA’s current chain face their own adjustment. An EVM-compatible environment is different from Sui, which uses its own programming model. Applications like Kled and Numo will need a clear path to keep running once the old chain goes dark.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.