VeVe

David Yu has worked in the gaming and collectibles industry since the age of 17. Starting with trading cards, comics, and toys, he opened a retail store in Auckland that brought players and collectors together, and he has kept the store ever since; it was through the store that he met Dan Crothers, and the two became friends over a shared interest in games. In 2017, as blockchain technology was emerging, the two concluded that the next step for collecting lay in the digital realm, and they combined Yu’s retail and gaming experience with Crothers’s background in web design and development to build a digital collecting app: VeVe.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

VeVe itself gives 2017 as the year it was founded by David Yu and Dan Crothers; other accounts say VeVe was established in 2018 and that the business began as a comic store on Auckland’s Karangahape Road (K Road).⁠[2][3][4]

Before they had any users, revenue, or even a prototype, the two traveled to the United States to pitch major rights holders; Yu recalled that they had “just some PowerPoint slides.” They then returned to the studios repeatedly with roadmaps, fielding questions about sales, marketing, design, security, authentication, and technology, and used consumer data to argue that there would be future demand for digital collectibles.⁠[1][1][1][1]

ECOMI Technology Pte. Ltd., the issuer of the OMI token, was registered in Singapore on May 2, 2018, as an exempt private company limited by shares, with no parent company.⁠[5][5][5]

OMI, the token of the VeVe ecosystem, was first issued on the GoChain blockchain in 2019, with a total supply cap of 750 billion tokens.⁠[5][5]

VeVe launched in 2020, and its first release was the #100 Batman designed by Todd McFarlane for the Batman Black & White series. Original projections called for about 60,000 users by the end of the app’s first year; it actually reached that figure six weeks after launch. Yu said that soon after launch the app had millions of downloads and hundreds of thousands of accounts holding collectibles, and some collectibles sold out in a very short time.⁠[1][2][1][1][1]

The app’s technology had been built for the projected number of users, and once traffic and transaction volumes far exceeded expectations, the team had to adjust, repair, and rebuild the system while operating it. Yu later said this scaling pressure forced the company to upgrade its infrastructure quickly while reporting its progress openly to the community.⁠[1][6][6][6]

In March 2021, VeVe committed to making its NFTs 100% carbon neutral; in May of the same year, ECOMI first announced a core partnership with the Ethereum layer-2 network Immutable X.⁠[2][7]

Marvel and Orbis Blockchain Technologies Limited, which operates VeVe, announced that the first official Marvel NFTs from their collaboration would be five Spider-Man digital statues, released on August 7 and priced by rarity: the common edition cost $40 with 32,000 units, and the rarest “secret rare” edition cost $400 with 1,000 units. That month also brought a digital version of the 1939 Marvel Comics #1 and Marvel Mightys digital figures, among other releases. Marvel President Dan Buckley said Spider-Man was the best way to kick off the global digital collectibles collaboration with VeVe, and Yu, as VeVe’s co-founder and CEO, said the partnership had finally come to fruition.⁠[8][8][8][8][8][8][8][8]

In November 2021, Disney released a “Golden Moments” series of NFTs on VeVe for its first Disney Plus Day, featuring classic characters and items from its popular properties; in some markets, buyers received a three- or 12-month Disney+ subscription credit.⁠[9][9]

The same month, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) partnered with VeVe to turn four Day of the Dead–themed “Forever” stamp images into limited-edition NFTs, which USPS licensing manager Amity Kirby said sold out in less than a second; on December 24, USPS released a second set of NFTs based on Christmas-themed stamps.⁠[10][10]

ECOMI announced that VeVe had completed its integration with Immutable X, moving more than 2.6 million licensed NFTs to Ethereum and allowing more than 1 million active users to trade with zero gas fees; Immutable X covers the cost of carbon credits so that NFTs minted and traded on the platform are carbon neutral, and VeVe separately provided grants worth more than $7 million to environmental causes. Immutable X co-founder Robbie Ferguson said the move showed that scale, user experience, and carbon impact need not come at the expense of Ethereum’s security and liquidity.⁠[7][7][7][7]

On January 28, 2022, the OMI token began migrating from GoChain to Ethereum as an ERC-20 token; all vesting and unlocks were completed in April 2022, and no new tokens are to be created.⁠[5][5][5]

Chaosium, publisher of the tabletop role-playing game Call of Cthulhu, had released NFTs on VeVe through its licensee TYPE40 in July 2021 and hinted that more series would follow; after sustained criticism from fans, Chaosium announced on February 16, 2022, that it was suspending further NFT releases. President Rick Meints said he understood the fans’ anger and disappointment, that the decision had been made in cooperation with TYPE40 and VeVe, and that the company would never require players to own an NFT to enjoy its products.⁠[11][11][11][11][11][11]

Meints and Chaosium Vice President of Licensing Michael O’Brien also defended VeVe, calling it an “ethical company” that uses blockchain “in a legitimate, meaningful, and environmentally responsible way,” and cited ECOMI’s March 2021 explanation of energy efficiency. Another point of contention was that VeVe had originally run on the lower-energy GoChain and in May 2021 announced it would move more than 2.6 million NFTs to Ethereum via Immutable X; critics argued that the underlying blockchain was still energy-intensive.⁠[11][11][11][11]

On March 22, 2022, VeVe was hit by an exploit in which attackers illegally obtained a large quantity of the in-app token “gems,” which are used to buy collectibles in drops and on the market. VeVe acknowledged the incident on X the next day, announced that it had closed the market as well as gem purchases and transfers while it investigated, and restricted a number of user accounts suspected of buying cheap gems from fraudulent accounts. Some users estimated that millions of gems had been obtained illegally and complained that the prices of their collectibles had fallen sharply within a week.⁠[12][12][12][12][12][12][12]

VeVe Digital ranked first on Deloitte New Zealand’s 2023 Fast 50 growth index.⁠[1]

Licensed by Sesame Workshop, VeVe launched the first Sesame Street NFTs; the first was Cookie Monster standing next to an oven, in 5,555 editions at $60 each, released on March 19. At the time, VeVe said it had sold more than 8 million NFTs through its mobile marketplace.⁠[3][3][3]

Some fans criticized the move as a departure from Sesame Street’s educational mission of helping disadvantaged children learn, said the price put it out of reach for many viewers, and questioned the environmental impact of NFTs; Becca Petunia, a writer for the fan community ToughPigs, said NFTs ran counter to the ideals she associated with Sesame Street. A Sesame Workshop spokesperson did not address the criticism directly, saying only that selling digital collectibles helps fund its mission and gives adult fans a new way to show their support.⁠[13][13][13][13][13][13][13]

VeVe launched the digital comics platform VeVe Comics with Marvel as its first major publishing partner: the app opened with more than 300 new Marvel comics, with new issues added weekly alongside print and older Marvel titles added over time; unlike services such as ComiXology, some limited-edition digital comics can be bought, sold, and resold on the platform’s marketplace. Marvel’s long-term partnership with Amazon’s ComiXology had ended in 2023. In 2025, Yu called the launch of VeVe Comics at SXSW a turning point for the company.⁠[14][14][14][14][14][6]

On May 8, 2024, OMI began migrating to the Ethereum layer-2 network Base; for continued OMI rewards in the collector program, the migration deadline was August 1, 2025.⁠[5][5]

YG Entertainment announced that the girl group BLACKPINK’s first digital collectibles would be released through VeVe from May 22 to 26, themed on the 2022 single “Pink Venom” and including 3D figures of all four members, a concert stage, and light sticks.⁠[15][15][15]

Yu said in June 2025 that VeVe’s integration with StackR lets users buy and sell collectibles with OMI, and that the company was preparing VeVeVerse, a mobile-first metaverse app where users can display their collections and interact in 3D spaces.⁠[6][6]

On October 1, 2026, ECOMI launched OMI Unlimited, the official OMI staking program running on Base. Its first season ends on December 31; stakers accumulate experience points according to the amount and duration of their lock-up and redeem them for collectibles and VeVe Gems at the end of the season, with rewards not paid in OMI or fiat currency. In the first 24 hours, 578 stakers locked 13.85 billion OMI.⁠[16][16][16][16]

VeVe’s terms of use state that the service provider is Orbis Technology Limited, incorporated in New Zealand (company number 6545833); the OMI white paper records the VeVe operating company with the same number as Orbis Blockchain Technologies Limited and lists David Yu as co-CEO and founder and Daniel Crothers as COO and co-founder.⁠[17][5][5]

Users first buy gems in the app and then use gems to buy collectibles; gems are the app’s official exchange mechanism. OMI is the ecosystem rewards token issued by ECOMI: its total supply is capped at 750 billion, of which about 311 billion can enter circulation, with the rest held in reserve, permanently burned (more than 111 billion), or stranded on GoChain and unrecoverable (about 98 billion); buying collectibles on the StackR marketplace and similar actions burn OMI. Holding OMI does not represent ownership of the equity, revenues, or intellectual property of ECOMI or VeVe, and it carries no governance voting rights.⁠[17][5][16][5][5]

As of October 2026, VeVe’s About page lists cumulative figures of more than 4 million digital comics sold, more than 900 comic series, more than 6 million digital collectibles sold, more than 200 collectible brands, more than $1.4 billion in community market sales, and customers in more than 150 countries; the same page also says more than 8 million NFTs have been sold. Partner brands include Star Wars, Disney, Marvel, and Pixar, and digital comics publishers include Marvel, Dynamite Entertainment, and VIZ Media. ECOMI’s website listed, at the same time, more than 700,000 ecosystem users, more than 12 million collectibles minted, and more than 440 billion OMI burned.⁠[2][2][2][2][16]

VeVe: Official website: https://www.veve.me/ (opens in a new window).⁠[18]

ECOMI: Official website: https://www.ecomi.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[16]

X: Public account: https://x.com/veve_official (opens in a new window)⁠[18]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6psiYgowNPQbodOphinq1A (opens in a new window)⁠[18]