Token Genies: Your Mission and Mentors (Part 2)

This is an overview on your mission and mentors at the Token Engineering track at Diffusion 2019. For more information see also part 1 of the series.

Diffusion 2019 is a hackathon with over 20 protocols and more than 400 hackers, taking place on Oct 19–20th. For the first time ever, there will be a token engineering challenge in a blockchain hackathon.
Designing the economic mechanisms and incentives for a blockchain system will be a key domain in this sector. With this hackathon track we aim to spread the knowledge on systems engineering and enable more and more hackers to use tools like cadCAD in order to make these new economic systems save, reliable and successful.

In this article we’ll give you an overview on what we plan for token engineers and who your mentors will be.

You can register to participate at the hackathon via https://diffusion2019.devpost.com/

Token Engineering is a new discipline, however you will find many similarities with traditional systems engineering. Building token economies is a great opportunity to (re-)think economic systems and invent new rules of the games for blockchain projects. Add you knowledge and make a difference!

For the hackathon we are looking for the following participants:

a) System Thinkers:

• your domain: design thinking, value propositions, business modeling, economies, incentive mechanisms, UX…
• you will define a problem space and system objectives, analyse stakeholder motivations and create value propositions
• you’ll translate inputs from domain experts into a system map (see cases below!)
• you will define value flows, behaviors and mechanisms and interprete simulation results

b) System Modellers:

• your domain: system modeling, system dynamics, complex adaptive systems, agent-based simulations, Matlab, cryptoeconomic building blocks (bonding curves, reward mechanisms etc.)…
• you will create computational models for dynamic systems, including modeling agents’ behaviours and system mechanisms
• you’ll adapt pre-formulated mechanisms and agent behaviours or invent new ones
• you’ll be able to run simulations in cadCAD and create insights on „what-if“ questions of your system design

c) System Coders:

• your domain: Python, Solidity, MatLab, BigQuery, policy functions and state update functions…
• you already have experience or want to learn how to create a digital twin for a respective system
• you’ll learn how to use cadCAD, a Python-based modeling framework for token economies
• you’ll implement mechanisms and behaviors and add data feedback loops for self-adjusting dynamic systems

Hackathon challenges and prize

For Diffusion we’ve set up a special agenda to introduce you to systems engineering and modelling in cadCAD. During the introductory workshops we’ll provide you with details on two cases and challenges — you will be free to register your final project for the hackathon prize in the course of Saturday, Oct 19th.

You already have your own idea and case to work on? No problem.
All submissions can be registered at https://diffusion2019.devpost.com/submissions with

• your project name
• track „Token Engineering: (re-)invent economic mechanisms by using simulations“
• and teammates (if already defined)

Hackathon agenda:

If you want to take part at the Token Engineering track, please make sure to attend the kick-off session:

Saturday, Oct 19
11 am — TokenEngineering Kick-off
1st floor/Token Engineering room

1.
We’ll start with an overview on the Token Engineering track, challenges and prize

2.
Token Engineering “Zero-to-One” Workshop:
how do you move from the idea, to system objectives, and/or requirements engineering of an ecosystem and its value proposition to a system description that can be modeled using the cadCAD framework

3.
After this workshop we’ll introduce cases and hackathon challenges. In case you haven’t already defined an own project, you can choose the case and challenge you’d like to work on.

4.
Token Engineering “Introduction to cadCAD” Workshop:
cadCAD is a framework for multiscale modelling of complex adaptive system, i.e. which gives you superpowers to model both agents and system dynamics — and since it’s in Python, is capable of plugging in data pipelines of digital twins of the modeled system to “blur the line between the thing and the model of the thing”

5.
You are free to hack throughout Saturday and Sunday and get support from Token Engineering mentors

Sunday, Oct 20
3 pm — Judging of submissions
6 pm — Award ceremony

Thanks to Outlier Ventures and Diffusion you’ll have the great chance to win the 1000 EUR Token Engineering track prize for the best hackathon result!

More information on the Token Engineering track and the entire event can be found here https://diffusion2019.devpost.com/

Your Token Engineering mentors will be available throughout the weekend — we are looking forward to creative ideas, awesome simulation insights and most important — a lot of fun!

Mentors at Diffusion 2019

Michael Zargham, Founder & CEO at BlockScience
Michael Zargham holds a PhD in systems engineering from the University of Pennsylvania where he studied optimization and control of decentralized networks. His earliest work on peer-to-peer effects in business decision making was developing algorithms to reverse engineer the word of mouth effect in enterprise software licensing decisions in 2005.
In the intervening years, Dr. Zargham has designed data driven decision systems and built a data science team for a Media Technology firm. He has also worked on the mathematical specifications of blockchain enabled software systems with a focus on observability and controllability of the information state of the networks. Most recently, he founded BlockScience, an engineering, research, and analytics firm focused on design and analysis of complex networks. Together with his team he built and open-sourced cadCAD (link), a Python-based modeling framework for crypto economic systems.

Billy Rennekamp, Founder Clovers.Network, Artist, Developer
Billy is an artist, developer and co-founder of Bin Studio, a multidisciplinary research, design and development studio based in Berlin, DE. In 2018 he received an ECF grant to continue work on Clovers.Network, a game that rewards the creation of scarce art. He’s the author of EIP-1633 (Re-Fungible Token) and active contributor to the Curation Market Community. He’s involved as a developer, researcher and community member of a number of projects including Cosmos.Network, Gnosis.io, Relevant.community, NewModels.io, Trust.support, MemeLords.com, ENSnifty.com and Doneth.org.

Sebnem Rusitschka, Founder Freeelio, Electraseed Fund
Sebnem Rusitschka started her career as a computer scientist specializing in peer-to-peer networks at Siemens in 2006. The application domain was mainly in Energy Management, for existing energy automation products & services. In 2016 Sebnem founded Freeelio as a free innovation collective to understand the paradigm shift of tokenizing real world assets such as decentralized energy resources.
In June 2017 Freeelio became a founding member of German Blockchain Association, in which Sebnem leads the Energy and Token Economy committees. During this time, she has started to work in networks of peers and organizations in a decentralized manner to create the free Digital Energy Assets framework. Electraseed Fund is the first spinoff that pools Digital Energy Assets from Global South and Global North, funded by the European Ledger Program for human-centric solutions.

Colin Andrews, Adaptive Systems Designer, Freeelio and Electraseed Fund
Colin started his career in supply chain strategy consulting; designing, modeling, and optimizing supply chain systems for major retailers and reporting recommendations to executives. The growing complexity and data availability introduced by omnichannel supply chain networks drew Colin to get a Master’s in Computer Science focusing on data-rich Machine Learning and AI techniques.
Colin now works as Adaptive Systems Designer at Freeelio, optimizing open access to clean energy. Freeelio’s spinoff Electraseed Fund is a pooled investment portfolio of renewable energy projects that connects investor financial and impact outcomes to live energy data. It is backed by a simulation of Digital Energy Assets and their socio-economic complexities, being built in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich.

Onur Solmaz, Economics Researcher at CasperLabs
Onur comes from an Applied Math background. Seeing all the development surrounding cryptoeconomics and token engineering, he decided to drop out of his PhD to move to Berlin and start working on this exciting field. He analyzed popular Dapps, built the mechanics of Crypto Island — a game on Ethereum, and started working as an economics researcher at CasperLabs, where he tackles problems in validator incentive design, cryptocurrency macroeconomics, governance and the gas/fee market.

Angela Kreitenweis, Co-Founder Token Engineering global community, Founder conectopia
Angela is an expert in developing and validating value propositions and business models. From 2016 to 2018 she established venture development and startup investments for innogy Innovation Hub Berlin. Over the last couple of years she validated around 50 new ventures and business models in various industries (e.g. mobility, SaaS, e-commerce, travel, health, B2B and B2C), applying methods from qualitative/quantitative research, web data analytics, UX and Design Thinking.
In 2018 Angela co-founded Token Engineering Berlin meetups, which has quickly grown to a global movement with meetups all around the globe. With her company conectopia she’s organizer of TEGG 2019, founding member of BerChain and inventor and co-creator of a range of other network activities in the blockchain and AI sector.

Big shout out to Stephen Young, Ravi Patel, Charlotte Kapoor and Outlier Ventures, Jeff Emmett, Griff Green, Kris and CommonsStack.org, and the entire team of BlockScience for supporting the hackathon!

Any further questions? Feel free to reach out to us on Twitter or via Telegram @akrtws.

Looking forward to seeing you at Diffusion!