DATA Foundation (ex-Story Protocol) keeps insider tokens locked past deadline with no new unlock date

Tokens held by $DATA Foundation's team and lead investors did not begin unlocking on Aug. 13, despite that date appearing in the project's earlier public supply schedule.

The organization, formerly called Story Foundation, said on June 25 that its team and lead investors had extended their token lockups by 18 months. Read alongside the previous schedule, the announcement means the tokens held by that named cohort remained locked on Thursday instead of starting their scheduled release.

The June post did not say when the 18-month period begins or provide a replacement date. It also did not identify affected wallets, quantify the tokens covered or disclose how the additional extension is enforced. Adding 18 months to the superseded Aug. 13 date would produce February 2028, but the Foundation has not confirmed that calculation as the new unlock schedule.

The February update had already postponed the initial unlock and every later vesting release for previously locked team, investor and insider tokens by six months. It moved the opening date from Feb. 13 to Aug. 13, 2026, while leaving total supply, allocations, vesting terms and legal ownership unchanged.

For that February change, the Foundation reported introducing a neutral automated smart-contract mechanism to enforce the revised lockup framework. It also said affected holders remained legally bound by their agreements even if technical authorization was incomplete. The public material provides no contract address, code, transaction evidence or wallet list, and it does not establish whether the June extension used the same mechanism.

Allocation is not one-day liquidity

Story's original token distribution assigned 21.6% of the 1 billion-token initial supply to Early Backers and 20% to Core Contributors. Both categories were structured to unlock over 48 months.

The combined 41.6% describes allocation buckets, not an amount due to become liquid in one day. The June extension is also more limited than those categories: it names the team and lead investors without saying that every Early Backer, Core Contributor or other insider is included.

The June announcement does not mention any change to community allocations, staking rewards or general emissions on Aug. 13. That omission does not establish whether a separate supply change occurred outside the team and lead-investor extension.

The same update renamed Story Foundation as $DATA Foundation, Story Network as $DATA Network and the former $IP token as $DATA. The Foundation said the change was one-to-one and required no action from holders on the announcement date.

Aug. 13 has therefore passed as an unlock date for the team and lead-investor tokens covered by the extension. Their next release date, affected wallets and token quantity remain undisclosed.