Layer 1 blockchain
VeChain ticker VET
Summary
Since the Hayabusa upgrade (fork block produced on 2 December 2025, followed by a 7-day transition), VeChainThor runs delegated proof of stake. Anyone who locks at least 25 million VET can queue for a leader group capped at 101 validators; VET holders delegate through StarGate staking NFTs, and a validator's chance of producing each 10-second block rises with its weighted stake. A finality gadget (Finality with One Bit) finalizes whole 180-block epochs after two voting rounds, each needing validators that hold more than two thirds of weighted stake to have proposed a block in the epoch. No slashing is described in the reviewed specifications: offline validators lose rewards and are removed after 7 days without blocks. Before Hayabusa, 101 identity-checked Authority Masternodes approved by the VeChain Foundation produced blocks. 26172025272829
Design
- System
- Layer 1 blockchainVeChainThor runs its own consensus and does not post data to or settle on another chain, so the package's layer-1 class is kept. Contracts run on a modified Ethereum virtual machine, but fees, transaction format, hashing and consensus are VeChain's own, so it is grouped with other self-settling chains rather than the Ethereum family. Consensus changed from foundation-approved authority nodes to delegated proof of stake in December 2025; these cells describe the current design.
- Settlement family
- Its own design
- Scarce resource
- Stake (proof of stake)
- State model
- Accounts
- Finality
- Checkpointed
- Who makes blocks
- Validators in the leader group, chosen per slot with probability proportional to their own stake plus delegated stake. Per VIP-253, a validator with delegators counts its own stake twice, X-Node NFT delegations count 1.5 times and other delegations once; stake per validator is capped at 600 million VET. A new validator enters first-in, first-out when a seat is free. VeChainStats showed 100 active and 0 queued validators on 2026-09-27.
- Fork choice
- Nodes first prefer the branch with the latest committed checkpoint from the finality gadget, discard branches that conflict with their finalized checkpoint, then prefer the branch with more justified checkpoints. Only then do they compare the accumulated witness score stored in each block header, taking the larger score and, on a tie, the shorter branch. Both rules were specified for the earlier authority model, where a checkpoint needed more than 67 of 101 leaders; VIP-253 moves the threshold to weighted stake, but whether the witness score changed was not verified.
Qualifications
- Finality · Partial. Whole 180-block epochs finalize after two voting rounds, each needing more than two thirds of weighted stake since Hayabusa. VeChain's specification page gives 30 to 60 minutes; four readings of a public mainnet node on 2026-09-27 showed the finalized block 62 to 81 minutes behind the head. No slashing appears in the reviewed specifications, so this is not recorded as stake-backed economic finality. If more than a third of weighted stake went offline, finality would stall (an inference from the threshold).
- Decentralization · Partial. Entry is open to anyone who locks 25 million VET, but the leader group is capped at 101 seats filled first-come, first-served, and every delegation goes through one designated delegator contract (StarGate). VeChainStats showed 100 active validators and none queued on 2026-09-27. Operator identities and stake concentration were not measured.
- Ethereum defaults · Not applicable. VeChainThor runs Solidity contracts on a modified Ethereum virtual machine and uses 0x addresses, but it has its own two-token fees, multi-clause transaction format, random rather than sequential nonces, blake2b hashing and a REST interface as its primary API, so fee, finality and rollup assumptions built into EVM tooling do not carry over. The foundation's roadmap plans JSON-RPC equivalence; it was not part of the reviewed releases.
- Fee token · Partial. Fees are paid in VTHO, not VET. Since the Galactica upgrade (July 2025) the base fee is burned and a priority fee goes to the block's validator; since Hayabusa, new VTHO is issued only as staking rewards, so holding VET no longer generates VTHO. Fee delegation lets a sponsor pay a user's fee.
- Tps · Not applicable. No throughput figure is recorded. The reviewed VeChain documentation gives no classified rate, and the 40 million gas block limit seen on 2026-09-27 is a capacity setting, not a measured rate.
- Settlement family · Partial. Recorded as other. VeChain's own terms: VeChainThor, run by the Thor client, with delegated proof of stake since the Hayabusa upgrade, two tokens (VET and VTHO for fees), multi-clause transactions and blake2b hashing; contracts run on a modified Ethereum virtual machine.
Tradeoffs
- Emphasizes
- Scalability
- Gives up
- Decentralization of block production and stake-backed security: at most 101 validators, each locking at least 25 million VET, with all delegation routed through one designated staking contract, and no slashing in the reviewed specifications, so misbehaviour costs rewards and a seat rather than locked VET; until December 2025 the VeChain Foundation chose block producers after identity checks. Finality is also slow relative to the 10-second block time, at roughly an hour.VeChain's own documentation described the original authority design as reducing the number of block producers to gain speed and security. Security is not listed as an emphasis because finality rests on validators holding more than two thirds of weighted stake behaving honestly, and no slashing appears in the reviewed specifications, so no locked VET is at risk; readers who count the finality gadget as a security emphasis may disagree. Stake concentration among validators was not measured in this review.
- Full node at home
- Practical at home 2324The Thor client README lists a validator build of 4 CPU cores, 16 GB RAM, a 500 GB NVMe SSD and 20 Mbit bandwidth, and a public API-serving full node of 8 cores, 64 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD; about 45,000 IOPS is needed for a roughly 30-hour sync from genesis (sync times measured as at August 2025). The client's node-types page gave about 200 GB of disk for a full node and about 100 GB without logs in April 2024. Anyone may run a full node without permission.
- Throughput claims
- No classified figure recorded
Scaling layers
No scaling layer recorded in this profile.
Capabilities
| Capability | How it is provided | Notes and sources |
|---|---|---|
| Account abstraction | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Atomic swaps | Unknown | Not yet assessed under the current definitions; contracts could implement hash- and time-locked swaps, but no deployed swap mechanism between parties on VeChainThor was reviewed. Multi-clause transactions are all-or-nothing, but one sender signs them, so they are not an exchange between two parties. 11 |
| Authenticated data publication | Unknown | Not yet assessed under this row's current definition. |
| Light clients | Unknown | Not yet assessed under the current definitions; third-party verifiers were not checked, so the rule that absence needs a source makes this unknown. The client documentation lists full, full-without-logs and archive nodes only, and the wallets VeChain's node guide calls light clients trust a public node's answers rather than verifying the chain themselves. 1424 |
| Native staking or delegation | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| On-chain governance | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Parallel execution | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Payment or state channels | Unknown | No payment or state channel layer anchored to VeChainThor was found in the reviewed sources. |
| Programmable spending | Native (protocol or core-team software) Earlier definition | Solidity contracts run on a modified Ethereum virtual machine that the September 2026 Interstellar upgrade aligned with Ethereum's Cancun, Prague and Osaka rules. At the transaction level, one transaction can carry several clauses executed in order as a unit, set an expiry, depend on an earlier transaction and name a separate fee payer. Smart-contract wallets are documented as work in progress. 1011121322 |
| Protocol-verified messaging | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Reversible transfers or recovery | Unknown | Not yet assessed under the current definitions; no protocol mechanism for ordinary accounts to reverse or delay a payment, to recover through a path set up in advance or to rotate keys was found in the reviewed documentation. Smart-contract wallets could add one; VeChain's account abstraction page calls that work in progress. 13 |
| Rollups | Unknown | Unknown under the rule that absence needs a source: the earlier note said absence was not exhaustively verified. No rollup or validium settling to VeChainThor was found in the reviewed sources; VeChain's docs call multi-clause transactions an on-chain scaling feature, and they batch work inside base-chain transactions rather than forming a second layer. 11 |
| Shielded transfers | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Signed partial offers | Unknown | Not yet assessed under this row's current definition. |
Reading these values
- How this feature is provided
- Built into the protocol, core-team software or independent software says where a feature lives and who can change it. These are implementation layers, not quality: core-team software is not closer to the protocol than independent software.
- Structured assessment pending
- The shared review has not assessed this feature for any chain yet (Account abstraction, Native staking or delegation, On-chain governance, Parallel execution, Protocol-verified messaging and Shielded transfers). That does not mean it is absent, and a chain’s profile may already describe it.
- Unknown
- The review has not established this for this chain under the current definition; the note beside it says why. Unknown is not absent and not a low score. A feature reads “Not present” only when a source shows it is absent.
- Earlier definition
- Payment or state channels, Programmable spending and Rollups keep the earlier definition until the next fact-check. There, “Native” does not separate the protocol from core-team software, “Ecosystem software” does not say who publishes it, and “Partial” does not say which layer.
- Reading across rows
- The list of capabilities is incomplete. Do not read these rows as a chain leading or lagging overall.
Ecosystem & custody
| Product type | Status | Notes and sources |
|---|---|---|
| Automated market makers | ThinVexchange (v1 and v2), BetterSwap, VeRocket, VeSwap, DThor Swap | VeChainStats tracks six automated market maker venues and 581 pools, with about 1,000 swaps in the 24 hours before its 2026-09-27 reading. Vexchange's GitHub describes it as a Uniswap v2 fork on VeChain. The venues' own sites blocked or failed automated fetching, and liquidity depth was not measured, so the status is a judgement from activity counts. 3033 |
| Issuer-native stablecoins | ThinVeUSD (Stably) | VeChainStats describes VeUSD as a fiat-backed stablecoin issued by Stably directly on VeChainThor, with about 779,000 in supply on 2026-09-27. Stably's current site shows VeChain only as a partner logo and the issuer page linked from VeChainStats did not resolve, so reserve, attestation and redemption terms were not verified. Circle does not list VeChain for USDC, and Tether does not list it for USDT. 31343738 |
| Algorithmic stablecoins | Unknown | Algorithmic or hybrid stablecoins on VeChainThor were not found or reviewed. |
| Bridges | ThinWanBridge (Wanchain), XPort (Wanchain) | Wanchain's documentation lists VeChain as supported by WanBridge and XPort. VeChainStats shows a bridged USDC token from Wanchain with about 16,000 in supply; it is a Wanchain bridge representation, not Circle-issued USDC. VeChain's 2026 roadmap says bridges to Ethereum and other EVM chains through VeWorld are planned; none was verified as live. Risk: WanBridge locks assets on the source chain and mints representations on VeChainThor under the control of Wanchain storeman node groups that sign with threshold signatures backed by deposits. Users trust that group and the bridge contracts, not VeChain's validators, and a bridged token is only as sound as the locked assets behind it. 28323536 |
| Block explorers | Established in the ecosystemVeChain Explorer, VeChainStats, Insight | VeChain's documentation lists these three explorers; Insight is operated by VeChain and VeChainStats is a community analytics site. Listing is not a quality or completeness check, and explorer data is provider-indexed. 1529 |
| Hardware wallets | Established in the ecosystemLedger | See custody rows: Ledger lists VeChain in its Ledger Wallet app and VeChain's VeWorld wallet can import a Ledger account to sign; Trezor states it does not support VeChain. 163940 |
Hardware-wallet custody
| Device maker | Status | What users can and cannot do |
|---|---|---|
| Ledger | Native supportSame as native: Yes | Can: Set up a VeChain account and manage VET in the Ledger Wallet app, per Ledger's VeChain page Can: Import a Ledger account into VeWorld (mobile or browser extension) and sign VeChain transactions on the deviceLedger's page does not say whether VTHO, other VeChain tokens or StarGate staking are handled inside Ledger Wallet; its staking wording is generic. Those points were not verified. 1639 |
| Trezor | None foundSame as native: No | Cannot: Manage VET or VTHO in Trezor Suite; Trezor states it does not currently support VeChainThird-party wallets that might pair a Trezor device with VeChain were not checked. 40 |
Public data
iKnow Blockchain has no public-data lookups for VeChain yet. This is a limit of the service, not a statement about the network.
| Lookup | Status | What it covers and its limits |
|---|---|---|
| Address or account | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| Tokens and assets | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| NFTs | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| Transactions | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
Sourced developments
Developments: Review overdue Reviewed Sep 27, 2026; next review was due Oct 7, 2026, 12:00 UTC.
Publication date · newest first
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Interstellar upgrade aligned VeChainThor's contract engine with Ethereum's Cancun, Prague and Osaka rules
Thor v2.5.0 was released as a mandatory upgrade activating the Interstellar hard fork (VIP-255) at mainnet block 25,902,540. It adds transient storage, memory copy and leading-zero opcodes, restricts SELFDESTRUCT, adds BLS12-381 curve and secp256r1 signature-verification precompiles and a historical block-hash contract, caps a single transaction at 16,777,216 gas and limits encoded blocks to 8 MiB. VeChain announced the VeVote ballot for VIP-255 on 6 August 2026, with voting from 10 to 17 August.
- Proposal:VIP-255, marked Draft in the VIP repository; put to a VeVote ballot 10 to 17 August 2026
- Implementation:shipped in Thor v2.5.0
- Release:mandatory release published 2026-09-03
- Activation:mainnet passed fork block 25,902,540 on 2026-09-16
Sources: vechain/thor maintainers — Thor v2.5.0 release notes (Interstellar hardfork) (external site) · VeChain VIPs repository — VIP-255: Interstellar EVM Upgrade Specification (external site) · VeChain — VeChain Renaissance: Interstellar Sets Course (external site) · VeChain (public node, Thorest API) — Mainnet block 25,902,540 (Interstellar fork height) (external site)
-
Thor v2.4.4 limits deep paging in the node's log-query APIs and fixes how finality weighs stake
Thor v2.4.4 is an optional maintenance release that the maintainers highly recommend. The node's events and transfers filter APIs now refuse any request whose offset is above 100,000 with an HTTP 403 error; operators can change the cap with the --api-logs-max-offset flag, and the notes say to page through large result sets by block range instead. The release also changes the finality gadget to compute its proof-of-stake threshold from the staking state after the client's housekeeping step, reworks transaction-pool pricing, adds transaction-pool and database metrics, and lets operators switch some features at runtime through the admin server.
- Implementation:shipped in Thor v2.4.4 (pull requests #1619 to #1633); the offset flag is still present at the v2.5.0 tag
- Release:optional, highly recommended maintenance release published 2026-07-15; later superseded by the mandatory v2.5.0 of 2026-09-03
- Activation:no fork height named; takes effect on each node that installs v2.4.4 or later; adoption not measured
Sources: vechain/thor maintainers — Thor v2.4.4 release notes (external site) · vechain/thor maintainers — Thor command-line flags at tag v2.5.0 (cmd/thor/flags.go) (external site) · vechain/thor maintainers — Thor releases (Atom feed) (external site)
-
VeChain 2026 roadmap plans JSON-RPC equivalence, committee-based finality and VeWorld bridges
VeChain's 2026 roadmap says Galactica (July 2025) and Hayabusa (December 2025) are complete and lays out further Interstellar work: step-by-step alignment with Ethereum's virtual machine, JSON-RPC equivalence, committee-based validation to strengthen finality, more validator delegation controls and verification infrastructure for tokenized real-world assets. It also plans bridges from VeWorld to Ethereum and other EVM chains and built-in swaps.
- Proposal:announced roadmap
- Implementation:virtual-machine alignment shipped in September 2026; other items not observed
- Release:no release for JSON-RPC equivalence, committee-based finality or bridges found
- Activation:not active as of this review
Sources: VeChain — VeChain Roadmap 2026: Agentic Foundations for Tomorrow & Beyond (external site) · vechain/thor maintainers — Thor v2.5.0 release notes (Interstellar hardfork) (external site) · VeChain VIPs repository — VIP-255: Interstellar EVM Upgrade Specification (external site)
-
Hayabusa upgrade moved VeChainThor from authority nodes to delegated proof of stake
Thor v2.4.0 was released as a mandatory upgrade activating the Hayabusa hard fork at mainnet block 23,414,400. It implements VIP-253, which opens validation to anyone locking 25 million VET in a leader group capped at 101 and routes delegation through StarGate, and VIP-254, which ends passive VTHO generation for VET holders and pays VTHO rewards only to staked VET. Finality became stake-weighted.
- Proposal:VIP-253 and VIP-254, both still marked Draft in the VIP repository
- Implementation:shipped in Thor v2.4.0
- Release:mandatory release published 2025-10-28
- Activation:fork block produced 2025-12-02; the transition window ended at block 23,474,880 on 2025-12-09, and the foundation reports the move to delegated proof of stake completed in December 2025
Sources: vechain/thor maintainers — Thor v2.4.0 release notes (Hayabusa hardfork) (external site) · VeChain VIPs repository — VIP-253: Upgrade consensus to Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) (external site) · VeChain VIPs repository — VIP-254: Upgrade tokenomics of VeChain DPoS (external site) · VeChain (public node, Thorest API) — Mainnet block 25,902,540 (Interstellar fork height) (external site) · VeChain — VeChain Roadmap 2026: Agentic Foundations for Tomorrow & Beyond (external site) · VeChain — Institutional Validators: Building The New Backbone of VeChain (external site)
Topics your AI can explain
Your AI can explain these topics for VeChain through the connection, with sources.
Known gaps
What this profile's review did not establish:
- Several VeChain documentation pages (about, consensus deep dive, specifications) still describe the authority-node design that ended in December 2025; current consensus facts come from the VIP specifications, client release notes, StarGate docs and the 2026 roadmap.
- How the pre-finality branch score is computed under stake weighting was not verified. The finality specification's safety proof was written for a fixed count of more than 67 of 101 authority nodes; a proof for the stake-weighted version was not found.
- No slashing appears in the reviewed specifications; that penalties are limited to lost rewards and forced exit was not confirmed in client code.
- Validator operator identities, stake concentration and geographic spread were not measured.
- No throughput figure was found in a form that could be classified, so none is recorded.
- VeUSD reserve, attestation and redemption terms were not verified from Stably; the issuer page linked from VeChainStats did not resolve.
- Algorithmic stablecoins, atomic swaps, payment or state channels and reversible-transfer or recovery features on VeChainThor were not found or reviewed.
- Automated market maker sites blocked or failed automated fetching; that row relies on VeChainStats and Vexchange's GitHub, and liquidity depth was not measured.
- Bridges other than Wanchain's were not reviewed; the VeWorld bridge in the 2026 roadmap is planned, not verified as live.
- Whether Ledger Wallet handles VTHO, other VeChain tokens and StarGate staking was not verified; third-party Trezor paths were not checked.
- The Thor client README still says its virtual machine targets Ethereum's Shanghai rules, although the September 2026 Interstellar upgrade moved it to Cancun, Prague and Osaka rules.
Sources
Oldest dated source check: Source checked Sep 27, 2026 Next check due Oct 27, 2026.
- About the VeChain blockchain (external site)
- Consensus Deep Dive (external site)
- Governance (external site)
- Nodes (external site)
- Blocks (external site)
- Block Model (external site)
- VeChain Blockchain Specifications (external site)
- Key Differences Between VeChain and Ethereum (Summary) (external site)
- VeThor (VTHO) (external site)
- Transaction Model (external site)
- Clauses (Multi-Task Transaction) (external site)
- Fee Delegation (external site)
- Account Abstraction (external site)
- How to run a node (external site)
- Block Explorers (external site)
- VeWorld user guide: Wallet (external site)
- VIP-220: Finality with One Bit (FOB) (external site)
- VIP-220: Finality with One Bit (FOB), specification PDF (external site)
- VIP-251: Dynamic Fee Market (external site)
- VIP-253: Upgrade consensus to Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) (external site)
- VIP-254: Upgrade tokenomics of VeChain DPoS (external site)
- VIP-255: Interstellar EVM Upgrade Specification (external site)
- Thor: the VeChainThor client (README) (external site)
- Node Types (external site)
- Thor v2.4.0 release notes (Hayabusa hardfork) (external site)
- Thor v2.5.0 release notes (Interstellar hardfork) (external site)
- Validators (external site)
- VeChain Roadmap 2026: Agentic Foundations for Tomorrow & Beyond (external site)
- Validator Insights (external site)
- DEX Insights (external site)
- VeUSD Insights (external site)
- USDC (Bridged) token page (external site)
- Vexchange GitHub organization (external site)
- Stably homepage (external site)
- Welcome to Wanchain (supported chains table) (external site)
- Security Mechanism (external site)
- USDC contract addresses (external site)
- Supported protocols (external site)
- VeChain wallet (external site)
- VeChain wallet (external site)
Report an error
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Funding disclosure
Funding disclosures appear here when an upkeep arrangement exists, in the form “Upkeep funded by [name]; verdicts unaffected.” The funder ledger has not been published yet. Neutrality & funding