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Art Abal, Co-Founder of Vana, revealed that the company is facing two major fronts in the regulatory challenge, which include making universal data portability real, and establishing data as a legitimate, tradable asset class.
In an exclusive chat with 99Bitcoins.com, Abal discussed how regulations like GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act have been touted as giving users control over their data, but in practice, they’ve been too lenient on platforms.
Tech companies can legally delay giving you your data for up to 30 days, which makes the idea of data ownership meaningless.
Abal pointed out that the Vana team has been engaging with members of the European Parliament on GDPR reform to modernize how data access and portability work. “We’ve also seen encouraging signs through our collaboration with Project Liberty, which helped advocate for Utah’s Digital Choice Act, one of the first laws requiring platforms serving Utah residents to use neutral, interoperable architectures that support near-real-time data portability. It’s a strong step forward, showing that policymakers are beginning to see the importance of user-controlled, transferable data,” he said.
The next frontier is gaining regulatory recognition of data as a legitimate, tradable asset class. At present, data is treated as property of corporations, but the true value lies with individuals, the people generating it. In an AI-driven economy, data is capital.
He revealed that Vana is in early stage conversations with Hub71 and the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) to explore regulatory sandboxes that could test the concept of data as an asset class, specifically around valuation, disclosure, and trading frameworks.
In short, the biggest hurdle isn’t resistance; it’s recognition. As regulators begin to accept data as a legitimate, tradable asset class, we’ll unlock an entirely new category of markets.
The Tokenomics Of $VANA
“$VANA is not a narrative token. It’s the settlement layer for a new class of on-chain data assets. As more datasets go live and more buyers enter the market, every access transaction feeds demand for $VANA. The more data that moves, the tighter the supply. It’s real utility, hardwired for growth.”
“Vana’s tokenomics are designed to directly reflect real network activity and the value of the data being exchanged. The $VANA token powers all transactions across the ecosystem. It’s the gas that enables data validation, movement, and access. When a user uploads their data, they pay a small fee in $VANA to secure and permission it within their enclave. Once that data is aggregated, it can be governed through a DataDAO or Data Liquidity Pool (DLP), each issuing its own VRC-20 token. That token represents fractional ownership and governance rights over the specific dataset, the key building block of the Vana data economy.”
Because data value changes over time, what’s valuable this month might be obsolete three months later, the system is designed to stay fluid. Data collectives can rise or fall in value as their relevance shifts, ensuring that incentives always align with live market demand rather than static assumptions.
“When an enterprise or developer accesses a dataset, they pay a data access fee, typically in fiat. Behind the scenes, that payment is converted into the relevant VRC-20 token for the DataDAO and a protocol fee in $VANA. Twenty percent of all data access fees are used to buy and burn $VANA, creating a direct link between data demand and token scarcity. This means every dataset transaction contributes to network value, a simple but powerful deflationary mechanic tied to real usage rather than speculation.”
“Each dataset’s VRC-20 token is priced relative to $VANA on the DataDex, Vana’s native marketplace for data assets. This enables price discovery for data, something that has never existed before. Communities can list their tokens, traders can speculate on the value of emerging datasets, and data buyers can identify where the best information lives.”
“Importantly, this also creates natural competition and quality incentives. For instance, two Telegram DataDAOs are live today on the Vana network, each building its own message-based dataset. When data buyers approach the network seeking Telegram data, both DAOs submit samples and schema structures. The buyer then selects the one that best fits their requirements. The DAO with higher-quality, better-structured data wins the sale, and its token appreciates accordingly.”
The biggest problem with data today is that, as an individual, your data isn’t inherently valuable. Its real worth emerges when it’s aggregated, when it can generate insight, train an AI model, or reveal patterns across millions of people. Vana’s technology makes that possible while ensuring you stay in control.
Unique, next-generation AI models or applications that are only possible because they are trained on the user-owned, permissioned data
“One example is trend forecasting. This is an incredibly valuable application for industries like fashion, retail, and consumer goods, where over 30 percent of products are never sold simply because they fall out of trend. Through Vana, users can contribute data such as their shopping behavior, social media preferences, and even what they watch or listen to on platforms like TikTok, Netflix, or Spotify. Using this, AI models can detect emerging cultural and aesthetic shifts. We’ve worked with a Fortune 500 company to link people’s listening habits with their fashion preferences to build a model that predicts upcoming trends, reducing waste, improving supply chain accuracy, and creating real economic and environmental value.”
“Another example lies in longevity and wellness research. Every day, we collect vast amounts of health and behavioral data through devices like Oura Rings, Fitbits, and Apple Watches. Vana enables this user-held data to be pooled securely and ethically for scientific research. Through our partnership with Avanasi Labs, we’re helping researchers access real-world biometric data to study how lifestyle patterns influence lifespan and well-being, unlocking decentralized science powered by real human data, not siloed clinical datasets.”
“The third major frontier is robotics and physical AI. One of the greatest bottlenecks in robotics is access to large-scale, real-world motion data. Lab-produced datasets are expensive and often fail to capture the complexity of real human environments. Vana allows communities to collectively generate and share kinematic and teleoperation data that trains robots to understand and interact with the physical world more effectively. This community-driven approach is already accelerating the development of embodied AI.”
As AI continues to evolve, data availability, not compute, is becoming the defining constraint.
About Vana
Vana is a startup driving decentralized, user-owned data. Vana is an EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain network and a crypto project that allows individuals to own, control, and monetize their personal data for use in AI development and other applications.
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