VeThor
VeThor Token (ticker VTHO) is the gas token of the VeChainThor public blockchain, consumed to pay for token transfers, smart-contract execution and other on-chain operations.[1] It is the operational half of VeChain's dual-token economic model, in which the VeChain Token (VET) serves as the network's store of value and staking collateral while VTHO is spent as the fuel for network usage.[2] VTHO was introduced in 2015 and rebranded in 2018 as part of the launch of the VeChainThor mainnet by the VeChain Foundation, the non-profit that oversees the network's development and adoption.[3][4] [5]
Overview
VeChain built its network around a two-token architecture in which each token performs a distinct function. VET is the value-transfer medium — described in early design documents as "smart money" intended to circulate value rapidly within the ecosystem — while VTHO represents the underlying cost of using the blockchain's resources.[6] The separation is intended to insulate the cost of transacting from speculation on the primary asset, so that the fee system can be managed independently of VET's market price.[1]
According to VeChain's documentation, the design grew out of collaboration with corporate and enterprise partners, who identified the unpredictability of usage costs — driven by cryptocurrency price volatility — as a major obstacle to blockchain adoption. On single-token networks, rising token prices during bull markets can inflate transaction costs, and the dual-token model was presented as VeChain's solution to that problem.[2] The company states the model is meant to deliver cost predictability, decouple network usage from market volatility, allow governance to adjust transaction costs without affecting the main value token, and provide an enterprise-friendly structure with stable operational expenses.[2]
CoinMarketCap's summary reiterates that separating VET from VTHO is intended to give applications and businesses more predictable operating costs.[1] In the current design VET is the network's native asset and staking collateral, functioning to secure the network through staking and delegation, provide validator collateral, transfer value, participate in applicable protocol-governance processes, and support the generation of VTHO when actively staked.[1] VET has a fixed maximum supply of 86,712,634,466 tokens.[1]
Technical Standard and Contract
VTHO is a VIP-180 token, VeChain's native fungible token standard, which the documentation describes as a superset of Ethereum's ERC-20 standard; VIP-180 tokens including VTHO are compatible with ERC-20 tooling and wallets.[5][3] The token is implemented on-chain as a built-in contract, energy.sol, which represents the VeThor sub-token; its interface exposes standard ERC-20 methods such as balanceOf, transfer, transferFrom, allowance and approve, along with a non-standard move method and view functions for totalSupply and totalBurned.[7] The contract records that one VTHO equals 1e18 wei, that the initial supply of VTHO was zero in the genesis block, and that its total supply is therefore dynamic.[7][8]
The VIP-180 standard also supports a fee-delegation, or meta-transaction, feature that allows a third party or smart contract to pay the VTHO fees for a user's transaction.[4] VeChain and third-party descriptions frame this as lowering the barrier for non-crypto users, who can interact with decentralized applications without directly holding tokens, and as enabling multi-party payments and multi-task transactions.[9][3]
Issuance and Burning
The way VTHO enters circulation was fundamentally changed by two network upgrades. Under the original design, new VTHO was generated at every block simply by holding VET, at a constant rate the documentation calls velocity. The generation was a function of the amount of VET held, elapsed time measured in blocks, and this constant, expressed in early technical materials as roughly 5×10⁻⁸ VTHO per VET per block, or about 0.000432 VTHO per VET per day.[10][9] A frequently cited example held that 10,000 VET would generate at most about 4.32 VTHO every 24 hours.[6] The energy.sol contract stated the growth rate as 5,000,000,000 wei per VET per second, equating to the same daily figure.[7]
The Hayabusa hardfork, which took effect in December 2025, discontinued this passive generation model.[1] Since Hayabusa, VTHO is generated at every block as a function of the total amount of VET locked or staked across the network, rather than by mere holding, and is distributed exclusively to participants who actively secure VeChainThor.[5] CoinMarketCap attributes the change to VIP-254, which introduced dynamic VTHO issuance, while VeChain's documentation states VTHO supply is governed by VIP-251, a dynamic fee mechanism inspired by Ethereum's EIP-1559.[1][5] The documentation explains that before Hayabusa every holder generated VTHO, which diluted the incentive and gave validators a weak reward; the new model ties issuance to active staking.[5]
Under the current mechanism, VeChain's documentation gives the annual generation formula as VTHO_gen = 1200 × 64 × √(VET_staked), where VET_staked is the total amount of VET staked across the network at the point of block production. The square-root relationship makes issuance scale sub-linearly with staked VET, so that each additional staked token generates progressively less VTHO — a design the documentation says is intended to prevent excessive inflation while still rewarding participation.[5] As a worked example, the documentation states that if 2.525 billion VET were staked, the network would generate approximately 3.86 billion VTHO annually.[5]
Burning removes VTHO from circulation on the other side of the ledger. The July 2025 Galactica upgrade introduced a fee-burning mechanism under which transaction fees are split into a base fee and a priority fee: the base fee is permanently destroyed and the priority fee is paid to the validator that proposed the block.[5] CoinMarketCap AI's overview states that Galactica burns 100% of the base transaction fee, a mechanism the article characterizes as similar to Ethereum's EIP-1559 and attributes to the source "Bullish."[11] The base fee itself is protocol-determined and adjusts according to network usage, while users can attach an optional priority fee to make a transaction more attractive to validators.[1] VeChain frames the burning of VTHO as serving supply control, value stability for predictable transaction costs, and flexibility to adjust parameters based on adoption and demand.[5]
Before Galactica, the older fee model split VTHO differently: 70% of the VTHO paid on each transaction was burned and the remaining 30% was awarded to the Authority Masternode operators who validated and produced blocks under VeChain's earlier Proof-of-Authority consensus.[10][9] The energy.sol contract likewise documented that the miner charged 30 percent of the transaction fee and 70 percent was burned.[7] The combination of staking-based issuance and active fee burning is described as creating deflationary pressure on VTHO's circulating supply as network activity grows.[11]
Staking, Validators and Delegators
The transition from Proof-of-Authority to Delegated Proof-of-Stake broadened participation in earning VTHO through staking.[11] Under the current system, unstaked VET does not generate VTHO; to be eligible for block rewards, VET must be actively participating in the network through validation or delegation.[1] Two categories of participant receive VTHO. Validators are operators that maintain network infrastructure and produce blocks, providing at least 25 million VET in self-stake. Delegators are VET holders who stake through StarGate and delegate their staking NFT to an active validator.[1][5]
When a validator has delegators, protocol block rewards are distributed using a default allocation of 30% to the validator and 70% to its delegators, apportioned according to eligible stake. Validators additionally collect the transaction priority fees from the blocks they produce.[1] Because issuance depends on the total VET staked and on protocol parameters, reward rates are dynamic and may change over time rather than being fixed or guaranteed.[1]
StarGate is VeChain's staking platform. VET holders stake VET to mint a StarGate staking NFT, which represents the associated VET collateral, delegation status and applicable reward attributes; delegating that NFT to an active validator makes the position eligible to receive delegator VTHO rewards.[1][3] Only staking positions actively delegated to a validator generate rewards, and the reward conditions may depend on the chosen validator, the delegation period, the NFT's attributes and current network parameters.[1]
Uses and Wallets
VTHO is consumed for a broad range of on-chain operations. Its listed functions include paying for token transfers, paying for smart-contract execution, supporting application and enterprise activity, providing protocol rewards to validators and delegators, and providing priority-fee income to block-producing validators.[1] The amount of VTHO required for a transaction depends on the size of the data written to the blockchain, so a simple transfer costs less than a complex supply-chain data upload.[10][9]
Ecosystem examples where VTHO is spent include enterprise supply-chain and product-data applications, digital product passports and provenance tracking, the VeBetter sustainability platform that records verified user actions, token and NFT transfers, decentralized finance applications, staking and governance operations, blockchain-based identity and trust mechanisms, and AI-agent services that use VeChainThor for verifiable records.[1][4] Every on-chain action, from a token transfer to recording a sustainability proof on VeBetter, consumes VTHO, and as activity increases more VTHO is burned through the base-fee portion of fees.[11]
VeWorld is VeChain's official self-custody wallet and ecosystem interface, available as a mobile application and as browser extensions. It can store and transfer VTHO, manage VET and other VeChainThor assets, connect to applications, access StarGate staking, claim and manage VTHO rewards, handle fungible tokens and NFTs, and connect compatible hardware wallets.[1] The earlier official VeChainThor Wallet, available on mobile, was designed to manage both VET and VTHO and to show VTHO generation in real time.[9] VTHO is traded across various centralized and decentralized venues, with available exchanges, pairs and withdrawal support varying by jurisdiction; users moving VTHO to self-custody are advised to confirm their platform supports withdrawals over the native VeChainThor network.[1]
History and Governance
VeChain was founded in 2015 by Sunny Lu, who had previously served as chief information officer of Louis Vuitton China and co-founded the Qtum project.[4] The project initially launched as a subsidiary of Bitse before becoming independent. VTHO was introduced in 2015, and the 2018 rebranding brought the VeChainThor blockchain and VTHO to market.[3] The VeChainThor mainnet launched in 2018 under the VeChain Foundation, and Antonio Senatore serves as chief technology officer leading technical development, bringing experience in blockchain architecture and Internet of Things technologies.[4] In its early years the project secured backing and partnerships from the professional-services firm PwC and the assurance and certification company DNV.[4]
Governance is managed by the VeChain Foundation, a non-profit entity that oversees development and adoption through a community voting system.[4] Under the earlier Proof-of-Authority consensus, the Foundation chose the Authority Masternodes that validated transactions and secured the network in exchange for a share of VTHO fees.[3] Because the two-token system allows transaction costs to be adjusted through governance-controlled technical variables without altering the main value token, VTHO's fee parameters can be tuned to network adoption and demand.[4] VeChain has stated that VTHO exists to solve enterprise adoption problems caused by volatile and unpredictable transaction fees, letting businesses budget for blockchain operations reliably.[11]
Third-party security assessments compiled by CoinGecko, sourced from external providers and not endorsed by CoinGecko, gave VeThor a security score of 51% as of 13 July 2026, with platform audit coverage listed as not available, an insurance score of 0%, and a bug-bounty score of 20%.[4]
