The protocol came under the spotlight in February due to a token unlock delay. Its co-founder Sy Lee defended the decision saying its blockchain needed “more time” to build usage.
Patel said the launch includes a direct integration with Kled AI, an opt-in human data marketplace. According to the company, the integration registers 1.1 billion user-contributed records on the new network. As part of the corporate shift, Andrea Muttoni takes over as CEO of the DATA Foundation.
Growing legal scrutiny
AI firms face growing legal scrutiny and data exhaustion from scraping the public internet, Patel said. DATA Foundation plans to address this by launching Trace, a public audit and search platform that creates unalterable cryptographic receipts for individual data contributions. The receipts are designed to help AI developers verify the provenance, licensing and consent history of datasets before using them.
"Trace publishes the audit record, not the data," Patel told CoinDesk. "What's public is the receipt: content hash, consent terms, licensing, payment proof and timestamps. There's nothing to scrape on Trace because the asset itself is not stored there."
Patel added that the underlying data remains inside the marketplace and requires a licensed transaction to access.
The network also incorporates Poseidon, an AI data processing project that cleans and scores human data. Poseidon runs a contributor app called Numo, which pays users stablecoins in real time for submitting authenticated data.
