Token Economics of the Morpheus Labs Ecosystem
Morpheus Labs is building a robust ecosystem of services and applications to help global businesses, of all shapes and sizes, embrace the blockchain. At the heart of our solution is our native MITx token, the fuel that powers the Morpheus Labs ecosystem. This article will explain in great detail how we designed our token economy. But before all that…Just what is a token economy?
The design of a token economy refers to the design of a token and the rules that govern its use between participants within an ecosystem. A successful token economy revolves around the correct design of incentives to ensure the use of the native token is desirable by all ecosystem stakeholders. Going a little bit deeper, the design of a token revolves around the study of game theory, behavioural economics and mechanism design. Elaborating on our MITx design philosophy, we focused on a few key considerations:
- Ensure that platform participants are strongly incentivized to use and hold MITx
- MITx must have multiple forms of utility within all platform services
- Lower user acquisition costs for Morpheus Labs
- Align the value of MITx with the success of Morpheus Labs
- Reduce price volatility
In light of these points, we have decided to go against making MITx a simple payment currency for Morpheus Labs services. Based on our decades of experience in the enterprise software space and consulting our partners during the design process, it was concluded that having all customers to own MITx at the onset would add a significant user acquisition cost. This isn’t directly referring to the fiat amount required to purchase MITx, but to the fact that the business environment is not mature enough for business consumers to buy, transfer, store or account for digital assets on their own balance sheets.
The ethos of Morpheus Labs is to simplify the blockchain for businesses across multiple industries and geographies by providing a frictionless user-centric platform for rapid dApp development.
On a broad level, we have built in incentives to ensure that our customers use and hold MITx across all services provided by the Morpheus Labs ecosystem.
Let’s take a look at how MITx will be used in the main pillars of the Morpheus Lab’s ecosystem:
1) Blockchain-Platform-as-a-Service (BPaaS)
The MITx token will be utilized in the form of a discount access token.
Simply put, customers will have the option to pay subscription fees in a currency they choose whether it is in USD or ETH. However, if customers hold a specified balance of MITx within their accounts, they are entitled to significant discounts on the subscription fees. This is a perpetual discount, as long as they continue to hold the required number of tokens, they will be entitled to receive the discount. It’s also important to note that customers that opt to pay fees in MITx, will be entitled to further discounts.
To further entice adoption of MITx, we are in planning to build a mini-exchange on the backend of the platform, where users could pay transaction fees of other blockchains using MITx. The mini-exchange determines the spot exchange rate and automatically performs the exchange between MITx and the underlying native token of the other blockchain. For example, subscription payment for our platform is a transaction in the Ethereum network, the transaction fee could be paid in MITx; another example, a decentralized exchange running on QuarkChain, built via our platform. Users could pay their transaction fees directly via MITx by converting MITx to QKC instantly at the spot-price via interfaces with the mini-exchange. We envision that MITx could become the de-facto ‘gas’ for all blockchains.
This model ensures to align the value of the MITx token with the fundamental success metrics of the platform. As more businesses sign up to use our platform, the more MITx will be needed to access services and unique incentives and MITx value will increase
We will be publishing more technical information on the discount structure and mini-exchange in a follow up post.
2) AppLibrary
The AppLibrary is an open marketplace where enterprise, startups and individual developers can develop and publish applications that will be usable by businesses and their customers globally.
Morpheus Labs will charge a commission on fees imposed by the publisher. These include application or component download fees, one-time in-app purchases and recurring application subscriptions.
Again, the MITx token will be used as a discount token for application publishers and application users. Application publishers will be required to hold MITx as a security deposit and they will be incentivized to hold MITx tokens in order to be eligible for discounts on the commissions payable. Application users are also incentivized by holding MITx tokens when downloading applications.
In addition, referencing back to our Proof of Alliance article, Application users holding specified amount of MITx tokens will be entitled to provide app reviews and get involved in an AppLibrary revenue share scheme. We will be releasing more information on the revenue share scheme as well as more creative PoA implementations going forward. So, stay tuned for that!
3) API Access Layer
The third pillar of the Morpheus Labs ecosystem revolves around our API services. Morpheus Labs is in plan to explore developing functional, business specific APIs to act as abstraction layers for businesses to build upon. Here, MITx will serve as an access token, where API calls would be paid in MITx. We envision our APIs to serve as access points to multiple interoperable blockchain protocols, with Morpheus Labs being the gateway.
4) Professional Consulting Services
The final pillar of our services ecosystem refers to our project consulting services. Morpheus Labs will provide consulting services from inception to deployment to established businesses, as well as startups, looking to develop blockchain services and applications. As these services will be initiated from within our platform, all previous uses for MITx are applicable here as well as, our payments will be denominated in MITx, particularly for startups and development teams.
Furthermore, projects that choose to launch a Token Generation Event (T.G.E.), on top of our platform will be accepting a portion of their fundraise in MITx.
This concludes the main services provided by the Morpheus Labs ecosystem. Now we will elaborate on our vital partners that power the implementation and deployment of our ecosystem, and how MITx will be utilized within these partnerships.
5) Blockchain Protocol Partners
Our blockchain providers are vital to the success of Morpheus Labs. They provide the blockchain infrastructure and protocols that allows us to serve as a gateway for businesses to implement blockchain technology. As outlined in our revenue model, protocol partners will be required to pay a listing fee which is payable only in MITx. We will also continue to develop deeper partnerships with our protocol vendors which may include building developer communities, research collaboration and community outreach, among other initiatives.
6) Value Added Resellers (Distributors)
Our reseller partners are key to the sales process of the Morpheus Labs platform. To be eligible for a reseller agreement, companies must hold an amount of MITx as long as the agreement is active. There will be a tiered hierarchy regarding the amount of MITx held. For example, exclusive distributors will be required to hold higher amounts of MITx to be eligible for their region. Besides this, distributors need to bulk purchase platform subscriptions using MITx at discounted price for them to resell, the higher number of subscriptions the higher discount.
Final thoughts…
Morpheus Labs is building a global ecosystem of businesses, developers, partners and users with the common goal of advancing blockchain adoption across industries and geographies. At the heart of this ecosystem is the MITx token, the fuel that powers all interactions between these participants, across the breadth and width of the technology stack.
Summarizing the utility of MITx in the following:
- Discount token for customers subscribed to BPaaS
- Can be used for gas payments across all partner blockchains
- Discount token for AppLibrary payments
- Staking as security deposits for application vendors
- Access token for API payments
- Payment for our consulting services
- Used for T.G.E. contributions
- Listing fee for protocol partners
- Staking token held by our VARs
- Proof of Alliance
We have designed the above token use cases with all stakeholders in mind, to ensure that MITx is prevalent throughout our ecosystem. However, we are constantly working on new methods to add utility and value capture mechanisms to MITx. Revenue collected in fiat will be converted to MITx via mechanisms that will involve 3rd parties. Going forward we will release a supplementary post showcasing the exact details of our model, including the different discount tiers and the required tokens for each tier. Stay tuned for that!
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