Tokenized Communities

If tokens are investments in memes, every community doesn’t need a unique token. Protocols already have this figured out.

In self-managing organizations, leadership is distributed across roles, not individuals.Rather than there being one leader in a community, there are many. Hierarchy is dynamic based on the specific function being carried out, the scope of the decision, or the context of the work.

Tokenized communities ensure some means of voting out core contributors and creating, editing, and ratifying community-wide proposals. This is most commonly manifested in treasury governance – members of tokenized communities have a say in how the group’s treasury is allocated. 

Network Tokens: tokens that represent a shared meme that act as a “schelling point” to connect other communities that aim to proliferate that meme in a specific way or for a specific audience.

For example, we value traditional companies based on assets and cash flows. Companies with more capital – or expected ability to absorb more capital in the future – are ideally valued more highly than others.That isn’t the case for every organization. Jacob Horne argues in his essay on “Hyperstructures” that crypto protocols built with certain trai... See more

On the other hand, Time Magazine minted an NFT collection. Time is not a tokenized community. The community at-large has not adopted the token as a means of organizing around the brand in any meaningful way. 

Positive-sum: economic model is expansive, not extractive.

Tokenized communities are collectively governed.This does not mean that token-holders vote on every decision in the community. Rather, it means that power in the DAO ultimately lies in the hands of token-holders.

Aspirational: actively working to progressively fulfill the first 6 criteria.