Designing Robust Economic Systems

Are you ready to transform the way we think about digital economies? Token engineering offers solutions for real-world challenges like inequality and unsustainable practices. In this groundbreaking tutorial series, you'll gain the essential knowledge to create innovative and impact-driven tokenised ecosystems, with a focus on Cardano's advanced capabilities.

Our series demystifies token engineering fundamentals, arming you with the tools to understand market mechanisms, optimise incentive structures, and design tokens with purpose. We'll take you from concept to implementation, empowering a new generation of designers to shape a more equitable and sustainable future.

"Our vision is to empower a whole generation of designers to create thriving, micro-economies... But to build these quality solutions, we need a deeper understanding of the problems and the tools."

Why Token Engineering on Cardano?

Cardano's research-backed architecture offers unprecedented levels of security and programmability, creating fertile ground for responsible innovation. By understanding and leveraging the unique capabilities of the eUTXO model, you'll be able to build more efficient, transparent, and robust micro-economies.

What You'll Learn

  • Key concepts of token engineering applied to eUTXO blockchains
  • Strategies for designing effective incentives and market mechanisms
  • Best practices for sustainable and impactful token design

All tutorial videos will be accompanied by supporting documentation, with Japanese translations available for wider global access. Eventually, with the help of the community, this series will be translated into multiple asian languages such as Vietnamese, Indonesian, and more.

Tutorial Series Overview

An outline of the topics discussed in each part of our five-part tutorial series.

Module 1 - Introduction to Token Engineering

  • Seeing blockchains through an institutional perspective helps us understand digital crypto-economic systems
  • Why it is important to understand human behaviour in a digital world of complex interactions
  • The what, why and how of Token Engineering

Module 2 - Market Design

  • What are markets and what do they do?
  • Markets as a tool for governance
  • The role of bureaucracies and entrepreneurs
  • Markets as computational systems and the role of the pricing function
  • Rules make/enable free-markets
  • The importance of incentive mechanisms (market mechanisms) and incentive compatibility
  • Principal-agent problems
  • A closer look at auctions: How food banks use markets to feed the poor

Module 3 - Game theory, Mechanism Design & Control Theory

  • What is game theory and how can it be applied when designing complex systems?
  • Types of games and their relevance
  • Cyber-Physical systems and control theory's application to token systems
  • Seven-Layers of financial cryptography and 'governance as capital'
  • Bringing it together: a closer look at mechanism design and how can it be used as a tool for coordinating social behaviour

Module 4 - Token Design Process

  • The basics of token design
  • Governing token economic systems
    • Network effects and dynamics
    • Power laws
    • Bargaining in social networks
  • Other considerations
    • Techno-ethics
    • The legal code
    • Economic design

Module 5 - Incentive Design

  • Ledgers in society
  • Code and capital
    • The alchemy of money
    • Capital and digital codes
    • Network states, digital geography & jurisdictions: Escaping the geographic limits for the rest-of-us!
  • Capital formation - Coordinating token sales and project funding
    • The hope and pray of Initial Coin Offerings (ICO’s)
    • Token air drops to bootstrap demand
    • Forgoing opportunity costs and Initial Stake-Pool Offers (ISPO's)
    • Competitive contestable funding and Catalyst's plutocratic voting system
    • Estimating funding preferences with quadratic funding
    • Assurance contracts and augmented bonding curves
    • Pay-for-Results and Alphabonds

Join the movement! Whether you're a developer, entrepreneur, or simply passionate about the potential of distributed ledger technology, these tutorials were created for you.

If you're ready to design a new generation of economic systems that are transparent, inclusive, and built to last then lets get to it!

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Yuta for helping with Japanese translation.