In The OpenAI Incident: When Agents Can Edit Evidence, published this month, we made the case that permanent, immutable records are the layer every other AI safeguard depends on. That argument is not difficult to make anymore. Agents now act with real autonomy, incidents get investigated long after the fact, and regulators are writing record-keeping obligations into law. The harder question is whether the teams who need that infrastructure can adopt it without rearranging how they already work.
Most of our September worked toward answering that second question. Enabling payment for storage in a currency teams already hold, returning unused credits without anyone having to file a claim, and meeting developers inside an SDK they already use. Each one removes a step between deciding to store something permanently and actually doing it. Here is where things stand heading into October.
The network ran normally throughout September. Block production, storage, and domain operations were stable, with no incidents to report, and no action was required from farmers, operators, or nominators.
Pay with USDC
Work on Pay with USDC, the feature that lets teams buy Auto Drive storage credits in USDC, continued through September. End-to-end testing is complete on Sepolia, an Ethereum test network, and the feature is now in its final stages of internal testing as we move from Sepolia to Ethereum. We are preparing for a public launch.
Storage Credit Refunds
Storage credits purchased on Auto Drive are valid for three months. Any credits left unused when that window closes are refunded in AI3, automatically, to the wallet address used for the purchase. All unused expired credits have now been refunded, and there is nothing for anyone to claim. Worth stating plainly, since the two are easy to confuse: the credits expire, the data does not. Anything already stored stays permanent.
Partner Integrations
XYO added Auto Drive as a supported Data Lake in the XYO SDK this month. XYO is one of the largest Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN), with more than 10 million nodes validating real-world data, and its Layer One chain records a compact reference to each piece of data while the data itself lives in a Data Lake. That design puts real weight on where the data is kept. Developers can now point that storage at Auto Drive using the SDK modules they already work with. Full details are in XYO Adds Auto Drive as a Supported Data Lake in the XYO SDK.
Guardians of Growth Season 2 Underway
Season 2 of the Subspace Foundation’s staking program began on September 9 and ran its first full month. Details on the program and how to take part are in Guardians of Growth Season 2 Is Underway.
Grants Program Relaunch
The Subspace Foundation’s grants program is close to relaunching. We look forward to sharing details in October.
A Note on Community Contributions
Contributions across our repositories increased noticeably over the past month, and we appreciate the effort and interest behind that. The network benefits most from pull requests that fix existing issues, introduce meaningful features, or address bugs, whether already known or newly identified. If you are considering contributing, please make sure your pull request addresses at least one of those areas.
Staking: 47,325,508 AI3 (+340,066 from August)
Auto Drive Files Uploaded: 825 (September) / 136,058 (All time)
Auto Drive Downloads: 278 (September) / 19,150 (All time)
Auto Drive Users: 746
Total Announced Partnerships: 66
Announced Auto Drive Integrations: 12
Total Grant Applications: 110 (+5 from August)
In October, Pay with USDC moves toward public launch, Guardians of Growth Season 2 continues, and work carries on across the integrations now in progress.
The most helpful thing you can do is put Auto Drive to work. It is free to start at ai3.storage, with 20 MB of uploads and 5 GB of downloads each month. If you are building something where records need to outlast the system that produced them, that is the fastest way to find out whether this fits.
We would also appreciate support through referrals for integrations. If you know a project wrestling with expiring links, pinning costs, or an audit trail nobody can verify, send them our way. Teams needing larger allocations can apply through the Subspace Foundation Grants Program.
