# Utility * **Staking for Validation** – Validators must stake $VAT tokens to participate in validation tasks. Staked tokens act as collateral that can be slashed for dishonest or low-quality work, ensuring economic security and network integrity. * **Validator Rewards** – Validators who submit accurate and consensus-aligned results are rewarded in $VAT. Rewards are distributed from the task pool based on performance, uptime, and participation frequency. * **Anchor Economy** – Developers who create Memory Anchors earn $VAT royalties each time their logic is used in a validation task. This incentivizes high-quality Anchor creation and fosters a self-sustaining marketplace for trust logic. * **Governance Participation** – $VAT token holders can propose and vote on key protocol upgrades, economic parameters, anchor standards, and system improvements. This ensures that the protocol remains community-driven and adaptable over time. * **Ecosystem Growth & Incentives** – A portion of $VAT is allocated to ecosystem grants, partnerships, and early support programs aimed at accelerating adoption, use case development, and community expansion. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://validnet.gitbook.io/docs/tokenomics/tokenomics/utility.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.