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Palo Alto, California, July 24th, 2026, Chainwire
The milestone comes alongside a growing onchain revenue model for real-world AI data, as Upbit runs a four-day $DATA trading competition for eligible users
The DATA Network (“Network”) has surpassed 100 million data registrations onchain, reaching the milestone alongside a revenue model driven by real, onchain network usage. Coinciding with the milestone, Upbit, one of Korea’s largest digital asset exchanges, is running a four-day trading competition for $DATA, which has traded on the exchange since July 8.
Upbit is running a four-day event from July 24th – July 27th on its official event page. Over the four days, participants can take part in a quiz explaining what $DATA is (available on days one and four), deposit $DATA onto Upbit, and complete trading missions to climb a leaderboard for top-trader rewards.
The trading event is available exclusively on Upbit. It is available only in eligible jurisdictions and is not available to US persons or to residents of OFAC-restricted jurisdictions. Full rules and eligibility are published on Upbit’s official channels.
Users can join the 4-Day DATA Challenge here
A Network Built for Real-World AI Data
When the organization rebranded from Story to The DATA Foundation, it focused the entire DATA Network on a single purpose: sourcing, proving, and processing real-world data for the AI labs that need it. The priority has been to build things that are useful and that generate revenue for the long-term health of the Network.
The Network launched our flagship product, Trace, an audit layer that gives AI labs the legal receipts they need to trust the data they train on. They also onboarded Kled onto the Network as an anchor data contributor.
AI has run out of usable public internet to train on. The next generation of models depends on real-world data that mostly lives with people rather than on the open web, and that data has never had a clean way to be licensed, paid for, or proven. Independent analysts value the market for licensed AI training data in the billions of dollars today, and it is expected to continue on a path of exponential growth in the next decade. The Network exists to build the rails for that market, and 100 million registrations is early evidence it can be built.
DATA’s Revenue Model
Network activity now generates daily onchain revenue. Chain fees run in the thousands of dollars daily, up more than 200x from levels a few weeks ago, which has moved the Network into the top 20 by chain fees.
Every registration is a permanent onchain record through Trace: proof of what the data is, who contributed it, whether they were paid, and on what terms. Creating that record requires a fee paid in $DATA. The provenance that AI labs are willing to pay for is the same thing that generates network revenue, because it is the same event. As registrations scale into the millions per day, revenue scales with them, which is why it has climbed alongside registrations rather than in place of them.
New registrations are running at roughly three to five million per day and Kled alone is still working through a backlog of over one billion files, with over 900 million left to register at more than three million per day. Anyone can follow the Network’s activity on public dashboards, including DefiLlama and our Blockscout explorer.
“Registration count is the KPI we watch most closely, because it is the most direct measure of the Network being used for its actual purpose”, said Andrea Muttoni, CEO of The DATA Foundation.“ What exists today is the early part of a curve we expect to compound. The pipeline of contributed data is large and growing, the apps driving it are still ramping, and each new registration adds to a base of licensable, rights-cleared data that AI labs increasingly need and cannot get from the open web.”
About the DATA Foundation
The DATA Foundation supports the DATA Network, an infrastructure network for sourcing, proving, and processing real-world data for AI, providing onchain provenance, licensing, and payment rails so human-contributed data can be trusted and used by AI labs.
Disclaimer: The Upbit trading event is operated by Upbit and limited to eligible jurisdictions; it is not available to US persons or OFAC-restricted jurisdictions. Nothing in this release is financial advice or an offer, solicitation, or recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any digital asset.
Contact
Henri Viès
henri.vies@piplabs.xyz
This article is not intended as financial advice. Educational purposes only.
