The book is a primer to the Web3 and describes how tokens are the main application of this new generation Internet. It starts out by explaining the fundamental building blocks of the Web3 to a non-tech audience and describes why blockchain networks & other distributed ledgers as the backbone of the Web3. The books maps the socioeconomic implications of Web3 applications such as smart contracts, DAOs and tokens to the concepts of money, economics, governance and decentralized finance (DeFi). The book describes that tokens – often referred to as cryptocurrencies – can represent any real or virtual asset or access right, such as gold, diamonds, a fraction of a Picasso painting or an entry ticket to a concert. It furthermore explains that tokens could also be used to reward social media contributions, incentivize the reduction of CO2 emissions, or even ones attention for watching an ad. While it has become easy to create a token, which is collectively managed by a public Web3 infrastructure like a blockchain network, the understanding of how to apply these tokens is still vague.

This is the second edition of the book Token Economy originally published in June 2019. The basic structure of this second edition is the same as the first edition, with slightly updated content of existing chapters and four additional chapters: “User-Centric Identities,” “Privacy Tokens,” “Lending Tokens,” and How to Design a Token System and more focus on the Web3. Read more on how second edition differs from the first edition in thisblog post.

Part one outlines the fundamental building blocks of the Web3, including the role of cryptography and user-centric digital identities. Part two explains Web3 applications like smart contracts, DAOs & tokens. The last two parts of the book focus on tokens as the atomic unit of the Web3, explaining the properties and functions of money and outlining the emerging field of decentralized finance (DeFi) that might power a potential future digital barter economy. Use cases such as asset tokens, fractional ownership tokens (art & real estate), purpose driven tokens, social media tokens (Steemit, Hive and Reddit), Token Curated Registries (TCRs), BAT (Basic Attention Token), privacy tokens, and stable tokens are explored, including the role of CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) and Facebook’s Libra.

The book builds on the legacy of our work at the BlockchainHub from 2015 to 2017 where we published the first educational posts on this matter that culminated on the Blockchain Handbook which was published in 2017 for free that has had over 100.000 downloads. Continuing the open source legacy of the content, the English edition of Token Economy was released on Github in 2020 under a non commercial creative commons licence, and was subsequently translated into several languages. 10 months after I put the book online for free on Github it has been translated by a group of volunteers into 9 different languages 6 of which are complete (Portugese, Brazilian, Polish, Italian, Spanish, Farsi) and 3 (Chinese, Japanese, French) of which are still in progress. The English and German version were previously published by myself. Some of the translations (Spanish, Italian, Portugese and Brazilian) have also been commercially released as print and ebook versions in consultation with the translation teams. Royalties are split between the translators and me.

Crypto Asset Conference, March 2020, Frankfurt NYC Token Meetup, Dec 16 2019, New York International Monetary Fund, Dec 12 2019, Wahington Soho House, Nov 11 2019, Berlin Soho House Nov 6 2019, Amsterdam The Next Web: Hard Fork Summit, Oct 17 2019, Amsterdam MIT Media Lab, Oct 6 2019, Cambridge Kunsthalle, Sept 20 2019, Vienna Siliconalps, Sept 17 2019, Graz Techfest, Sept 5 2019, Copenhagen TEGG – Berlin Blockchain Week, Aug 23 2019, Berlin 1E9 Conference, Jul 12 2019, Munich