#vanar $VANRY
Vana is an EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain designed to help individuals turn their personal data into a financial asset by aggregating private datasets for AI model training. Founded in 2018 at MIT by Anna Kazlauskas and Arthur Abal, the project tackles one of the most pressing questions of the digital era: who truly benefits from the data people generate every day?
At the heart of the network are Data Liquidity Pools (DLPs), which allow users to contribute their data in a structured and secure way. Individuals can export their information from centralized platforms, store it in encrypted environments, and deposit it into DLPs managed by DataDAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations focused on data governance). Importantly, the data remains encrypted and privacy-preserving, yet can still be utilized for AI training and research through secure computation methods.
Vana emphasizes user ownership and control, ensuring contributors decide how their data is accessed and used. A proof-of-contribution mechanism validates submissions to maintain quality standards, while privacy technologies such as Trusted Execution Environments and zero-knowledge proofs safeguard sensitive information. When datasets are accessed, contributors are compensated with $VANA tokens, creating a direct economic link between data creation and value generation.
With a capped supply of 120 million tokens, $VANA supports validator staking, transaction fees, governance participation, DataDAO operations, and dataset access payments. Since launching its mainnet in December 2024, Vana has introduced innovations like the VRC-20 standard and onboarded millions of data points, signaling a broader shift from corporate data extraction toward user-driven data ownership and monetization.