Vana Founder Confirms Attendance at Hong Kong Forum, How AI Chain Will Break Through in the Payment and Ecosystem Track in 2026

Vana Co-founder Art Abal confirms attendance at the “Build and Scale in 2026” themed forum held in Hong Kong on February 10th. This is not just a simple conference appearance but a signal of the rising status of this AI-native public chain within the Web3 ecosystem. As sectors like AI, payments, and DeFi begin to merge, Vana, as an L1 designed from the ground up for AI, is validating its value proposition through actual products and ecosystem development.

Forum Background: Who is Participating and What Are They Discussing

This forum, jointly organized by ChainCatcher, RootData, and Alibaba Cloud, is an important peripheral event of the Consensus Hong Kong conference. It focuses on industry integration trends, growth paths, and market opportunities for 2026, covering key sectors such as RWA, stablecoins, AI, payments, and DeFi.

Art Abal’s confirmed attendance reflects Vana’s actual progress and increasing influence in these sectors.

Vana’s Core Positioning: Why It’s Not Just Another L1

According to the latest information, Vana is not simply a pseudo-AI chain that “plugs in an AI plugin” on traditional blockchains. From day one, it has been built as infrastructure tailored for AI. This distinction is reflected in several aspects:

AI-first Underlying Architecture

• Built a five-layer native AI architecture
• Native memory, on-chain inference, automated execution, and settlement capabilities embedded directly into the protocol layer
• Data can be directly stored on-chain in a readable format
• Inference and execution are fully decentralized

Fixed Gas Fees and Business Friendliness

Related reports indicate that Vana aligns with Google Cloud infrastructure to offer extremely low and stable fixed Gas fees. This provides substantial cost optimization for applications like gaming, payments, and DeFi, addressing the business uncertainties caused by traditional chain Gas volatility.

GraphAI Capabilities

Vana’s integrated GraphAI aims to transform the entire on-chain data layer into an “intelligent data partner” that can be interacted with via natural language. This means brand operators, financial auditors, or regulatory compliance personnel can query complex on-chain data as easily as asking a question, without needing engineers to write specialized scripts.

Practical Support for Token Economics: $VANRY Is Not Just an Empty Shell

Based on analysis, the value of $VANRY is not hollow but supported by multiple practical applications:

• Basic Fuel: Used to pay on-chain Gas fees, with consumption growing exponentially as users and transactions increase
• Ecosystem Consumption: Used within Vana’s games and applications to buy equipment, virtual land, pay for tickets, etc.
• Governance and Staking: Participating in community governance and network security, attracting long-term holders
• Payment Settlements: Paying for AI computing power, directly tied to ecosystem operations

This design makes the value of $VANRY highly correlated with ecosystem prosperity rather than empty narratives.

Why 2026 Is a Key Milestone

Related reports mention that Vibe Coding is rapidly spreading in the current AI sector, with more people using AI to validate ideas and prototype. However, most of these creative efforts are fragmented and difficult to sustain or reuse long-term. Vana aims to solve this problem—providing a foundational environment where emerging AI ideas can be accumulated, connected, and continuously evolved.

This means 2026 is a validation phase for Vana. It’s not about how many stories it can tell but about:

• How many real applications are running on Vana
• Growth in transaction volume and user base within the ecosystem
• Actual consumption and liquidity performance of $VANRY
• Whether AI+payments, AI+gaming, and other integrated applications are truly usable

Summary

Art Abal’s participation in the Hong Kong forum signifies that Vana is moving from the “proof of concept” stage to the “ecosystem construction” phase. Compared to projects that follow the AI hype, Vana has chosen a more challenging path—building from the ground up for AI, with innovations like fixed Gas fees, GraphAI, and native memory to support long-term applications in gaming, payments, and DeFi.

The key in 2026 is not how many AI chains exist but who can truly make AI usable, trustworthy, and profitable on Web3. Based on available information, Vana’s preparations in this regard have already surpassed mere narrative. In the coming months, attention should be on the growth of actual applications on this chain and user activity levels.