# What is the purpose of Vow? The purpose of VOW is to provide nodes on the network (e.g. businesses) the ability to issue fixed value tokenised currencies called Voucher Currencies. Merchants purchase a number of VOW tokens, representing 20% of their annual rewards budget. They then send this sum to a smart contract address on the blockchain - a process which currently results in creating Voucher Currencies worth 5x the deposit value, ready for distribution. Consequently the business can issue their intended rewards to customers as they normally would, however this time denominated in Voucher Currencies as opposed to fiat cash. Merchants can unlock their VOW and receive its full value back any time they return the same value of Voucher Currencies they have distributed to the smart contract. This strategy means businesses will have accepted back from their customers the same value of Voucher Currencies originally distributed, proving that they honoured their Vow. In this way, VOW serves as a collateral in the process of replacing cash in any spend cycle. As such, VOW can be applied to any spend cycle as long as the distributor backs their distribution by **vowing** to accept them back against their goods and services and in addition locks up an additional deposit (20%) of Vow in the smart contract. --- # 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://vow-2.gitbook.io/white-paper/frequently-asked-questions/what-is-the-purpose-of-vow.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.