Erik Voorhees’ Venice AI Launches VVV Token
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Venice AI launched its VVV token on Monday, coinciding with the unveiling of China’s DeepSeek artificial intelligence (AI) model, as founder Erik Voorhees pushes for decentralized AI solutions.
The VVV token, launched on Ethereum's Layer 2 Base network, aims to reduce economic friction for AI agents. In its first airdrop, 25% of the token’s 100 million supply was allocated to wallets holding AI agents and various other tokens on the Base blockchain. Another 25% was distributed to over 100,000 early Venice users.
VVV is currently changing hands for $16, giving the project a fully diluted valuation of $1.6 billion. Notably, Coinbase listed VVV within hours of its launch.
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The launch of the VVV token underscores Venice AI's contrasting approach to DeepSeek, which has raised concerns about data privacy. While DeepSeek is accused of sharing user data with the Chinese government, Venice AI prioritizes data security, ensuring that user information stays private, founder Erik Voorhees claimed in a post on X.
“When you use the DeepSeek app, all your convo, IP, prompts, etc are going to the Chinese government,” the post reads. “When you use DeepSeek through the http://Venice.ai app, none of it is going anywhere.”
Not everyone is convinced, however, with crypto investor Eric Wall noting that “Prompts are sent to a collection of GPU providers who each individually have the full ability see the full contents of your prompt and any files you upload with it.”
Voorhees was yet to respond at the time of publishing.
Venice AI
Launched in May 2024, Venice AI offers decentralized access to open-source AI models for text, image, and code generation via web and mobile apps, with no accounts required for basic use. VVV is the project’s native token, which can be staked for a limited number of free inferences and emissions-based yield.
The genesis supply of VVV is 100 million tokens. Each year, 14 million VVV tokens will enter circulation, leading to an initial inflation rate of 14%, which is expected to fall over time, according to a press release.
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