> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.vangrid.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Token utility

> $VAN is the collateral and settlement asset of the Vangrid network. What it is used for, and what it is not.

\$VAN is the collateral and settlement asset of the Vangrid network. Its function is operational. This page describes that function and nothing else.

Nothing on this page is an offer, a projection, or a statement about price.

<Note>
  \$VAN is not live. Every section below is written in the future tense and describes designed function.
</Note>

## Why the network needs an asset at all

Vangrid sells data whose value depends entirely on whether a buyer can believe it was captured where and when it claims. That requirement produces three constraints that a centralised stack does not satisfy:

* **Authenticity cannot rest on Vangrid's word.** A buyer evaluating crowd captured data has to be able to verify it without trusting the party selling it.
* **Settlement has to clear in minutes, in any jurisdiction, at amounts below a dollar.** No banking rail carries that profile.
* **Provenance has to be anchored where no party to the transaction can rewrite it.**

\$VAN exists to satisfy those constraints. The order of the sections below reflects their weight.

## Verification collateral

Capture authenticity is the network's core problem, and it is the token's primary function.

Automated checks at ingest catch the cheap attacks: replays, duplicates, captures whose camera and location signals contradict each other. They cannot resolve the harder cases, and a central review team is both a bottleneck and a single point of trust. Verification is therefore delegated to independent operators who put capital behind their judgement.

The mechanism:

* Operators stake \$VAN to enter the verification set. The stake is the collateral behind every attestation they sign.
* Captures are sampled and assigned pseudorandomly. An operator cannot select which captures to review, and a contributor cannot select the operator who reviews theirs.
* Operators sign an attestation of authenticity. The attestation is attached to the capture's provenance record and travels with the observation through the API.
* An attestation that disagrees with the resolved outcome costs the operator part of the stake. Sustained disagreement removes the operator from the set.
* Failing to act on assigned work carries its own penalty. Idle collateral does not accumulate anything.
* Queries that require the highest assurance route fees to the operators who verified the observations returned.

The consequence for a buyer: a provenance record is not a claim Vangrid makes about itself. It is a claim an identified operator was paid to make, under collateral that is forfeited if the claim is false.

## Settlement of commissioned capture

Bounties will be funded and settled in \$VAN. A reward will move from a requester in one jurisdiction to a contributor in another within minutes of acceptance, at amounts a wire cannot carry economically.

Settlement volume therefore tracks work performed. A bounty that nobody fulfils settles nothing.

## Fee denomination

The platform fee will be payable in \$VAN at a lower rate than payment by card. Requesters operating continuously on the network hold and spend \$VAN because it is the cheaper path, not because they are asked to.

## Coverage funding

Fees collected in \$VAN fund bounties posted by Vangrid in areas the network does not cover. Demand side fees become supply side incentive, directed at the gaps rather than distributed evenly.

This is the network's growth mechanism. It is not a distribution to holders.

## Access and residency

Region scoped access to the data rail, dedicated residency configurations, and priority placement for bounties will be denominated in \$VAN.

## What \$VAN is not

<Warning>
  * It is not a claim on revenue, profit, or assets of any entity.
  * It does not entitle a holder to a distribution of any kind.
  * Holding it produces nothing. Compensation in the verification set is payment for work performed under collateral, not a return on the collateral.
  * Points are a separate, non monetary measure of contribution. Points do not convert into \$VAN.
</Warning>