2025 was a watershed year for VeChain and crypto. The fight for utility and mass adoption has never been tougher. But despite major headwinds, VeChain demonstrated why we’ve been the most reliable ecosystem since 2015.
In bygone years, a running joke among crypto enthusiasts was that the industry ran on whitepapers, roadmaps, and promises without viable applications. If this is still your view, though, you haven’t been paying enough attention.
In 2025, we saw concerted efforts from lawmakers across the world to legislate and advance the industry, pushing crypto both as a novel asset class and new technological opportunity. The crypto sector is finally crossing the chasm from abstract concept to material use cases, inviting trillions in new investment, and unlocking a tidal wave of growth.
While much of Web3 spent 2025 chasing narratives, VeChain remained steadfast in its long-term vision: build for utility, relentlessly ship, and deploy technologies that onboard users, businesses, and institutions seamlessly. VeChain maintains that crypto shouldn’t be a medium for speculation, or institutional exit liquidity, but for applications with real utility, powering people, planet and value.
We have proven — at scale — that blockchains deserve their place in the global economy, unlocking efficiencies, creating value, and solving legacy challenges.
In 2025, despite a market backdrop that, at times, felt like a casino, we proudly led the fight for utility and value. Looking ahead to 2026, the prospects for crypto adoption have never looked stronger, and we’re excited for what comes next.
Web3 Utility: More Than Theory
The overarching aim of VeChain and Web3 is ‘real world adoption.’ We’ve proudly launched over 100 enterprise applications since launching in 2015 and delivered hundreds of millions of transactions for business clients. We deliver adoption, while others construct narratives.
In 2024, we embarked upon a bold expansion for Web3 adoption with the mainnet launch of VeBetter — a sustainability-focused B2C app platform built to bring utility to the masses using tokenization and incentives. So far, the platform has achieved:
- 50+ applications live
- Nearly 50 million transactions to date
- 5.2 million+ users
- Hundreds of thousands of weekly on-chain actions, representing real world impact
- The most active DAO with tens of thousands of weekly voting actions
In that time, flagship apps like Mugshot and Greencart, coffee cup waste reduction and healthy diet apps respectively, amassed over 3 million users. BYB, a health and fitness-focused application, launched to support the UFC’s massive 900M+ global fanbase. We helped ‘regular’ users — not just crypto natives — experience the potential of blockchain first-hand through activations at the Nitto ATP Finals. We’re bridging the gap between the crypto community and everyday users.
And for many of these users, they aren’t ‘using crypto’. They’re using applications that simply save energy, reward EV driving or support brands they love, through gamified, entertaining experiences, that, uniquely, distribute rewards with tangible value. By abstracting the blockchain experience away, adoption becomes easy.
This is what real adoption looks like. Not Node chatter, transaction spamming, or other metric boosting activities some blockchains deploy. VeChain’s network is delivering the true spirit of crypto and decentralization, for real people and businesses. We are growing.
Upgraded Economics, Built for All
2025 brought substantial changes to VeChain’s economic model, as we sought to reconcile the attributes that make us attractive for adoption — low, stable and adjustable transaction costs — balancing them against the desires of stakeholders, investorsand builders in the form of greater economic incentives.
These were not just minor tweaks. The VeChain Foundation launched a series of groundbreaking upgrades via our ‘VeChain Renaissance’ roadmap (detailed later) with the specific goal of rebuilding our tokenomic model from the protocol up to enable inclusive decentralization and enhance the network security.
Key elements of the upgrade include increasing the burn rate of VTHO, now at 100% of VTHO utilized per transaction. We have also significantly reduced its production and inflation rate, which, against a backdrop of accelerating usage powered by the VeBetter ecosystem helps capture value. Scarcity-plus-demand is a fundamental valuation metric for every market.
In the first few weeks since Hayabusa, the most recent upgrade, went into effect, VeChainThor now produces 50% fewer VTHO overall, and distributes generated VTHO solely to Node holders who stake via the StarGate staking platform. This has the effect of reducing ‘idle’ VTHO generation (such as that generated by exchange’s VET holdings) and condenses the protocol reward pool distribution among a smaller subset of holders, proportionally increasing user rewards.
For us at VeChain, we recognise the vital importance of the interconnection between all actors, and economics are, and will always be, critical to the success and value accrual of a protocol over time.
From a value perspective, VeChain is now in the best position it has ever been — an important factor as we stand on the precipice of a new era of adoption and industry growth.
Compliance & Utility at Institutional Levels
In 2025, VeChain was proud to have been one of the first protocols to proactively come out ahead of emerging regulations by meeting the demands of MiCAR in the EU head-on. The whitepapers for our core protocol tokens, VET and VTHO, were two of the first to be successfully confirmed and published on the EU’s ESMA register, speaking volumes about VeChain’s proactiveness and readiness to embrace and integrate elements of compliance that further our adoption prospects. This achievement was later followed by VeBetter’s B3TR token, as well as the Hayabusa mainnet upgrade.
We forged key strategic partnerships with Keyrock, BitGo, Meria Finance, Franklin Templeton and more, bringing new institutional weight to VeChain’s ecosystem. Along with long term business users like Walmart and several luxury brands, we proudly welcomed new business partners such as Lululemon China, a leading sports fashion brand, and more recently, Rekord, one of the newest businesses to launch operations on VeChainThor who recently surpassed 100,000 on-chain transactions.
Their work is laying the groundwork for regulated, compliant product data infrastructure across Europe in the form of Digital Product Passports, meeting regulatory needs in the trading block. We continue developing relationships and use cases, with news to be announced in early Q1 on that front.
Brands of this calibre expect the best and work with the best. Ergo, VeChain, a long-time champion and pioneer of real utility for Web3, is recognized accordingly, opening doors to growth.
2025 — A Year for Builders & Communities
2025 was a year VeChain went all out for builders, helping them do what builders do best. From new tools, infrastructure, events and opportunities, we made it our mission sure to deliver robust foundations for talented builders across the world. In 2025, we witnessed:
- 15+ workshops across 5 countries
- 450+ developers trained
- VeChain Builders Academy launched
- 100+ hacker hackathons, building everything from DeFi to sustainability
- VeChain Kit 2.0, core ETH tooling ports (e.g.: Hardhat), EVM upgrades
- Grants fuelling real deployment
- 14.4 million on-chain addresses and 924k+ smart contracts hit
And of course, our incredible community supported this growth by creating content, building apps, sharing news and updates, hosting Spaces, establishing cross chain relationships and continuing to propel us forward.
We are grateful for every person that contributed this year. Sincerely, thank you. Everything we do at VeChain revolves around you, and we will continue to make you our priority in 2026. By the builders, for the builders.
Technology That Serves Missions
VeChain’s adoption has always been underpinned by industry-leading, reliable technology. VeChain is one of very few blockchains with 100% uptime since launch and continued to deliver advancements through the Renaissance releases: Galactica, StarGate and Hayabusa.
But these are not trophies — they are weapons in our fight to deliver genuine utility, to ensure VeChainThor is competitive and compatible, economically attractive, and to allow us to keep succeeding where it matters most. ‘VeChain Renaissance’ as we named our ambitious tech roadmap, introduced:
Galactica:
- EIP-1559-style gas fee market + priority tips for Validators
- 100% VTHO base fee burn
- EVM Shanghai alignment
- Additional developer features
Hayabusa and StarGate:
- Consensus migration to DPoS
- Open, non-KYC Validators and inclusive Delegators, increasing decentralization
- Institutional, community, and KOL Validator participation
- Reduced VTHO inflation, better value capture, superior tokenomics
- A staking model built for long-term alignment, not mercenary capital
This is a new, more sustainable economic model for VeChain that delivers survival and scale through 2026 and beyond, enhancing the security, increasing decentralization, and improving community governance.
2026: Louder, Bigger, Unapologetic
2025 was a year filled with technical achievements, ecosystem expansion, and user growth. 2026 is all about acceleration.
Interstellar, the third phase of VeChain renaissance, opens VeChain to the wider Web3 universe — creating avenues to new assets, new builders, and new users with the integration of cross-chain communication protocol. It will allow us to expand well beyond our current borders.
Regulation compliance will be continued to expand the scope of service offerings like custodians to onboard non crypto users.
VeBetter will also continue to evolve — offering deeper engagement, with AI-powered agents helping expand, grow and support the everyday apps making blockchain invisible and indispensable for conscious consumers. The agentic digital economy will only continue to accelerate, and blockchains are its lifeblood.
New business opportunities, projects and partnerships will come online in Q1 and beyond, helping VeChain’s unique technologies be used in new and exciting ways, advancing blockchain integration and merging it with other emerging technological fields.
As Sunny has said many times:
“Crypto doesn’t win by being the destination. It wins by being the rails.”
Amazon isn’t just a bookstore; it became a thriving service ecosystem and shifted an entire commerce paradigm. TC/IP is much more than a communication protocol; it is the bedrock for the entire internet.
Likewise, VeChain’s end state isn’t just being a blockchain. It is about becoming the foundations of a sprawling, tangible Web3 ecosystem, helping solve challenges across industries, for people, and being a pathway that onboards the next billion users, seamlessly, simply, and invisibly.
Market Can Ignore Fundamentals — Reality Doesn’t
2025 turned out to be an uncomfortable experience for many in the space, including us.
Despite a rational focus on fundamentals and long-term value creation, the market became more casino-like, with users chasing quick wins, narratives and memes, only for them to falter as quickly as they emerged.
One thing we are supremely confident about is that as the industry evolves, regulations will finally lay foundations for a legitimate, mainstream-ready market, where real blockchains and businesses delivering valuable utility will win in the end.
Projects without real users fade. Narratives without adoption collapse. Liquidity without purpose dries up. VeChain is still here because it’s building what is valuable, viable, and attractive for the long term.
The 2026 Call to Arms
VeChain’s message for 2026 is simple: If you’re holding VET, you’re backing proven infrastructure, destined to power the future.
If you’re a VeBetter user — crypto native or otherwise — you’ve already tasted a sample of a future where your data, activities and even choices can be monetized and rewarded, recognizing positive contributions you make to global challenges.
If you find yourself challenged by someone claiming crypto has no value, no use cases, and no future — simply point them to VeChain, have them download VeWorld, and let them explore tangible examples of crypto technology, usable every day.Blockchain is a new paradigm for data management, the trend and future are all but certain.
2025 was the year we fought for utility. VeChain remains exactly where it needs to be — true to our vision, and on the right side of what’s to come — massive, mainstream adoption.
Onwards, VeFam, to 2026 — the year the crypto industry truly goes mainstream.
VeChain’s 2026 Manifesto: The Fight for Utility in a “Casino Market” was originally published in The Capital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
