Cryptoeconomic Primitive
Definition
"Protocol based incentives systems that are uniquely enabled by tokens. Also referred to as “tokenized economic games”.
They enable the coordination and allocation of capital to achieve a shared goal via the use of various economic and cryptographic mechanisms." (https://blog.coinbase.com/the-emergence-of-cryptoeconomic-primitives-14ef3300cc10)
Characteristics
"A Cryptoeconomic Primitive should be a self-sustaining system, and its intrinsic token must be a necessary element of that system³. In other words, it shouldn’t require anything other than itself to function and the removal of the token would cause it to fail or work less effectively than the system with a token.
A Cryptoeconomic Primitive should result in the predictable coordination of a set of actors (whether it be humans or machines) towards some specific shared goal or outcome. This can include predictably failing in certain situations and knowing limitations." (https://blog.coinbase.com/the-emergence-of-cryptoeconomic-primitives-14ef3300cc10)
Examples
"To find some examples, look no further than the bustling category of Curation Markets: which is a field of primitives that are specifically designed to curate information and reduce information asymmetry⁴. The most notable primitives are Token Curated Registries (TCRs) and Curved Bonding. Both share the same goal to incentivize token holders to curate information, but differ in behavior and output: Token Curated Registries give you a binary outcome (i.e. is this thing “in” or “out” of the registry) where as Curved Bonding systems give you a gradient score of the relevance of something.
These two primitives alone are serving as the foundation for multiple consumer applications, protocols, and platforms that utilize curation markets on their own specific vertical or use case.
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Outside of Curation Markets, some other examples of Cryptoeconomic Primitives include:
- Prediction Markets: incentivized coordination and allocation of capital to correctly forecast future events
- Stablecoins: incentivized coordination and allocation of capital to maintain the stable value of the stablecoin, usually relative to some measure (E.g. 1 USD)
- Geospatial Markets: incentivized coordination and allocation of capital (e.g. self driving cars, beacons, any infrastructure or object) throughout the physical world and prove its location."
(https://blog.coinbase.com/the-emergence-of-cryptoeconomic-primitives-14ef3300cc10)