Data Network data

Story Protocol has rebranded as The DATA Foundation, with Story Network becoming DATA Network and the former $IP gas token becoming $DATA. The project is now positioned as a purpose-built Layer 1 for data provenance, confidentiality, ownership, licensing and monetization, especially for AI training data. Official docs describe DATA as combining EVM compatibility with a CometBFT/Cosmos-SDK consensus layer and execution optimizations for complex data structures.

The network's three product layers are Trace (provenance), Confidential Data Rails (CDR; confidentiality) and IP & Licensing (rights). Trace records content hashes, contributor consent, KYC signals, license terms and payment/lifecycle metadata as verifiable receipts while keeping source files private. CDR uses threshold encryption and validator-operated trusted execution environments to gate decryption through on-chain conditions.

Data can be an image, song, dataset, RWA or AI-training corpus. Apps such as Kled and Oto source opt-in human contributions; Poseidon processes and labels raw data into model-ready datasets. The official homepage reports live protocol metrics (which change over time), including more than 191 million receipts and over 482,000 contributors at the time fetched.

AI data supply is increasingly constrained by provenance, consent, copyright and quality issues. Creators lose control and credit when their work is uploaded, while labs and regulators lack portable proof of where data came from, what terms applied and whether contributors were paid. Conventional public ledgers also cannot publish sensitive source files safely.

The network addresses this by combining public, auditable receipts with confidential payloads and programmable rights. Trace lets a lab audit a dataset without exposing the underlying files; IP/licensing terms define authorized use; and CDR can keep data encrypted until a user satisfies an on-chain condition. This targets the gap between open verification and private data exchange rather than simply offering another data-availability chain.

DATA Network is a purpose-built, 100% EVM-compatible Layer 1 with a CometBFT-based consensus layer, fast finality and low-cost transactions. Its execution layer is optimized for traversing complex IP/data graphs. Chain ID is 1514, the native gas currency is DATA, and the official RPC is mainnet.datarpc.io.

Trace registers a verifiable receipt containing hashes and metadata such as consent, versioned license terms, payment and compliance information. The ledger provides a public audit trail that can be checked across a whole dataset, while the actual contribution may remain confidential. Apps supply opt-in records; processing and marketplace layers connect contributors to AI buyers.

CDR is an application layer for threshold-encrypted data. A committee of validators runs attested TEE kernels; distributed key generation ensures no one validator has the full decryption key. Uploaders encrypt data locally, store encrypted files in an availability backend when appropriate, and put an encrypted key plus access conditions in a vault. When a reader satisfies the on-chain condition, enough validators produce partial decryptions for client-side reconstruction.

Rights are represented through IP Assets and programmable license terms. Licensing, royalty, dispute, grouping and metadata modules can be composed around an IP Account; CDR can gate reads on possession of valid license tokens. Developers can integrate through REST Trace APIs, the Protocol/TypeScript/Python SDKs or the CDR SDK (the docs currently identify Aeneid release @piplabs/cdr-sdk v0.2.1 as a testnet-oriented release).