In the context of the rapid development of AI technology, data has become the "oil" of the new era. How to break through data barriers and allow users to truly benefit from their own data has become a core issue that the industry urgently needs to address.

Recently, PANews invited the Vana team for an in-depth dialogue. As a decentralized data liquidity network, Vana is committed to reconstructing the data value chain through its innovative DataDAO mechanism. Notably, the project has received $25 million in investment support from top institutions including Coinbase Ventures, Paradigm, and Polychain. With the mainnet about to launch, the issuance of the VANA token will bring revolutionary changes to the entire ecosystem.

Guest of this issue:

Art Abal: Managing Director at Vana Foundation

Victoria: Head of APAC

PANews: Please briefly introduce yourself.

Victoria:

Hello everyone, I am Victoria, currently mainly responsible for market promotion, ecosystem expansion, and business development in the Asia-Pacific region. My previous experience working at an exchange has given me a deep understanding of the Chinese community and the ecosystem in the Asia-Pacific market.

Art:

Hello everyone, I am a co-founder of VANA. I entered the Web3 space because I saw problems with how data was used in Web2, and I firmly believe that blockchain technology can solve these issues. Especially in the AI era, we should have our own data sovereignty.

Part One: Project Vision and Market Pain Points

PANews: What kind of data dilemmas is the AI industry currently facing? Why do we say we are encountering a "data wall"? What problems exist in traditional data collection models?

Art:

Data is the foundation of AI, and the quality of data directly determines the performance of AI models. The current problem is that all generative AI models are using public data, which has been heavily scraped and utilized. This creates a "data wall": if we want to develop better AI models, relying solely on existing public data is not enough; we must obtain more high-quality data. This is why private data in "walled gardens" like social media platforms has become so valuable.

I have personally experienced this process while working at related companies. For example, when a social media company wants to purchase news data from a competitor, they cannot trade directly and must go through third-party data brokers. These brokers collect data from users without informing them of the specific purposes, then resell it at a high price, keeping most of the profits for themselves. This leads to three main issues:

• Users have no idea how their data is being used.

• The data sold often comes from users who are forced to sell, making the samples unrepresentative.

• Ultimately, this results in biased, low-quality datasets that affect the quality of AI models.

PANews: How does Vana protect user data privacy while accelerating AI innovation?

Art:

First of all, in the Web2 era, people often believed their data was safe and that platforms would use it responsibly. However, in reality, due to centralized management, data is often misused, sold without consent, or leaked.

VANA provides significant improvements in the following ways:

• We enable users to self-host their data, ensuring that everyone has complete control over their data rather than relying on centralized platforms.

• Every data transaction on the VANA platform is tracked and permitted through smart contracts, so users always know who is accessing their data and for what purpose.

• Users can finely authorize data usage through encrypted wallets, ensuring that data is only used for approved purposes.

• Through the DataDAO mechanism, users can safely aggregate data to unlock collective value while maintaining individual ownership and privacy.

• We use proof-of-contribution technology to verify data value while keeping data encrypted, ensuring privacy security.

• This system creates a trustless environment where users can confidently aggregate data, allowing us to unlock private data for collective use and AI model training.

In short, by protecting user privacy on VANA, we are actually accelerating AI innovation because it allows data to be used in ways that are currently not possible.

Part Two: Technological Innovation and DataDAO Ecosystem

PANews: How is Vana's technical architecture designed?

Art:

I recommend checking the official detailed technical documentation. Here, I will provide a high-level overview of VANA's three-layer core architecture:

1. Data Liquidity Layer

• This is the layer where data enters the system and undergoes decentralized verification.

• Users can contribute data to the DataDAO for centralized management while maintaining complete self-hosting and ownership of their data.

• Data contributors and custodians will receive corresponding governance rights and rewards, replacing the traditional role of data intermediaries.

2. Data Application Layer

• This allows users to freely transfer data both within and outside the ecosystem.

• Through private keys, users can manage permissions finely, fully controlling how and where their data is used.

• It provides the infrastructure for distributed training of foundational models and AI application development.

3. VANA Layer 1 Blockchain

• Serving as the registry for all data transactions, ensuring data security and traceability.

• Every data interaction (contribution, access, or monetization) is immutably recorded on-chain.

• It provides a trustless decentralized infrastructure to support the expansion of the DataDAO ecosystem.

These three layers together build a complete decentralized data system, similar to the self-hosting principles in DeFi, but applied to the data domain.

PANews: What is DataDAO? How does DataDAO operate?

Art:

DataDAO is essentially a special community organization. Imagine a group of people coming together around a specific dataset or theme, all believing that this data is important for advancing AI development.

When users contribute their data to the DataDAO, they receive a reward in the form of governance tokens. This token is special because it represents the user's stake in the DAO, allowing them to participate in decisions about how this data should be used. This process is quite interesting as it transforms data that cannot be freely traded into a tradable form through tokens.

The operation of DataDAO is similar to other DAOs, where members participate autonomously. However, the biggest difference is that the core asset of DataDAO is the dataset. In today's AI-driven world, the value of high-quality data is extremely high.

Governance not only focuses on community activities but is more importantly about deciding how to use the aggregated data. Some DataDAOs even further utilize this data to train AI models or drive innovation.

PANews: There are currently over 300 DataDAOs in the ecosystem; can you share some typical cases?

Art:

Let me correct the data first. In fact, I just checked the latest data, and we have received applications from 599 DataDAOs, which far exceeds the previously mentioned 300, and the number is still growing.

Some specific successful cases include:

Medical Data Field

• Asterisk DataDAO: This is a very meaningful project focused on women's health data. They found that women are twice as likely to experience adverse drug reactions compared to men, which is directly related to the lack of targeted medical data. Through this DAO, we hope to collect more women's health data to improve this situation.

Web2 Platform Data Recovery Projects

• Resume DAO: Specializes in LinkedIn data.

• Scroll DAO: Responsible for Instagram data.

• Volara DAO: Manages the collection of Twitter data.

Financial Transaction Data

• Finquarium and Datapig: These two projects mainly aggregate user trading activity data to help build better trading agents and models.

If you want to know more details, feel free to visit the official website for information on active DataDAOs, including how to create your own DataDAO. These cases demonstrate how DataDAOs help communities solve critical data issues, allowing users to regain data sovereignty while driving AI application innovation.

Part Three: Token Economics and Ecosystem Governance

PANews: What role does the VANA token play in the ecosystem?

Art:

As the native token of the ecosystem, VANA has four main uses:

1. Data Transactions

• Used for all data-related transactions within the ecosystem.

• Includes data validation, transmission, and AI functionality operations.

2. DataDAO Staking

• Users can stake VANA tokens to support the DataDAOs they believe in.

• Staking helps maintain data security.

• Rewards are earned based on the quality and quantity of data from the DataDAO.

3. Ecosystem Governance

• Participate in voting decisions, such as determining the number of DataDAOs that receive rewards.

• Participate in establishing data quality assessment standards.

4. Data Access Payments

• Serves as the payment currency for purchasing and accessing data.

• It is the native token for accessing data within the ecosystem.

PANews: How many tokens does VANA plan to airdrop to users? Which users are eligible for the airdrop?

Art:

Due to regulatory restrictions, we cannot comment specifically on the airdrop plan or the number of tokens to be distributed at this time. However, I can share that:

• Early contributors to the project and active supporters of the community will be recognized.

• The greatest contributions to the community include participation in DataDAOs, contributing data, etc.

• I recommend that everyone’s best positioning right now is to actively participate in DataDAO activities.

PANews: For ordinary users who want to participate in the VANA ecosystem, what are the ways to get involved?

Art:

First, it is important to emphasize that anyone who has data can participate in the VANA ecosystem. Since each of us generates and uses data in our daily lives, it can be said that everyone can get involved.

Let me specifically introduce three main ways to participate:

1. Contribute Data

• Visit datahub.vana.org for pre-registration.

• Browse existing Data DAO projects on the Data Hub.

• Choose datasets of interest to participate in, such as data from the Twitter domain.

• Participate in these projects by sharing data.

2. Token Staking

• After the VANA token is launched, you can stake tokens to support projects you like.

• By staking, you not only support DAO development but also earn corresponding staking rewards.

• Choose projects you resonate with to support.

3. Developer Participation

• You can create your own Data DAO or data applications.

• Visit docs.vana.org for detailed development guidelines.

• Many developers from the Chinese community have already created impressive projects.

In summary, whether you are an ordinary user or a developer, you can find a way to participate that suits you. It is recommended to pay attention to future announcements for more specific details.

Part Four: Business Model and Future Development

PANews: What are the main sources of income for VANA? How is the sustainability of the business model achieved?

Art:

The VANA team has over 20 years of experience in the data field, which is a significant advantage for us. The main sources of income come from two aspects:

Data Transactions

• Including data validation, sales, and access.

• For example, our TensorSource project helps DataDAOs sell data to Web2 buyers.

• In just a few months, it generated $10.5 million in data demand.

Data Application Development

• DataDAOs can create community-owned AI models and agents using aggregated data.

• These models can be tokenized and generate ongoing revenue.

• At the same time, community ownership is maintained.

The sustainability of the business model is built on:

• Creating the world's largest data lake.

• Forming a virtuous cycle through transactions, applications, and innovation.

• As the ecosystem expands, more applications will choose to build on VANA.

• All transactions use VANA tokens, ensuring ongoing demand.

PANews: What expectations does VANA have for the transformation of the data market in the next 3-5 years?

Art:

We hope to fundamentally change the data market to make it fairer for both data providers and innovators.

The current issues are:

• User data is obtained without compensation for AI training.

• AI usage decisions are made by the highest bidder or large platforms.

• This leads many people to be skeptical of AI because they feel it is imposed on them rather than serving them.

VANA's vision is:

• To allow users to truly own their data.

• To enable individuals to participate in shaping the development of AI technology.

• To establish a new economic system based on data.

• Data becomes the key to empowering individuals rather than platforms.

• Users can fully control their data, AI agents, and related technologies.

We believe that the direction of AI development should be collectively decided by the community, not by the highest bidder. This is not only about fixing market issues but also ensuring that everyone has a voice in the future of AI.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。