GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands, September 29, 2026 (Chainwire) — The Vana Foundation announced today that expanded staking, introduced as part of the Vega upgrade to the Vana network, is now complete. Alongside the announcement, the Foundation published a paper titled "VANA: The Asset Behind an Open Data Economy," which sets out the VANA token economics. Under the upgrade, network fees generated from personal data reads now fund staking rewards, buybacks and ecosystem development under a fixed protocol split. A public dashboard at token.vana.org reports network reads, fee income, buybacks, burns and token supply, together with the on-chain record behind each figure.

Vana is a network for moving personal data under the permission of the person it belongs to. Under the network's fee model, an application that reads a person's data with a granted permission pays one cent per scope read. Fees are allocated by protocol rule: 60 percent to stakers through staking pools, 20 percent to the purchase and burn of VANA, and 20 percent to ecosystem development. Each buyback and burn is published with its transaction hash. Because the staking share is funded from these usage fees rather than from new token issuance — total supply and release schedules remain unchanged — reward flows follow actual data reads on the network.

Expanded Staking Mechanics

With expanded staking live, staking runs through three staking pools, each of which carries a 5 percent operator commission. Staking rewards are paid from network fees, accrue to the staked position and may be claimed as they accrue.

Existing staked positions can be moved into one of the three pools in a single transaction at stake.vana.org by midnight UTC on October 31, 2026. Principal can be withdrawn at any time, with no deadline attached. After October 31, a position that has not been moved will no longer earn rewards.

"Every read of a person's data on the network is a paid transaction, and the fees pay the node operators and stakers who make that movement possible," said Art Abal, Managing Director of the Vana Foundation. "The split is written into the protocol, and every figure is published on chain."

Network Activity and Token Supply

Applications on the network have produced 2,937,447 verified reads to date, as of September 28, 2026. Total VANA supply and release schedules remain unchanged. With the October 31, 2026 migration deadline in place, the dashboard's running totals on reads, fee income, buybacks, burns and supply give observers on-chain markers for how the Vega-era fee split operates in practice.

The paper "VANA: The Asset Behind an Open Data Economy" and the whitepaper addendum "The Vega Upgrade: Data Portability and Transformations" are available at token.vana.org.

About Vana

Vana is an open network for personal data portability. Its standard, the Personal Data Portability Protocol, was contributed to Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust as a Community Specification. More information is available at vana.org.

About the Vana Foundation

The Vana Foundation is a non-profit foundation that supports the development and adoption of the Vana network and is a member of Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust.

About OpenDataLabs

OpenDataLabs builds and operates the products that governments and industry run on the Vana network. More information is available at www.opendatalabs.com.

This release is for information only and does not constitute an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any token or security.

Media contact: Arthur Abal, Managing Director, Vana Foundation — press@vanafoundation.org

Source: Blocktelegraph