Tokens as a Form of Organization and as Commons
Discussion
A Token is an Organization ... and a Commons!
Rutger van Zuidam:
"A token ecosystem is more than a blockchain or “coins”. It is an information (also value) carrier. An economic structure where multiple parties, often with conflicting interests, coordinate their actions coherently — without any formal organization in the conventional sense of the word. All coordination is literally encoded in the protocol, including the governing and regulatory aspects. Compare it to traffic rules and laws.
This has given rise to a whole new area of economics: token economics; a mix of micro economics, game theory and behavioral economics. Again, the hard work has to be done before the coding starts. What are the goals of the ecosystem, what are the actors involved, what are their motives and goals and what rules and incentives do we need to align all these different actors and interests?
This is not so much about software engineering. This is about engineering complex systems. It’s about creating interconnected collaborative communities. Once launched, a token ecosystem can be a self regulating organization. No one is in charge, and it is owned by itself. We know relatively little of the needs of this kind of organizations. Should it have a specific legal framework? It’s own regulatory framework? What kind of standards will it adopt or reject and why? How will it fund itself? How will it fund its changes? Which changes? The fact that these organizations are digital and (thus) borderless makes answering these questions even more difficult. But that doesn’t mean there is no way forward. On the contrary, there is so much of this in the making right now and we can only find out how it works by actually putting this to work.
Blockchains and Tokens are Part of the Digital Commons
One of the most interesting aspects of open blockchains especially, is that something (code, data, protocols) has come into existence that is not owned by any private or public entity. It is not unique in this respect — there is a long tradition of Public Domain and Open Source software, and there is a large amount of digital content in the Creative Commons. But still, it is relatively rare that valuable resources are created, maintained and upgraded outside the scope of both the state and the private sector. It seems to defeat the economic law that is known as “the tragedy of the commons”.
The commons, of course, refers to the pre-industrial communal meadows that existed throughout Europe. But the commons never really vanished, in Europe. Many institutions, from building unions in Britain to vinicultural co-ops in France to the “waterschappen” (polder and dike authorities) in the Netherlands have strong communal characteristics. One could say that the commons are deeply rooted in European culture.
In the digital domain, the commons have been brought up as an alternative to what has been dubbed data capitalism, platform capitalism or even surveillance capitalism. Because of the strong network effects in the digital economy, markets have a tendency towards monopolies. By putting infrastructure, protocols and certain data in the commons, one can create “fat protocols” (UPDATE: These are more precisely described as Application Layer Protocols, as suggested by sebnem), so that a much larger part of the network value falls to the community — and private companies can offer their services in competition on top of that, without fear of monopolization.
To sum it all up: #commonization
… we have learned that the real value of blockchain and tokens lies in the possibility to “commonize” important parts of the digital infrastructure. At the most fundamental level, we are talking about only a handful of entities: value, identity, maybe two or three more. One level higher, we envision things like a commonized infrastructure for energy, for payment systems, for supply chains, for pension rights, for consent, and many, many more (we can build protocols on top of these protocols). Each new protocol a fresh market with opportunities for business to deliver value. We know, by and large, what we want to build. Ecosystems. Complex systems that are antifragile because of their decentralized nature, that thrive in unpredictable conditions. We take our inspiration from nature itself." (https://medium.com/@rutgervz/blockchain-and-tokenization-beyond-the-hype-8bacd3c43481)