Tokenized Communities

Collectively governed: governed by all token-holders.Meme-driven: working toward the proliferation of a common meme.

Tokenized communities are working toward a collective goal or upholding a shared set of values. In other words, tokenized communities use tokens to coordinate around the proliferation of a shared meme.By meme, I mean an idea or element of culture that evolves as it spreads throughout a network.

As mentioned at the beginning of the essay, protocol tokens are financially valuable in large part because of the "threat of the fee." Taking this idea to its extreme, 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. ... See more

Community tokens serve as financialized coordination tools in previously unfinancialized communities.So how do tokenized communities economically sustain themselves? This is primarily a question of how individual members and contributors get paid, so that they aren’t forced to allocate time elsewhere. Unlike protocols, people need to be paid. 

A good way to test this for most tokenized communities today is to ask: if their primary communications tool (e.g. Discord) disappeared, would this community still exist?

All of these goals are served by playing positive-sum games, ensuring that the protocol stays open and as valuable as possible for everyone. 

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

Tokenized community: a progressively self-managing and collectively-governed community that works toward the proliferation and development of a common meme using a token as its primary means of coordination. 

Given their use of a token as the primary means of coordination, they are not tied to any communications tool or social media platform. They are independent of centralized infrastructure.

What does it mean for a community to be tokenized? Simply put, tokenization implies that a community is using a token as its primary means of coordination. The token is a proxy for some larger meme or set of values.