Everything You Need to Know About the Upcoming AI+DID Project Vana Across the Network

[TL；DR]:

The Vana project is committed to enabling users to regain ownership and control over data by creating digital characters and supporting privacy controls, ensuring that only users and their authorized accounts can access it.

The Vana network has built two main layers: the data mobility layer and the data portability layer, ensuring ownership, security, and availability of data.

The total supply of VANA is 120 million tokens as native tokens, which have the functions of staking to maintain network security, participating in governance decisions, paying network fees, and accessing transaction data.

Introduction

With the rapid upgrade of AI+Crypto applications represented by AI agents in recent times, the value of data as an important resource in the digital age is gradually being recognized. However, in the current Web2 and Web3 ecos, user data is collected by large platforms for free and used for commercialization, resulting in the inability to protect the interests of data creators.

In this context, the Vana project emerged, committed to breaking the existing data economy model, allowing users to regain ownership and control of their own data, and training AI models through data to obtain direct benefits, creating a new narrative point and innovation space for AI integration.

We have previously written multiple articles to explore the various innovative protocols and technologies in the AI field since this bull market. The Vana (VANA) token will be launched on major exchanges, including Gate.io today. This article aims to popularize the basic situation and development prospects of the AI+DD protocol.

Basic Overview of the Protocol

Vana originated from a research project at MIT in 2018 that aimed to enable users to have their own data and use the AI models they created.

According to the official website, Vana is an AI identity generation application that allows users to create a digital character and supports its use in different applications. At the same time, the digital character has privacy and can only be controlled by the created user and their authorized account. Developers can use this data to train personalized AI models and promote the democratization of data in the Web3 era.

Source: vana.org

It is worth mentioning that the Vana network is fully open source and operates decentralized without the need for licenses. The Open Data Foundation and other contributing organizations are working together to promote the large-scale adoption of the Vana protocol.

Team and Financing

Vana was co-founded by two Filipino entrepreneurs, Anna Kazlauskas and Art Abal. Anna has a computer science and economics background, was involved in Ethereum mining in the early days, and conducted data research at international financial institutions. She has served as a policy advisor to the Prime Minister of Timor Leste and designed a legal that ensures equality for all.

Art is a Master of Public Policy from Harvard University and has led innovative data collection methods at AI training data provider Appen. The two of them collaborated on the TOCA project, providing low-income individuals in the Philippines the opportunity to earn rewards by contributing data, laying the foundation for Vana’s development.

According to Rootdata data, Vana has raised $25 million in two rounds of financing. The seed round was led by Polychain with $2 million in investment, the strategy round was led by Coinbase Ventures with $5 million in investment, and the A round was led by Paradigm with $18 million in investment. The investment portfolio includes Coinbase Ventures, Casey Caruso, Packy McCormick, and former partners of Paradigm also participated in the investment.

Source: Rootdata

Technical Architecture and Principles

The Vana network consists of two main layers to ensure ownership, security, and availability of data: the Data Liquidity Layer and the Data Portability Layer.

Source: docs.vana.org

Data Liquidity Layer
The data liquidity layer is the foundational layer of the Vana network, which enables data to be viewed as a liquid asset. This layer allows data to be securely verified, tokenized, and traded through decentralized mechanisms.

The data liquidity layer introduces decentralized autonomous organizations (DataDAOs) that aggregate similar data types from various contributors to create a decentralized, trustless data marketplace.

Data Portability Layer
The data portability layer is Vana’s application layer, which enables decentralized datasets to be accessed, shared, and used across various platforms and applications. This layer ensures the interoperability of user-owned data across different services and s while maintaining data privacy and security.

Through these two main layers, the Vana network has built a complete eco from data validation, tokenization, trading to cross platform applications, aiming to achieve users’ complete control over their data and maximize its value.

Innovation Highlights

Vana’s innovative highlights are mainly reflected in the following aspects:

Data Sovereignty and Personal Data Dividends
Vana democratized data by allowing users to own and control their data. Users can not only earn economic returns by contributing data, but also participate in the training process of AI models and enjoy the direct benefits of data.

Privacy Protection and Programmable Access Rights
Vana solved the problem of data duplication by combining private data hosting with public ownership records. The data itself is stored in crypto personal servers or trusted secure areas, while blockchain maintains global states such as data ownership records, access permissions, and verification proofs. This design not only protects the privacy of user data, but also enables programmable access to the data.

DLP Data Liquidity Pool
DLP is one of Vana’s core technological innovations, which allows users to stake their data usage rights to specific domain data pools and obtain tokens as equity certificates. When the AI training demand side applies the data pool, the cost will be automatically allocated proportionally to the voucher holders. This mechanism not only promotes the liquidity and value of data but also provides users with sustained economic returns.

TEE Trusted ution Environment
TEE technology provides Vana with powerful privacy protection capabilities. In the TEE environment, data can perform complex operations without exposure, ensuring data privacy while realizing the right to use the data. This’ usable but invisible ‘feature perfectly solves the privacy protection problem.

Business Data

Since the launch of the Developer Testing Network in June 2023, the Vana network has attracted a large number of users and developers to participate. Currently, Vana has over 1.3 million users, more than 300 data DAOs, and 1.7 million daily transaction volumes.

These data DAOs cover multiple fields, from social media to financial forecasting data, providing users diverse data contribution and revenue opportunities.

Token Economics

VANA is the native token of the Vana network, with a total supply of 120 million tokens and an initial circulation of 28.5%. It has the functions of staking to maintain network security, participating in governance decisions, paying network fees, and accessing transaction data.

Source: docs.vana.org

It is worth mentioning that VANA serves as the foundational token, while each DLP can also issue its own token to incentivize data contribution and governance.

In summary, VANA and various DLP tokens are used in multiple scenarios, such as data trading, governance voting, and network security, to ensure the stability and liquidity of the token’s value, while incentivizing users to participate in data contributions and network governance.

Future Prospects

With the continuous development of AI technology, the demand for high-quality data will become increasingly urgent. It can be seen that Vana will provide rich data sources for AI training by providing a data network owned and controlled by users. Its innovative technology architecture and business model provide users with opportunities for data sovereignty and privacy protection and provide developers with rich data sources and training platforms.

With the launch of the mainnet and the introduction of tokens, Vana will undoubtedly experience some hype. Finally, I would like to remind readers to monitor volatility risks and participate in investment or trading cautiously.