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. In parallel, the Foundation published "VANA: The Asset Behind an Open Data Economy," a paper setting out the economics of the VANA token. With the upgrade, network fees generated by personal data reads now fund staking rewards, buybacks and ecosystem development under a fixed protocol split. A public dashboard at token.vana.org tracks network reads, fee income, buybacks, burns and token supply, with the on-chain record behind each figure.

A Fixed Fee Split for Stakers, Buybacks and Ecosystem Development

Vana is a network for moving personal data with 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. Protocol rules allocate these fees as follows: 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. According to the Foundation, the split is written directly into the protocol.

Because fees are charged per read, the income flowing through the split tracks how often applications access data with a granted permission, and because the allocation is set by protocol rule rather than discretionary decision, each published figure can be checked against the on-chain record behind it.

How Expanded Staking Works

Staking now runs through three staking pools, each charging 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 Principal can be withdrawn at any time, with no deadline. After October 31, a position that has not been moved will no longer earn rewards. The October 31 cutoff therefore applies to reward eligibility only, not to access to staked principal, which remains withdrawable whether or not a position is moved into a pool.

"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 Supply Unchanged

Applications on the network have produced 2,937,447 verified reads to date, as of September 28, 2026. The Foundation noted that total VANA supply and release schedules remain unchanged following the upgrade. As the dashboard continues publishing reads, fee income, buybacks, burns and supply alongside their on-chain records, that dated read count gives readers a baseline for the figures released going forward.

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 Foundationentralized Trust as a Community Specification. Additional 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 details are 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.

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