“What kind of person is this system imagining as its ‘user’—and who doesn’t fit that definition?”
I often notice projects say they’re “for everyone,” but the design usually betrays a narrower picture. Not because the team is lying, but because every system silently chooses its preferred user: the person who has the time, the habits, and the risk tolerance to live inside it. With Vanar Chain, the public story is “real-world adoption” through games, entertainment, brands, and “the next 3 billion consumers.” The honest question is whether the system is truly imagining an ordinary consumer, or whether it is still imagining a crypto-native user who happens to like games.
If I try to define Vanar’s “user” without repeating slogans, it sounds like this: someone who wants to participate in digital experiences—games, metaverse worlds, brand campaigns—where assets, identity, and engagement can move in a more open way than typical Web2 platforms. In that framing, the user is not primarily “a DeFi trader.” The user is a gamer, a fan, a brand community member, a creator, and also the studios and developers who build the experiences that attract those people. That focus is consistent with Vanar’s own positioning around gaming, virtual worlds, and consumer adoption narratives.
But once you break “users” into real segments, you start to see the tension. Retail users want convenience and safety: sign-in that works, recovery when something goes wrong, and a feeling that a mistake won’t destroy them. Businesses and brands want predictable operations: stable costs, clear rules, and a support path when customers get stuck. Developers want familiar tooling, documentation, and a stable environment that won’t break every few months. Institutions, if they ever arrive, will want compliance, auditability, and governance clarity. Vanar seems to speak most loudly to developers and consumer-facing businesses: it highlights EVM compatibility, which is mainly a builder convenience, and it leans on an ecosystem narrative tied to known products like Virtua Metaverse and VGN games network as distribution surfaces for consumer activity.
The hidden requirements are where mainstream dreams often get quietly narrowed. The first hidden requirement is still wallet reality. Even if a project wants “3 billion consumers,” it either asks users to handle keys, or it hides keys behind custody, social login, or managed recovery. If it chooses self-custody, the “user” becomes someone willing to learn seed phrases, phishing risks, and irreversible mistakes. If it chooses managed recovery, the “user” becomes someone comfortable trusting intermediaries again. Vanar’s high-level messaging leans toward making Web3 “user-friendly,” but what exactly that means in practice is not fully proven from marketing language alone.
The second hidden requirement is access and compliance. Real consumer adoption is not just an app store problem; it runs into regions, payment rails, on/off ramps, and legal rules that differ by country. If a system depends on exchanges, certain regions may be excluded by default. If it depends on identity checks for some actions, parts of the “3 billion” become a compliance question, not a product question. Vanar is increasingly presenting itself as a stack for PayFi and real-world assets, which usually increases the role of compliance rather than reducing it. If that is the direction, the real “user” might shift from everyday gamers to businesses and partners who can operate under these constraints.
Then there is the question of where complexity lands. Many chains become “simple” by moving the hard parts onto someone else: developers, infrastructure operators, or foundations. Vanar’s own documentation describes a hybrid consensus direction where Proof of Authority is “governed” by Proof of Reputation, and it states that initially the Vanar Foundation runs all validator nodes, later onboarding external validators through a reputation-based process. This is not automatically bad, but it is a clear signal: early-stage safety and coordination are being carried by a central operator. That means the system’s ideal user, at least at the beginning, may be someone who is comfortable with a foundation-led chain, trusting that decentralization expands later.
This is where “ideal user” versus “real user” becomes sharp. The ideal user implied by consumer Web3 is someone who wants ownership and portability but doesn’t want to learn crypto. The real user in most Web3 systems is still someone who tolerates friction, accepts weird steps, and has a higher appetite for risk. Vanar says it is trying to bridge that gap through consumer verticals like gaming and entertainment, where users already exist at scale. But a vertical is not a solution by itself. The match only works if onboarding, recovery, and customer support feel closer to Web2 norms while preserving whatever “ownership” is supposed to mean.
So where does it break first if mass adoption actually happens? Usually onboarding and recovery break first. If a user loses access, who helps them, and what power does that helper have? If a user is scammed, is the response “sorry, it’s irreversible,” or is there a practical safety layer? The second breakpoint is operational friction: customer support tickets, charge disputes (even if the chain can’t reverse), and the simple fact that mainstream brands cannot afford a support experience that feels like a forum thread. The third breakpoint is governance under pressure. If the chain begins with foundation-run validators, what happens when a major partner, regulator, or platform demands changes that conflict with user expectations? The documentation’s emphasis on initial foundation-run validators makes this a real question, not a theoretical one.
There is also a clarity gap in the story itself. Vanar simultaneously describes itself through gaming and metaverse roots, and through an “AI-native stack” narrative for PayFi and real-world assets. Both can be true, but broad narratives often hide the central user. When a project tries to serve too many “mainstream verticals,” it risks building a system that is compelling in pitch decks but hard to explain in one sentence to an ordinary person.
What remains unclear, and needs proof rather than confident language, is the practical path from “crypto system” to “ordinary consumer routine.” How exactly will users onboard without becoming security experts? How will account recovery work without quietly recreating the same gatekeepers people wanted to escape? How will the network show, with concrete milestones, that early foundation control becomes meaningfully more distributed over time? If this is truly built for ordinary users, what will be the first proof that the system is carrying complexity itself—rather than placing it on the user?
