Cutting a token’s supply is easy to announce and hard to sustain. Revenue has to grow while new coins shrink, otherwise scarcity becomes just a promise drawn on a chart. On 1 October Venice took the step it had planned: annual VVV emissions fell from 2.5 million to 2 million tokens, on the schedule announced on 5 August.

The cut, in two steps

The plan called for two reductions of 500,000 tokens: the first on 1 September, the second on 1 October. With the second cut, annual emissions settle at 2 million. The most interesting figure is the trajectory: since the token launched in January 2025, emissions have fallen by about 86%. This is not an improvised adjustment, but the last step of a long descent declared well in advance. The new tokens issued go directly to stakers, with no allocation reserved for the team.

Burning to count

Reducing the supply is only half the story. The other half is the burn: since July, $5 out of every $100 spent on API credits is used to buy VVV on the market and burn it. It is the first time the mechanism does not depend on the Pro, Pro+ and Max subscriptions but on credit purchases — that is, on actual use of the platform. The design is coherent: the more people use the API, the more VVV leaves circulation. Deflation, in short, is not decreed but tied to real activity. And that is also its limit, because it depends on growth.

DIEM: more room, same meaning

Meanwhile DIEM’s supply cap has risen for the first time since launch, from 38,000 to 40,000, in four steps of 500 completed on 14 September. DIEM’s function does not change: one staked DIEM is still worth $1 of API credit per day, renewed every day. It is created only from VVV, by staking it and then locking it. Raising the cap does not touch the value for those who already hold it: it merely opens room to mint more, and therefore for more inference capacity.

Venice is building something more ambitious than a token: a way of tying the price of access to AI to the actual use of AI. Whether it works will depend on a rather unspectacular condition — revenue. Programmed scarcity is a promise; the question is who pays for it.

Verified sources: official Venice.ai blog, “Tokenomics Update: Credit Burns and a Higher DIEM Supply Target” (17 July 2026, updated 5 August 2026); CoinMarketCap Top Stories (2026-10-01); Pluang, summary of the emissions cut (2026-10-02); @JonShapeShift post on X (2026-10-01); Crypto Briefing / Ground News (2026-10-01). All consulted on 2026-10-02.