Let's talk about #cryptoeconomics and #tokeneconomics
1. Crypto economics ≠ token economics
2. Token economics ≠ tokenomics
3. Token economics ≠ token design
4. Token design ≠ tokenomics
Resources at end of 🧵
Crypto economics is the study of designing embedded incentives of the system to hold desired properties with the goal of validating and agreeing on messages and information transacted in the system.
This can include messages being transferred like Ethereum, or information being kept like Filecoin.
The goal of crypto economics is to answer: given these constraints and goal, what kinds of incentives can we design to achieve the desired properties we want?
Where you find this? in the infrastructure layer
In the infrastructure layer, the goal is to secure the integrity of information and protect the information against adversary actions.
The goal is to minimise adversary attacks.
The economics is to the economics of validating information or messages.
Token economics is the study of designing incentives of the system to encourage economic transactions with the goal of coordinating and collaborating between agents in the system.
The goal of token economics is to answer: given these constraints and goal, what kinds of economic transactions and resources can we design to achieve coordination properties we want?
Where you find this? in the platform application layer. Metaverse, DeFi
The platform layer’s goal is to increase economic transactions as that is a proxy for value creation. The economics is to maintain the right incentives and allocation of resources.
Here, like a country, a platform can go through economic busts and booms, recession, financial crisis and hyperinflation.
Watch on youtube
More resources
A 💡 moment: crypto economics is about robustness amongst parties on the input and function. Token economics is about robustness amongst behaviours on the parties and function.
!!! That’s it !!! How that is defined in math, idk yet. But the crypto economics part is #BFT
Even if this doesn’t make sense to people, at least I have an archive of my notes for when I need to dive back into this
Anyway, #robustness is not about knowledge but influence. If it’s knowledge, it’s privacy we talk about. Influence is economics.
We need to design protocol (crypto econs) and systems (token econs) to work regardless of adverse influence.
For context, BFT = Byzantine fault tolerance. Web3 uses it. Or CEPS = circuit evaluation with passive security. Cryptography uses it.
(I’m not smart enough to understand the math behind these protocols. But these are examples where crypto econs at layer 1/2 come in)
I cannot emphasise enough that THESE ARE VASTLY DIFFERENT PROBLEMS TO SOLVE. Different methodologies, solutions and outputs.
In crypto econs, you typically look for correctness, liveness and privacy. we call these #conditions. Correctness is ALWAYS there. Liveness and privacy depend on what you’re building and the necessary conditions.
In token econs, I’m still working on defining the properties. It’s still very new and I’m waiting for more time to pass to show us what’s the necessary conditions. My hunch is around allocation, governance execution to remove bad actors and something around qualifying the network
Theory is one. Proving them empirical with onchain data based on your transactions in primary market is the next step.
Stay tuned to this one. It’s gonna take a couple more years
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