What is Vana?
Explore developer documentation for Vana — the leading decentralized platform for building applications with user-owned data.
Vana is the first network for user-owned data. It transforms how data is owned, shared, and monetized. Vana L1 enables users to pool their data into DataDAOs while maintaining control and privacy.
Developers can leverage these decentralized datasets to build next-generation applications such as AI models and data-driven dApps.
The "Why"
The problem: In today’s data economy, tech giants profit from the data you generate, while you get nothing in return. Reddit, for example, makes $200 million selling user-generated content as AI training data. Worse, you have no say in how your data is used or who benefits from it.
The solution: Vana changes this by giving you ownership over your data. Through DataDAOs, you can contribute, tokenize, and share your data. You decide how it’s used and get rewarded for it. With Vana, data becomes an asset that empowers you—whether it’s used in AI development or other applications.
The "How"
See how Vana works for you:
Contribute Data: Users contribute data to DataDAOs. Contributions range from social media data to IoT and sensor data, all stored securely, encrypted, and off-chain.
Tokenization: Validated data is tokenized, allowing the secure use of data in different decentralized applications, especially for the development of AI models.
Earn and rule: Users gain governance rights across different DataDAOs, influencing decisions about data usage and earning a share of the profit when data is used.
Vana uses blockchain to ensure transparency, security and decentralization in the way data is owned and shared.
A quick example
Imagine you’ve been tracking your health data for years. You contribute that data to a Data Liquidity Pool on Vana. It’s tokenized, verified, and becomes a valuable asset in the hands of AI developers who use it to build life-saving medical models.
As these models grow and generate revenue, you earn a share of that — ultimately earning financial returns on the data you’ve been providing for free. Plus, you’re part of the decision-making process, helping to shape how this data is used in the future of healthcare.
The Benefits
Data ownership: Users maintain ownership of their data, with full control over how it is used across applications.
Tokenized data: Data is transformed into a verifiable and tradable asset for decentralized AI and data-driven applications.
Privacy and Security: Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) and Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) ensure the privacy and security of data contribution.
Decentralized governance: Participants influence ecosystem rules and data pool operations through on-chain voting.
Take control of your data
Vana is more than just a platform — it’s a movement to help you take back control of your data and become a meaningful player in the digital economy.
When you join Vana, you gain ownership, governance, and return on the data you generate every day.
