The DATA Foundation (formerly Story Protocol) is a Layer 1 blockchain and decentralized data infrastructure protocol focused on powering the AI data economy. ^[5]

Originally launched to support the tokenization and programmable licensing of intellectual property (IP), the project rebranded in June 2026, shifting its primary focus toward verifiable, licensed AI training data.

The network enables organizations to register, license, audit, and monetize datasets on-chain while providing transparent provenance, compliance records, and payment infrastructure for contributors. Its native token, IP, was rebranded to DATA as part of the transition. ^[5]

History & Overview

Originally founded in 2022, The Data Foundation (formerly, Story Protocol) is headed by Andrea Muttoni ^[9] with an aim to address challenges in intellectual property (IP) management and monetization by utilizing blockchain technology. By incorporating attribution, usage terms, and royalty agreements on-chain, Data Foundation seeks to create a decentralized framework that supports creators in protecting their work, enabling collaboration, and facilitating revenue generation.

The platform includes the Story Network, a layer 1 blockchain designed for IP data structures; the Proof-of-Creativity Protocol, which supports IP registration and programmable metadata; and the Programmable IP License, linking blockchain-based IP management with legal frameworks. Story aims to modernize IP systems to align with the demands of a digital and AI-driven landscape. ^{[1] [2]}​

Rebrand to The DATA Foundation (2026)

In June 2026, Story Protocol announced a major strategic rebrand, renaming itself The DATA Foundation, its blockchain to DATA Network, and its native token from IP to DATA. ^[6]

The project said the transition reflected a shift in focus from becoming a general-purpose intellectual property (IP) protocol to building infrastructure for the rapidly growing AI training data market. ^[6]

According to the Foundation, the decision followed lessons learned from its initial efforts to support programmable licensing for entertainment, gaming, creator tools, and digital intellectual property. While projects such as Magma and Aria demonstrated successful adoption, the team concluded that many traditional IP owners preferred retaining centralized control over licensing, limiting broader adoption of permissionless IP infrastructure.

The Foundation identified AI training data as the strongest product-market fit after incubating Poseidon, an AI data processing network that provides licensed, verifiable datasets for AI developers. It stated that major AI companies increasingly require data that can demonstrate provenance, contributor consent, licensing rights, and quality, creating demand for blockchain-based audit and licensing infrastructure.

As part of the rebrand, DATA introduced Trace, an on-chain audit platform for verifying dataset provenance and licensing history, alongside Poseidon as its decentralized data processing layer.

The Foundation also announced partnerships with several AI data companies, including Kled, an opt-in human data marketplace that began registering more than 1.5 billion data assets on DATA Network.

The project stated that token holders would receive a 1:1 migration from IP to DATA, with no immediate action required, while existing network infrastructure, validators, and developer integrations would continue operating without interruption. ^{[5] [6]}

The Data Stack

Trace

Trace is the DATA Foundation’s data provenance and audit layer. Data providers send normalized metadata about the content they handle (content hashes, perceptual hashes, contributor consent, KYC signals, and capture/upload behavior) to the DATA Foundation, which assigns each record a global data_id, stores an append-only metadata history, and exposes public audit views over the whole dataset. ^[7]

Confidentiality (CDR)

Confidential Data Rails (CDR) is the DATA Foundation’s confidentiality layer. It lets users encrypt data so that no single party ever holds the complete decryption key: secrets are encrypted against the validator network’s DKG-generated public key and can only be recovered when a threshold number of validators collectively provide partial decryptions.

Access is enforced on-chain through smart-contract conditions, and the validator-side flows run inside story-kernel TEEs (Intel SGX enclaves).The result is data that stays confidential at rest while remaining programmatically unlockable to exactly the wallets, license holders, or custom conditions you define. ^[7]

Poseidon

Where Trace proves where data came from, Poseidon makes it usable. It is the processing layer of the protocol, and it answers the third question every lab asks: is the quality actually there? Raw human data is messy. It arrives unstructured, in inconsistent formats, uneven in quality, and mixed with content that was scraped, pirated, or generated by another model. Almost none of it is model-ready as collected.

Poseidon is the decentralized network that turns it into something a lab can train on. It cleans and normalizes raw contributions, structures unstructured input, validates authenticity and license, scores each record for quality and relevance, and packages the result into datasets buyers can actually use. Authenticity is the part labs worry about most, because once bad data is in a training pipeline they cannot get it back out. So that check happens up front, before anything reaches a buyer: Poseidon screens out content that is scraped, synthetic, or altered, so only real human data moves through. Trace proves where a record came from. Poseidon proves it is worth training on. ^[8]

Proof-of-Creativity Protocol

Story’s Proof-of-Creativity Protocol aims to enable users to register intellectual property (IP) as IP Assets (IPAs), represented as on-chain NFTs linked to ERC-6551 IP Accounts. The protocol facilitates licensing, royalty payments, and dispute resolution through various modules.

It provides permissionless licensing by offering ready-to-use contracts and automated license tokens, allowing creators to set terms for derivative works. The royalty module automates payment distribution based on predefined policies, aiming to ensure reliable and transparent management of IP. Story seeks to decentralize and streamline IP management through programmable solutions. ^[7]

Programmable IP License

Story aims to integrate intellectual property (IP) with blockchain technology through the Programmable IP License (PIL). The PIL provides a legal framework that connects real-world IP to on-chain tokenization, allowing IP owners to define and enforce licensing, commercialization, and remixing terms through Story’s smart contracts.

The PIL offers standard configurations, such as Non-Commercial Social Remixing, Commercial Use, and Commercial Remix, and allows developers to create custom terms using Story’s SDK. ^[6]​^[7]

Funding

Story Protocol secured over $54 million in funding in May and September 2023, with a16z crypto, part of Andreessen Horowitz, leading the round, alongside investors such as Endeavor, Polychain Capital, Hashed, Paris Hilton’s 11:11 Media, and Samsung Next. The funding aims to support the development of its system for extending intellectual property through online collaboration. ^[3]​

In August 2024, Story raised a further $80 million in Series B. ^[4]