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The "VVV" Concept, Which Has Increased Ninefold in Six Months, Becomes the New Mainstream in the Base Ecosystem

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The Economic Structure of $VVV/$DIEM, Legitimately Featuring a Hint of "Tech Stock" Flavor

Undoubtedly, the recent focus of the Base ecosystem continues to be AI. But to be more specific, it is the "VVV."

Before introducing the relevant token of the "VVV" concept, let's first understand what "VVV" really is.

What is the "VVV" Concept?

$VVV is the token of Venice, and Venice is a privacy-focused, censorship-resistant generative AI platform in the Base ecosystem led by Erik Voorhees.

Erik is an OG who entered the cryptocurrency space in 2011, playing a key role in Bitcoin adoption early on. Following the Mt. Gox debacle, he founded one of the earliest non-custodial and privacy-focused exchange platforms, ShapeShift. His expertise in decentralized finance and user sovereignty has made Erik a strong advocate for permissionless AI.

According to a user count chart of the Venice API disclosed by Erik Voorhees in March this year, Venice's API user count saw growth from close to 0 to 15,000 throughout the year 2025.

However, despite this growth, the price of $VVV has been lackluster, with occasional rebounds reaching a market cap of around $200 million at most. It once dropped to a market cap below $45 million, far from its peak market cap of $1 billion shortly after launch.

It can also be seen that entering 2026, there has been rapid growth in the Venice API user count. This can be attributed to the surge in OpenClaw. Due to its focus on privacy, Venice was prominently recommended in the model provider section of the OpenClaw official documentation.

Although this prominent recommendation was later removed, 2026 was a year of rapid growth for Venice. According to data disclosed by Erik Voorhees, as of March this year, Venice has amassed over 2 million total users, with 55,000 paid subscribers, generating a monthly revenue of $835,000 with a 15% monthly growth rate.

In contrast, $VVV has seen a continuous surge. Since the beginning of 2026, $VVV has increased more than 9 times.

$VVV/$DIEM

Earlier, we discussed Venice's growth in exposure and user numbers this year, which can be seen as the macro narrative for the rise. However, as a tokenized AI project in the cryptocurrency space, its price increase is closely related to the token's mechanism.

Since the beginning of the year, the annual emission of $VVV has undergone multiple reductions, decreasing from 8 million tokens per year to 5 million tokens. Starting on July 1st, the annual emission will be further reduced to 3 million tokens. The team has stated that the goal is to achieve a net deflation of $VVV, where the burn rate exceeds the emission rate, ensuring $VVV's native yield.

The initial total token supply of $VVV was 100 million tokens, and the current total token supply is around 79.9 million tokens, with approximately 42.22% (around 33.73 million tokens) of the current token supply already burned.

The token burn of $VVV is tied to Venice's subscription revenue. At the end of April, Venice allocated more subscription revenue to token buybacks, with each new Pro package subscription ($18) allocating $2 for buyback and burn of $VVV. The Pro+ package ($68) and Max package ($200) correspondingly allocate $5 and $10 for buyback and burn.

The current circulating supply is around 46 million tokens. Additionally, around 8.85 million tokens are still locked, and approximately 32.47 million tokens are staked.

What's particularly interesting is the token utility of $VVV. In contrast to the awkward situation faced by previous cryptocurrency projects where "token rights are useless compared to equity," $VVV provides a very interesting solution.

While constantly controlling the token supply, staking $VVV not only allows users to earn more $VVV and receive greater rewards from emission cuts but also enables them to use the staked token $sVVV to mint $DIEM.

$DIEM can be traded or staked. Every 1 $DIEM staked corresponds to a daily $1 Venice API credit limit.

This credit limit refreshes daily, so what is not used today will still be available tomorrow, with permanent validity. The $1 Venice API credit limit can do quite a lot, as Venice itself has provided an answer:

Stake 1 $DIEM and get free daily transactions processed by Venice

However, considering that the price of one $DIEM has now skyrocketed to $1,500, minting a $DIEM requires about 756 $VVV, costing around $12,800. Is it cost-effective? Venice has calculated the following:

Overall, the $VVV/$DIEM economic structure, coupled with Venice's regulatory mechanism, gives $VVV a legitimate "tech stock" flavor, while also having its own unique features in the crypto world:

- Reduced supply-side emissions to ensure the token's value is not overly diluted (also to prevent dilution of staking rewards in $VVV)

- Subscription revenue used for token buybacks

- Staked $VVV can be used to mint $DIEM, allowing the token to have practical use in the product

- However, there is a cost to having practical use; $VVV that mints $DIEM can only receive 80% of staking rewards ($VVV staking rewards)

- DeFi operations can be conducted on-chain, such as staking $VVV to receive $DIEM and then selling the $DIEM to buy more $VVV. There are even community projects like @cheaptokensAI that don't sell $DIEM but instead transfer the daily allocation of $DIEM to earn money

$POD

Since May, $POD has surged over 12 times from a market cap of around $7.8 million to briefly exceeding $100 million.

$POD is Dolphin's decentralized AI inference and training network token. In essence, it uses idle GPUs for "mining," providing computing power to those in need of AI compute services and receiving $POD rewards.

However, $POD's hype is not due to the network itself but Dolphin's other business—AI models. Venice's current default model, Venice Uncensored 1.2, was jointly developed by Dolphin and Venice and evolved from Dolphin Mistral 24B Venice Edition.

Therefore, although $POD is only intended as the token for Dolphin's distributed AI inference and training network, it is currently being hyped as the sole investment target in Dolphin.

$cyb3rwr3n

This project claims to be creating a USDC-based Venice that utilizes a credit auction market. However, it is seen as part of the broader "VVV" concept because some analysts, after studying on-chain activities and tweets, believe there is a strong connection between this project and Venice founder Erik Voorhees.

The Venice official account has already clarified that this speculation, stating that cyb3rwr3n is not an official Venice project.

After this news emerged last month, it caused around a 50% price drop, but a few days ago, it hit a new all-time high. The official clarification did not completely dispel market associations. According to some discussions, Erik Voorhees was the first follower of the cyb3rwr3n official account, and key Venice team members such as co-founder @TeanaTaylor, CTO @jesseproudman, and Product Lead @willyogo have also followed the account. They believe that even if Venice is indeed not associated with this project, the support conveyed through this interaction is quite bullish.

This is indeed one of the cheaper coins related to the current "VVV" concept, with only a $4 million market cap. But the reason for its low price is that its product has not yet been released, and it currently can only be considered a meme coin.

$SR

STRIKEROBOT.AI is a full-stack embodied AI platform, building a humanoid robot framework for Physical AI Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), focusing on security in hazardous environments such as nuclear power plants, high-pressure facilities, and radiation zones.

They have a robot training and simulation platform, SR Platform, and $SR is the token for this platform. The project's association with Venice comes from an announcement on May 7 that they will jointly develop a VLM inference layer designed for robots with Venice and have received funding from Venice.