VeChain was co-founded in 2015 by Sunny Lu with plans to build a blockchain for supply management solutions. The blockchain was launched in June 2016 as a private consortium chain with support from BitSE, a Chinese Blockchain-as-Service (Baas) company, and primarily focused on anti-counterfeiting and supply chain management through Near Field Communication (NFC) chips, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags, and Quick Response (QR) code. Early funding came from Fenbushi Capital, one of China’s first blockchain-focused venture firms. This support laid the financial groundwork for VeChain’s development. In 2017, the project launched an initial coin offering (ICO) that raised approximately $20 million through the sale of VEN tokens, VeChain’s original ERC-20 token. These funds were used to build out VeChain’s proprietary Layer-1 blockchain, VeChainThor, which launched in 2018. Strategic corporate investors soon followed. In 2018, DNV, a European business assurance organisation, acquired a stake in VeChain and integrated its technology into their service offerings. Rather than relying on successive venture rounds, the project sustained itself through enterprise partnerships and its ICO reserves. In 2023, VeChain and Boston Consulting Group established a partnership under a similar premise, but with the goal of delivering a blockchain ecosystem that could solve sustainability challenges and demonstrate real-world adoption of decentralized applications. Originally designed to solve inefficiencies in global trade for enterprise clients, VeChain’s strategy has expanded to include consumers and app users, with the Foundation driving a new frontier of adoption through VeBetter, its sustainability-focused Web3 app store. The platform builds on VeChain’s track record of real-world adoption to help deliver blockchain applications that target a broad array of sustainability-focused scenarios, from waste reduction to diet, EV charging, and exercise, as described by the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. As of June 2025, the VeChain Foundation is approaching the second phase of its new technical roadmap, known as the VeChain Renaissance. This phase includes transitioning its consensus mechanism, introducing a new staking model, modifying its two-token economic structure, and adopting JSON RPC to improve interoperability. The Foundation is also adapting to regulatory developments, having established MiCAR compliance in early 2025 to support token use across the European Union. These changes reflect an effort to develop infrastructure for practical, real-world applications rather than speculative use.