Venice
- $VVV's primary holder utility is staking. By staking, holders receive access to Venice's AI inference, with free usage allocated proportionally to their share of the total $sVVV stake.
- $VVV stakers can also mint $DIEM — a token that provides $1/day of AI inference in perpetuity. This converts volatile, stake-based inference access into a predictable one. Minting $DIEM requires locking a specific amount of $sVVV, and unlocking that $sVVV requires burning the previously minted $DIEM.
- In addition, Venice uses a portion of inference payments to buy back and burn $VVV, creating indirect value accrual for all $VVV holders, regardless of staking.
Mechanism map
- Staking to access the inference
- Buyback and burn
Token functions
Staking to access the inference
Staking to access the inference is the core utility of $VVV. To activate it $VVV must be staked.
VVV stakers receive (a) a pro-rata share of Venice's free API inference capacity, so $VVV acts as a kind of discount token for the product (b) 80–100% of programmed VVV emissions.
These emissions serve a dual economic function: (1) a yield stream that can be interpreted as a form of cashflow to stakers; (2) an increase in the staker's relative share of total supply, expanding their future claim on free inference capacity versus non-stakers.
The $DIEM minting option is a subset of free inference access function, tokenizing the determined free amount of usage and allowing it to be used as an asset in DeFi.
Yield-Bearing Staking
The Yield-Bearing Staking Token sub-VCM is structured around staking and the depreciation-offsetting proportional allocation of a part of the total regular emissions to staked token holders. THe value is captured by additionally incentivising token staking by diminishing the loss incurred by price volatility whilst the tokens are locked.
This model allows stakers to either utilize their allocated API access or trade it.
Value drivers
Transferability Restriction
represents staking $VVV for activating its utility functions
Reflects the risk derived from staking VVV tokens in a staking contract to get a corresponding share of free API calls. The risk is derived in part from natural volatility and in part - from the consistent inflation rate that continuously depreciates staked tokens.
[7] = ƒ(staking_period, reward_rate, amount_staked, price_at_staking)
staking_period— is the length of period set up by the userreward_rate— is the amount of tokens per second awarded to all users for staking (i.e., the rate of emission)amount_staked— is the number of tokens staked up by the userprice_at_staking— is the price of the staked token position when staking them. It defines the staked value together with the staked amount
Value capture investment profile
$VVV token design Insights
$VVV fundamental value is a claim on (1) protocol inference capacity, through free inference access and $DIEM minting (2) protocol revenue shared via buyback model.
What does this model mean for $VVV holders:
- Since $VVV stakers earn emissions-based staking rewards, stakers continuously grow share in overall supply and size of available free inference vs. non-stakers.
- Inference capacity growth increases value of every $sVVV stake and vice versa.
- The Mint Rate of X sVVV per DIEM today (up from 90 at the Aug 2025 launch) is the live cost the protocol assigns to perpetual compute — and therefore the cleanest on-chain reference for $VVV intrinsic value: floor ≈ (1 / Mint Rate) × $365/y.
- Subscription revenue used for buybacks and burns acts as an additional origin for token value accrual benefiting all existing holders.
- $DIEM is the asset whose value is capped at $365/year and its DIEM price / $365 is a kind of a multiplier reflecting the valuation of perpetual claim on the protocol inference.