Vana is Stripe for data
When you buy something online, you rarely think about Stripe. The shop shows you what you want, you tap pay, and Stripe handles everything in between: it checks the card, moves the money and keeps a record of the payment. Most people never see it. They only notice that paying works.
Your data should work the same way. Today we are releasing the new Vana App, built on that idea. It sits behind the apps you use. When one of them asks for some of your data, the Vana App shows you exactly what it is asking for and lets you decide. If you say yes, your data moves to that app with your permission, and the move is recorded.
The quickest way to see it is OpenPet, an app built by a team in the Vana Builder League. It takes about a minute, and it shows the whole flow from start to finish.
Data is more useful when it can move
Your data sits in the services where you created it. Your sleep is in your ring's app. Your listening history is in your music app. Your spending is with your bank. Locked in those places, it does very little for you. The app that could do the most with it is usually a different app, built by someone else, with no way to reach it.
That is the problem Vana was built for. A person's data should be able to move to the app they choose, under their permission, with a record of what they agreed to. Vana is the open network it moves on, and it is already in use.
- Apps built on Vana
- 100+
- Users
- 1.5M
- Transactions
- 20M+
The new Vana App is how that works in your hands. Its job is to carry your data to the apps you choose, ask you first every time, and keep the record. The apps get to spend their time on what they are good at.
Why the app sits behind other apps
Stripe became part of the internet's plumbing because every shop needed a checkout and almost none wanted to build one. A shop that uses Stripe gets to spend its time on what it sells.
Apps that want to use personal data face a harder version of the same problem. They have to connect to the services where the data lives, ask the person for permission, store the data safely, and let the person take it back. When every app builds that alone, every app does it slightly differently, and the person ends up with a different set of settings everywhere they go.
With Vana, a builder asks for the data and the Vana App handles the rest. The person sees the same permission screen wherever they go and has one place to see what they have shared and take it back. The builder gets data they could never collect on their own, with a record of what the person agreed to.
What happens when an app asks for your data
Here is the flow as it runs in OpenPet.
You tap Connect in the app.
The Vana App opens and asks you to approve the request. It names the app asking (OpenPet), the source (your Oura Ring) and exactly what it wants (sleep, readiness and activity). Nothing moves until you approve.
You approve.
Your data is saved to your own Personal Server and passed to OpenPet with your permission. The permission is recorded.
You can take it back at any time.
That is recorded too.
That is the whole thing: one request, one decision, one record.
See it work in OpenPet
OpenPet was built by a team in the Vana Builder League. Connect your sleep, readiness and activity data from an Oura Ring, and OpenPet turns it into a pet that reads your data back to you: your latest sleep score, your longest run of good sleep, the night your readiness dipped.
It is a playful app on purpose. It shows that the data you already create can come back to you as something you enjoy, on your terms. The same flow works for any app built on Vana.
Your XP carries on
The Vana community programme now lives at community.vana.org. Log in to see your XP and earn more. Your XP comes with you, and unclaimed XP does not expire.
This week, trying OpenPet earns 50 XP, and posting about OpenPet on X earns another 50 XP.
What this means
Stripe earns a small fee each time a payment goes through. Since the Vega upgrade, the Vana network works the same way: it earns every time one person's data moves. Someone moves their data to an app. The app reads it. The network earns.
For you, it means the data you create can finally do something for you, and you stay in charge of where it goes. For builders, it means you can build on real data from real people without building permission, storage and records yourself.
Vana brings your data home. This week you can watch it happen.