To really understand what’s going on and why, we just need to follow the money journey.

Tokenomics is a particularly difficult practice.

Today, anyone can create a cash reserve with a token, as long as they own the token

By going back along the path of money, we can understand what is happening, whether it is a price or a political movement.

In my many years of studying economics, I never forgot a single lesson from an undergraduate teacher. He was talking about the economic theories and the complex models we would learn.

Putting them aside, he told us that in order to really understand why something is happening, we just need to follow the money. In doing so, we would understand why something is happening, whether it is a course or a political movement.

I consider the ethics of “follow the money” to be a form of BinBot. When I look at the token distribution models and the allocation models, I first look at who will benefit and how the project will develop. Are there enough non-founding parties that could be positively affected by this project?

Because that would only contribute to its success. If the answer is yes, there is potential for this project to be a success. If the answer is no, I look at the potential pitfalls and what can be done to address them and, if possible, avoid them.

Define who will benefit

Tokenomics is a particularly difficult practice. That said, with some tokenomic models, you don’t have to do complex technical and mathematical analysis. Just look at the design, and see that the founders will be the beneficiaries for the next twenty years, and no one else.

Why should this project grow and why no one else cares? They won’t and they don’t care. It is therefore important to look at the models and long-term results with regard to beneficiaries.

You have a few options when starting a crypto project. You can associate a company with shareholders, such as founders and investors, and you derive value for them and for consumers.

Once you overlay the token model, things get twice as complex, because with a business that incorporates tokens you now have two groups of stakeholders. You have your shareholders and the token holders. You need to think about these two groups, while entering the value fairly.

Then there is the foundation, not-for-profit model where you don’t have shareholders on the corporate side, but only token holders. Tokenomics then becomes simplified and similar to traditional business, where you try to capture all the economic value created by your tokens.

And finally, there is the vaporware model. A project is simply issuing tokens on Ethereum (ETH) without worrying about how to capture value or responsibility.

It still shocks me today that people are investing in phantom decentralized financing ( DeFi ) projects . They don’t know who is behind it or what the appropriate value creation mechanisms are. It could be a pyramid scheme, a scam or a “rugpull”, but people keep investing in these projects. I guess they’re too apathetic to research and consider the consequences of a project that doesn’t work.