VeChain (VET) is a versatile enterprise-grade L1 smart contract platform.
VeChain began in 2015 as a private consoritium chain, working with a host of enterprises to explore applications of blockchain. VeChain would begin their transition to public blockchain in 2017 with the ERC-20 token VEN, before launching a mainnet of their own in 2018 using the ticker VET.
VeChain aims to use distributed governance and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to create an ecosystem which solves major data hurdles for multiple global industries from medical to energy, food & beverage to sustainability and SDG goals. By leveraging the power of trustless data, VeChain is building the digital backbone that will underpin the fourth industrial revolution, which demands real-time and trustless data sharing between many participants.
The platform uses two tokens, VET and VTHO, to manage and create value based on its VeChainThor public blockchain. VET generates VTHO and acts as the store of value and value transfer medium. VTHO is used to pay for GAS costs, separating the need to expend VET when writing data. This has the additional benefit of ensuring costs of using the network can be kept stable by tweaking certain variables such as the amount of VTHO required to service a transaction, or by increasing the VTHO geneation rate. Such actions first require all-stakeholder community votes.
VeChain has been able to demonstrate massively boosted efficiency, traceability and transparency across data trails, supply chains and within novel kinds of ecosystems, such as those in San Marino targeting UN SDGs, among others.