Erik Voorhees-backed AI startup Venice debuts VVV crypto on Base

Artificial intelligence startup Venice, backed by Erik Voorhees, has announced its own token VVV on Coinbase’s Base network.

With AI advancements like China’s DeepSeek grabbing attention, Venice — backed by Erik Voorhees — marks its move into web3 by launching the VVV cryptocurrency on Coinbase’s Base layer-2 network.

With the token, Venice wants to make its API more accessible by letting AI agents stake VVV tokens for continuous access to its growing offerings for generative text, images, and code.

It’s expected that this move will eliminate the usual pay-per-request model, allowing agents to stake tokens and gain a share of Venice’s inference capacity. “If you stake 1% of VVV, you get 1% of Venice’s growing API capacity, indefinitely. You do not pay per request,” the firm explained in a Jan. 27 blog announcement.

Venice also launched an airdrop alongside the token announcement, giving away 50 million VVV tokens. Half went to over 100,000 Venice users, and the other half was distributed to AI and crypto communities like Virtuals, Luna, and VaderAI.

The VVV token is limited in supply, with 100 million VVV created at launch. Each year, 14 million more will be added, the blog announcement reads. The new tokens will be distributed as staking rewards.

ShapeShift founder Erik Voorhees announced his AI startup in May 2024, pledging to double down on decentralization, privacy, and permissionless technology. At the time, Voorhees explained that Venice aims to offer users an alternative to the increasingly centralized and censored AI offerings of major tech firms like OpenAI or Anthropic.