Economics of Community Tokens
Discussion
Jihad Esmail:
"A token's governance power is powerful because it gives you the ability to conserve the vibes. As a builder on the protocol, you hold to help ensure that you can't get deplatformed. As a user, you hold to help ensure fees don't increase. As a passive investor, you hold to help ensure that the protocol continues to grow.
All of these goals are served by playing positive-sum games, ensuring that the protocol stays open and as valuable as possible for everyone.
Community tokens follow a similar path to value accrual. While short-term value may accrue to the token through gating access (e.g. to Discord, content, product, events, etc.), long-term value accrues when community members are holding to:
Influence the meme. As a holder, I want to have a say in how the meme is manifested. In other words, token governance is a means of contributing to a headless brand. The balance between meme conservation (group) and evolution (individual) is manifested in the Vibes Infinity Flow.
Spread the meme. As a holder, I also want to ensure that more value is continuing to be created for as many new community members as possible. This increases the value of the meme, a net-positive for everyone involved.
In some ways, this is no different than other financial assets in communities we're a part of today: I want to make my neighborhood as nice as possible so that my home value increases. I want to give back to my university so that the value of my degree increases. I want to be a productive citizen so that the national economy grows.
Community tokens serve as financialized coordination tools in previously unfinancialized communities."