as we're getting towards the end of the year, i thought it'd be a good time to look back at everything that's happened in venice in 2025.
here's a month-by-month breakdown of how we got where we are now and all of the work the team at venice.ai have put in over the last year.
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JANUARY: New Year, New Token!
Venice kicked off 2025 with the launch of VVV token on the Base network on 27th January. On release of the token 25 million VVV were distributed to over 100,000 early Venice users! The token enabled a novel staking model for API access, aligning the platform with decentralised economics. The staking system granted pro-rata shares of daily API capacity. All of this followed the earlier Pro-user release of the Deepseek R1 70B model, which was notable for its visible reasoning process.
The chat app itself was tuned so conversations with lots of images were less sluggish and an indicator was added when a non-default model was selected. A web-enabled toggle appeared in the chat input, and non-Pro users could now at least see what chat and character features exist. the public characters grid was refreshed visually and character image loading was sped up. There were improvements to the API like support for multiple system prompts and larger image limits,
tldr:
- $VVV token launched on base, with a large community airdrop and staking-for-API design
- Private API access
- Characters update with a web-search toggle and local-storage visibility for pro users
- UI fixes: reduced lag in image-heavy conversations and an indicator for non-default models, character grid refreshed visually, image loading sped up.
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FEBRUARY: vision, in-painting, voice & web search
Early in Feb, inpainting (beta) was pushed out which allowed text-guided edits on generated/uploaded images with an LLM generating masks and a diffusion model doing the actual inpaint. The feature was then temporarily restricted while stability and performance issues were ironed out and the upscaler was moved to a real-esrgan backend.
On the model side, Qwen 2.5 VL 72B landed for pro users in both web app and API, giving “look at this image and reason about it” capability. The sticker factory (beta then opened more broadly), API web search, and serious work on venice voice. Encrypted backups went out to Beta testers and Venice Voice (text-to-speech) rolled from internal testing, to beta and was clearly positioned as a top-requested feature on the Featurebase. the team also shipped an endpoint so autonomous agents staking VVV can mint their own API keys without human involvement!
tldr:
- image inpainting (beta) launched and performance issues were worked through
- Qwen 2.5VL 72B multimodal model added for pro users (vision in app + API)
- sticker factory rolled out from beta to broader access
- API web search released, plus Deepseek-focused optimisations in the web UI
- Venice Voice (tts) moved from internal testing then to beta, laying groundwork
- new endpoint for autonomous, VVV-staking agents to create their own API keys
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MARCH: Shipping SZN!
Ahh, March was definitely a 'shipping season' for Venice with a lot of infrastructural and feature rollouts. There were over 5 changelogs this month! On the API side, crucial consumption limits were introduced for API keys, allowing users to cap usage per epoch in either USD or legacy VCU credits via both the dashboard and the API. The Venice Voice feature exploded in popularity, processing over a million sentences within 24 hours of its beta and becoming fully available by late March, with its text-to-speech voices exposed through the models endpoint.
For Pro users, a major privacy feature was launched in the form of encrypted chat backups for all users, enabling them to export, encrypt with their own password, and restore conversations across devices, with the changelog detailing the specific encryption and chunking scheme. The platform’s model offerings also matured with the addition of the dedicated Deepseek Coder V2 Lite and an upgraded Qwen VL 72B, while system prompts were specifically tuned to reduce over-censorship issues in Qwen and Mistral models. The month ended with a “Venice is Burning” blog post and the burning approximately $100 million worth of unclaimed VVV tokens.
tldr:
- Per-key consumption limits (in USD or VCU) added for API keys in UI + API
- Venice Voice TTS went from beta to full rollout in the API with configurable voices
- Encrypted Chat Backups for Pro users (password-based, chunked, cloud-stored)
- Deepseek Coder v2 lite and updated Qwen VL 72B added and system prompts tuned to reduce over-censorship
- Airdrop window closed and $100m in unclaimed VVV burned
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APRIL: New Backend & Image Engine v2
April with no fools!
This month was about strengthening the foundations of Venice and levelling up images. Mistral 24B became the default general model for everyone and brought multimodal support. A new backend service took over auth, image generation and upscaling to make the app faster and more scalable. Conversation forking and a “jump to bottom” control landed making long chats easier to manage and character moderation was streamlined with quicker approvals and better tooling.
Around the middle of April Venice Image Engine v2 went live. Venice SD35 replaced fluently as the new default image model, paired with a new upscale & enhance pipeline for higher-quality, more detailed outputs. Pro users gained edit-history for conversations, public characters got a rating system, and chat inference was fully migrated to the new backend.
By April 27th. the infrastructure migration was effectively wrapped, adding bulk chat deletion, smoother wallet connect flows, and an openai-compatible image endpoint with json_object response format and Venice-SD35 set as the default image model in the API.
tldr:
- Mistral 24B became the default multimodal chat model for all users.
- Conversation Forking and “Jump to Bottom” were added for better chat navigation.
- Venice Image Engine v2 launched (Venice SD35 + new Upscale & Enhance pipeline).
- Pro users could edit conversation history; public characters gained ratings.
- Backend migration was completed, with bulk chat deletion and an OpenAI-compatible image API + json_object support and venice-sd35 as the api default.
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MAY: New Model Paradigm, Search v2 and Simple Mode
May, the birthday month of the greatest Reddit Mod to ever exist in history of the interwebs!
So, for my birthday month, the whole model lineup was reset and the platform was streamlined. The “New Model Paradigm” introduced five curated categories: Venice Uncensored, Venice Reasoning, Venice Small, Venice Medium, and Venice Large, replacing the older cluttered list. Dolphin Mistral 24B Venice Edition became the flagship uncensored model, and Llama 4 Maverick arrived as a big-context, vision-enabled large model.
Not long after this, Maverick and Llama 3.2 3B were retired from the main app in favour of Qwen3-235B as Venice Large and Qwen3-4B as Venice Small... Deepseek’s removal pushed back to the end of the month and the old inpainting implementation deprecated while a new version was designed. Pro api access also changed: the 'Explorer' tier was retired and new Pro sign-ups moved to a one-off $10 API credit with a bunch of API fixes (EXIF preservation on upscale, openai-style embedding names, json support for upscale/enhance).
Then along came Venice Search v2! This was a full overhaul and it now built search queries from chat context, injected richer results and showed only citations actually used in the answer, across both app and the API. The app also started auto-resetting temperature/top-p when you switch models, tagging 'w/ web search' on responses that included search, and routing shorten/elaborate through the current model instead of the original one.
Pro users got access to 'Simple Mode', which auto-routes between text, images and search without needing to pick a model or mode, plus a full 'enhance any image' flow and the HiDream Image model as a high-adherence option.
Other features added towards the end of May included a hover-state on images, mobile share fixes, HiDream negative prompts disabled, multi-image support for Qwen VL and Character options to hide model 'thinking' in character chats.
tldr:
- Introduced the New Model Paradigm with five core categories.
- Added Dolphin Mistral 24B (Uncensored) and Qwen 3-235B as flagship models.
- Launched Venice Search V2 with contextual citations.
- Added Simple Mode for Pro users and the HiDream image model.
- Retired old inpainting and Explorer API tier; improved API and embedding endpoints.
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JUNE: Stability, Performance and Embeddings
June was mostly about reliability and scale. The first week focused on stability. Images now appear in the UI as each variant finishes, a timer and clearer statuses were added to the Upscaler, and the old code-specific section of the web app was removed to simplify things.
On the API side, Upscale/Enhance got clearer error messages, top_logprobs support landed on Chat Completions and the API keys list endpoint was optimised for heavy users.
The big headline was context and safety. Venice Large’s context window was expanded from 32K to 128K both in app and API, the default image model switched from Venice SD 3.5 to HiDream, and search responses started showing inline citations. Safe-Mode options were consolidated into a single 'Mature Filter' (optionally pin-protected), there was a new setting to mask personal information in the UI and a run of hallucination/formatting bugs were addressed, especially for reasoning models and long sessions. Mid-month added a public embeddings endpoint, plus a new model-name field on the models list, while Flux Custom was updated and the Fluently & SD3.5 image models were formally retired.
By the end of June, a latency timer appeared on messages, support for HEIC images arrived for Vision & Upscaling, and a few annoyances like pasted images overwriting text or file-upload errors were all cleaned up.
tldr:
- Images and upscales now stream into chat as they complete, with better timers and error states; the separate “code” section of the app was removed.
- Venice Large’s context window increased to 128K tokens; HiDream became the default image model.
- A unified 'Mature Filter' (with optional pin) and a privacy setting to mask personal info were introduced.
- Embeddings endpoint launched, Flux Custom was upgraded, and Fluently + SD3.5 image models were retired.
- Latency timer, HEIC support and further image rendering/upload fixes landed at the end of the month.
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JULY: Inpainting Returns and Venice goes Social
July arrived with a mixed big creative upgrades with more polish around routing and feedback. the month opened with image editing (inpainting) returning for pro users, now powered by Flux Kontext Dev with natural language editing for inpainting, style changes, composition tweaks and lighting/colour adjustments.
Simple Mode’s reliability was improved, Venice Uncensored was bumped to a 1.1 version with better tone control and ethical reasoning and legacy coder models (Qwen Coder and Deepseek Coder) were removed after their deprecation period. all references to Venice Compute Units were updated to use DIEM terminology.
Next week - the 2nd week of July - saw the launch of the Venice Social Feed, users could share image generations to a public feed, browse other users generations, upvote/downvote, save posts, reuse prompts and follow favourite creators. Character listings were updated to highlight highly-rated Characters, subscription management moved inside the app and the edit-image API (with url support) was exposed.
By mid-July, tokenised DIEM was formally introduced to the community (ahead of the august launch), thumbs up/down ratings were added to responses, and a notification bell appeared for social interactions, alongside small quality-of-life fixes like preserving EXIF data and smoothing subscription management.
Late July, Venice Large was upgraded to a newer Qwen 235B variant, Venice Small’s context was increased to 40K, and 'auto mode' launched as the default for new users, automatically routing prompts between models and modes. model settings moved into a dropdown attached to the chat input, a consolidated settings menu arrived in the left nav, thumbs-based result ranking and better system-prompt visibility were added, and power-user details like auto-tags on social posts, better bulk deletion, better content violation messaging and per-image regeneration all shipped in the same wave.
tldr:
- Image editing/inpainting came back for Pro, powered by Flux Kontext DEV.
- Venice Uncensored was upgraded to v1.1; legacy coder models were removed; “VCU” was fully renamed to Diem.
- Venice Social Feed launched with share/browse/follow, voting and saved prompts.
- Tokenised Diem was announced to the community, and thumbs up/down ratings were added to responses.
- Auto Mode became the default for new users, Venice Large and Small were upgraded, and a big batch of app/api UX improvements shipped.
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AUGUST: Mobile Apps and Tokenised DIEM Launch
August was a heavy month for tokenomics and reach. First, the Venice mobile apps for iOS and Android were released. The team announced final parameters and launch timing for tokenised DIEM: a target supply of 38,000, a base mint rate of 90, 10,000 DIEM minted by Venice itself and an annual VVV inflation reduction from 14m to 10m starting on launch. anime-specialist image model Anime Wai went live for pro users, and Qwen Image was added as a high-quality general image model tuned for speed and prompt adherence.
On 20 August, tokenised DIEM actually launched with a redesigned token dashboard and a clear deprecation policy + tracker for older models. API pricing for several chat models dropped significantly (Venice Small, Venice Uncensored, Venice Large) and a full deprecation list mapped older models to recommended replacements, including timelines for Deepseek-R1, Llama-3.1-405B, Dolphin-2.9.2-Qwen2-72B, Qwen-2.5 image/code variants, SD3.5 and flux models. Featurebase the web app got improved global chat search across titles, messages and attachments.
Late August went into September with an emphasis on efficiency and polish: Qwen Image got a Lightning Lora that roughly halved generation time and pinned CFG/steps for more consistent results. Latex rendering, image copy behaviour and printing were refined, Qwen Edit became the default for inpainting, Wallet Connect was upgraded; and the Social Feed gained better handling for non-square images, downloads and a 'My Posts' tab. API-side, stricter tool parameter validation, deprecation headers, character photo urls, a Character Details route and support for multiple image variants per API call were added.
tldr:
- Venice launched native mobile apps for iOS and Android.
- Tokenised Diem went live with new tokenomics, reduced VVV inflation and a refreshed dashboard.
- Anime WAI and Qwen Image were introduced as key image models.
- API pricing was cut across several core chat models, and a formal deprecation tracker/model-mapping was published.
- Qwen Image performance improved, Qwen Edit became the default inpainting model, and the social feed + api got multiple quality-of-life upgrades.
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SEPTEMBER: API efficiency and prep for Venice v2
September focused on efficiency and polish ahead of the Venice V2 transition. API usage pricing was restructured to make inference more affordable across major models, including Venice Small, Uncensored, and Large. Qwen Image Lightning LoRA became the default, halving generation time and improving prompt consistency.
The app received several refinements: improved LaTeX rendering, smoother zoom and copy behaviour for images, and better wallet connection handling. The Social Feed gained support for non-square images, a 'My Posts' tab, and one-click downloads. On the API side, deprecation headers, tool parameter validation, character photo URLs, and multi-variant image generation were added.
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OCTOBER: HUGE Month - Venice V2.
https://i.redd.it/eorfkog6so2g1.gif
October then arrives and its one of the most eventful months of the year.
By this point there are over 1.300,000 users on Venice that are enjoying the benefits of private, uncensored AI, and over 1,000,000 Venice API calls from developers are happening every single day.
The #1 most requested feature by users has been video generation. Venice delivered and then some. Not only did Venice Video get released with text-to-video, but with image-to-video capability too but the main surprise was that it contained some of the biggest models in the world. Venice Video launched to Beta users and later Pro users with Sora 2, Veo 3.1, Wan 2.2 A14B Sora 2 Pro, Ovi, Veo3 Fast, Veo3 Full, Wan 2.5 Preview, Kling 2.5 Turbo.
One thing the team needed to figure out was what to do about these models that hoover up your data. The models are not hosted by Venice, but Venice anonymises your data before sending it to the provider. Here is what the development team said about it:
Note that when using these models, the companies can see your generations. Your requests will be anonymized, but not fully private - the generations are submitted by Venice and not tied to your personal information. The privacy parameters are disclosed clearly in the UI.
The only data the provider could see (if they wished to, for whatever reason), is your prompt data. They have no way to tie it to your identity in any way. If you are sharing something sensitive its recommended to stick to fully private models.
A new credit system was built to enable scalable economics of video generation:
- $1 = 100 credits
- 1 DIEM = 100 credits per day
- Credit balance = (USD paid + DIEM balance)*100
On the API side, model lineup was expanded by adding three new large models in beta (Hermes Llama 3.1 405B, Qwen 3 Next 80B, and Qwen 3 Coder 480B) and retired the legacy 'Diem' system for credits.
All API inference is now billed via staked tokenised DIEM or USD.
There is a channel in the Venice Discord server for video generation and some of you have already created some incredible content using these models within Venice. If you're not already in the Discord, you should consider joining to talk directly to the team and chat, share, and learn from and with over 7,000 other Venice users. It is a welcoming place and people are always willing to share prompts, ideas, apps and websites they've built using the API, and show off their generations.
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The team wrote a development update to share all the latest information on whats been happening, and whats to come over the next couple of months or so.
Big upgrades coming to our tokenomics and mechanics:
➢ October 23rd: VVV emission reduction from 10M/yr to 8M/yr
➢ Early Nov: Start VVV buyback & burn based on October revenue
➢ Later in Q4: continued vertical integration of VVV into Venice V2
See more: October Development Update
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The Venice Support Bot debuted as an AI assistant built into the UI, capable of answering FAQs, fetching documentation, and escalating support tickets automatically.
Remix Mode (which auto-generates creative variants of your last image), Spotlight Search (Cmd/Ctrl+K for fast conversation lookup), and a toggle for Enter key behaviour were all added. Character chats gained a context summariser to maintain coherence over long sessions. The API introduced three Beta models: Hermes Llama 3.1 405B, Qwen 3 Next 80B, and Qwen 3 Coder 480B. Legacy VCU billing was officially retired in favour of DIEM and USD credit systems.
tldr:
- Introduced Venice Video (text-to-video and image-to-video).
- Added the Venice Support Bot for instant in-app help.
- Added Remix Mode, Spotlight Search, and chat Enter-key toggle.
- Character chats gained a context summariser.
- Added new beta models (Hermes Llama, Qwen 3 Next, Qwen 3 Coder).
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NOVEMBER:
In November 2025, Venice team continued to expand its capabilities with new models and features.
The GLM 4.6 model (developed by Zhipu AI) was added for Pro users, delivering a high-performance option for reasoning and creative tasks. The response to this model was probably the most overwhelmingly positive I've seen on this subreddit. It had some quirks here and there and almost got taken back out fo public release and put back into Beta, but the positivity surrounding it despite its faults is what kept it public. The team worked on fixing the model while it was available and everyone was understanding and supportive of it so that was cool.
Dolphin Mistral 3.2 (a new model in beta) was added in. The older Flux models were retired. The team worked on removing the safety filters from Wan 2.5 to allow more open-ended generations. A major new capability was the launch of Webscraping which allows users to include any URL in a prompt and the system will fetch and use the page content as context.
The app received a bunch of interface improvements notably a redesigned Library for managing generated content and the ability to adjust settings when regenerating videos, support for HEIF image uploads, GitHub-style markdown table rendering in chat, automatic URL detection in prompts, and even speech-to-text via Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) in the mobile app.
Another feature that I am sure will be welcomed is Venice Memoria (beta) which is an optional long-term memory system for more coherent long conversations. Anoher addition is shareable character link functionality to easily share custom characters with others.
Later in the month, the team announced a significant upcoming model update: the large Qwen3-235B model will be split into two specialised variants (one “thinking” with full reasoning, and one “instruct” for faster responses) starting mid-December, accompanied by a 50% reduction in usage pricing for the model family.
Several cutting-edge image models – Nano Banana, Nano Banana Pro, and Seedream V4 were just added too. They are proprietary image generators from Google and ByteDance accessible on Venice via the pay-per-use credit system (or using the DIEM token for access).
TL;DR: Hello present day!...
- GLM 4.6 (a high-benchmark model by Zhipu AI) was introduced for Pro users, Dolphin Mistral 3.2 was added in beta, and the Veo 3 video model was reintroduced. In parallel, older Flux generation models were retired and the Wan 2.5 model’s safety check was lifted for more open generation.
- Scrape web pages for context – users can include a URL in their prompt and the content of that page will be fetched and used as AI context automatically.
- A new Library interface launched for browsing one’s creations, and numerous UI improvements were made (eg. video re-generation controls, support for HEIF image uploads, GitHub-flavoured markdown tables in chat, automatic URL detection in prompts, etc.).
- The mobile app was also updated with features like Automatic Speech Recognition for beta testers.
- Memoria (in beta) was introduced as a long-term memory feature to improve the AI’s continuity over lengthy chats, and character share links were added to let users share custom characters via a simple link.
- An official update announced that the big Qwen3-235B model will split into two distinct models on December 14, 2025, alongside a 50% cut in its pricing to $0.45/$3.50 per 1M tokens.
- Added three advanced image generation models - Nano Banana, Nano Banana Pro, and Seedream V4 - available on a pay-per-use basis. These “frontier” models (from Google and ByteDance) can be accessed via DIEM tokens, expanding the platform’s image creation capabilities.
And that's the lot for 2025!
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November had some new little things for the subreddit too which I may as well add here:
NEW MODERATOR
we have a new Moderator here on the subreddit that you've probably seen around helping out here and there! He is great and super helpful and definitely helps take some of the load off. His username is u/MountainAssignment36. So if you need anything then feel free to contact me or the mountainman!
VENICE CEO ACTIVE ON r/VeniceAI
Erik Vorhees / u/evorhees himself hopped on the subreddit in November and revived his Reddit account that hadn't been active for a few years. He responded to a post here. I added a user flair to his account so you know that its legitimate.
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I know its a beast of a post and most of you probably won't read the whole thing but you can skim through to see just how much the team has got through this year. This isn't every single minor fix, but it's all the major updates and new features. As you can see, the dev team has been absolutely relentless, barely letting up the entire time.
Now the focus shifts to Venice v2 and beyond.
I can't spill the beans just yet because of confidentiality, but the second i'm allowed to share what's coming next, i'll post it here as always. i'll be back to add december's updates to this post once we're there.
Keep an eye out for changelogs here on the subreddit, on Venice Blog and Featurebase, and join the Discord to join the team and 7,000+ Venice users.
Take care Venetians!
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