Autonomys is pleased to announce a strategic partnership with Vana — the first decentralized network for user-owned data. Vana and Autonomys share a vision of an open, secure Internet where users own their data as well as the AI models they contribute to. We believe in the creation and iterative improvement of open-source AI models with data that users have been compensated for.

Data remains largely centralized as a digital asset, controlled by a few entities that dictate its flow, use, and value. AI models are currently hobbled by this lack of data liquidity, limited by their access to walled-off training datasets. Vana is creating Data DAO-governed data liquidity pools (DLPs) that incentivize, aggregate and cryptographically verify valuable data, freeing it from centralized platforms for open-source AI training. Vana’s growing user-owned data ecosystem, as well as its dual goals of aggregating the world’s largest training dataset and training a user-owned foundation model, require significant storage.

Autonomys’ secure, permanent distributed storage network (DSN) and scalable domain (execution) layers will be able to enhance Vana’s AI data management and computational capabilities. In turn, the Autonomys team is exploring how Vana can provide trusted environments for user-owned data storage and processing on the Autonomys Network.

Vana and Autonomys will be co-hosting an X Space AMA with leadership from both projects on September 10th to explore our integration in preparation for both projects’ upcoming mainnet launches.

Key Aspects of the Partnership

• Digital Sovereignty: Autonomys and Vana are engaged in building a shared vision of a digital economy where users have full ownership and control over their personal data, as well as the AI models that utilize that data. By integrating Autonomys’ DSN with Vana’s user-owned data ecosystem, we are not just creating infrastructure; we are setting a new standard for how data should be managed in a fair, transparent, and user-centric way.
• Data Liquidity: Vana’s on-chain training data enables unprecedented data liquidity, while its Data DAO-governed DLPs provide unparalleled decentralization. Storing and processing this data on Autonomys’ DSN and domains has the potential to pair this with unmatched scalability. Ensuring valuable, cross-platform user-generated data is freely available and securely managed unlocks new potentials for AI-driven applications, from personalized user experiences to advanced on-chain identity solutions.
• User-Centric deAI: Autonomys is building a secure, decentralized foundation layer for AI developers. Vana’s provision of trusted environments for the storage and processing of data on the Autonomys Network will be invaluable to the future applications in our ecosystem, and ensure that AI models are trained and data is stored in ways that prioritize user rights and privacy.

“Unleashing the full power of your data begins with ownership, but true sovereignty requires strong partners who keep that data decentralized and secure. Our collaboration with Autonomys is a step toward a future where data remains in the hands of its rightful owners at all stages of the AI development pipeline. We look forward to working with the Autonomys team to execute on our shared vision of decentralized user-owned AI.” Art Abal, COO & Co-founder at Vana

“Autonomys is building scalable, decentralized infrastructure to support the next wave of AI-powered augmentation. Vana is putting data ownership and AI model control back into the hands of users. These are both important steps on the road toward the digital economy of the future. Together, we are championing a new era of digital sovereignty through user-owned data and AI, where user rights, privacy and transparency are prioritized, and innovation is driven by decentralized, ethical practices.” Labhesh Patel, CEO & Co-founder at Autonomys

About Vana

Vana is a distributed network for private, user-owned data building towards a user-owned decentralized AI foundation model trained by millions of individuals contributing data and compute. Users own, govern, and earn from the AI models they contribute to. Developers gain access to cross-platform data to power personalized applications and train frontier AI models. The Vana ecosystem counts 1.3m users across innovations including r/datadao, a community-owned data collective focused on Reddit data, and 15+ other independent Data DAOs, and Volara, a decentralized data marketplace for Twitter data.

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About Autonomys Network

The Autonomys Network — the foundation layer for AI3.0 — is a hyper-scalable decentralized AI (deAI) infrastructure stack encompassing high-throughput permanent distributed storage, data availability and access, and modular execution. Our deAI ecosystem provides all the essential components to build and deploy secure super dApps (AI-powered dApps) and on-chain agents, equipping them with advanced AI capabilities for dynamic and autonomous functionality.

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