Token Genies: First Contact (Part 1)
This is a teaser for the First Token Engineering Hackathon track hosted at the First Diffusion Event October 19–20, 2019 by Outlier Ventures.
In the following parts you will learn more about one of the two token engineering challenges of the weekend: “Connect2Evolve” — and, together with the organizers, we will share the hackathon flowchart, mentors and judges, challenge sponsors, as well as what the outcomes of your initiation as token engineer will be over the coming weeks (see Part 2).
But first, for the uninitiated, or the ones hopping back on the saddle after a break: The accumulated learning as presented at Token Engineering Global Gathering 2019, a long 18 months (eternity in blockchain time) after the initial idea formation is definitely worth binge watching. If you want a curated list for what we’ll be zooming in on at the hackathon, take a look at Commons Stack’s.
Do you have a vague idea of what we’re about to unleash, are curious & courageous, and “Connect2Evolve” resonates with you? Do you have experience in one or more of the following:
- programming (Python, Solidity, Javascript or any other (functional) flavor basically)?
- system design (Systems Thinking, Complex Adaptive Systems, Business Dynamics)
- modeling & simulation (still matlabbing? have a break, have a cadCAD!)
- user experience (Cultural Anthropology, yes! As soon as you leave the digital comfort zone of VMs, you realize you can program incentives, but are you legitimized to do so? We don’t want you to break things, as token economies involve humans).
- cryptoeconomics (which again is a multidisciplinary field — “it’s turtles all the way down”: economics, mechanism design, political philosophy, cryptography, distributed systems, <add your angle to digital societies here & show up at the hackathon!>)
Then you are exactly where you are supposed to be: Reserve your spot & Read on to learn about one of the Challenges present at the hackathon; about why use systems thinking modelling and simulation to design token economies that are resilient and useful.
In the coming two weeks, we’ll release more background information, how tos, and during the hackathon we’ll be present to:
- Guide you from “Zero-to-One”, i.e. how do you move from the idea, market research, and/or requirements engineering of an ecosystem and its value proposition to a system description that can be modeled using the cadCAD framework (Angela Kreitenweis, Founder TEGG 2019, Co-Founder Token Engineering Global Community, and myself)
- Give you an “Introduction to cadCAD,” which 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” (Michael Zargham, Founder & CEO of BlockScience, and Billy Rennekamp of Clovers Network)
- Co-create with you your learning experience and learn how to better design & engineering of token economies together.
Register as an individual or team, make sure you check in the Token Engineering Track, and start checking the updates regularly. If you feel lost, or have suggestions to improve drop a comment here. Make sure to catch the other parts of this series, as they come online.
Now a first glimpse into the “Connect2Evolve” Challenge. The goal is to bring a solar smart micro-grid into an off-grid village in Senegal, where the people have so much digital economic activity so that they need electricity now.
“Even though the villages are sometimes 30 km from any planned roads or electrical grid, they all have good cell phone coverage, demonstrating how a new technology can leapfrog obsolete solutions in developing countries and providing evidence that solar energy could be the staple for developing countries instead of fossil fuel high voltage networks.”
We will have people with domain knowledge at the hackathon (check out the mentors here) to spar with you and provide any and all answers as far as we have them, or else find answers together. But a good challenge first poses intriguing questions:
- How can we create new financing, operations, and ownership models as to improve sustainability?
- What are the ecosystem participants’ value adds, motivations, and needs; how can those be aligned to reach the common goal of sustainability?
- What is sustainability? How is it supposed to be defined and measured in a global setting with stakeholders with various cultural backgrounds and needs. How can it be tracked and governed by the ecosystem?
We will have people with technology knowledge at the hackathon (to be introduced in the coming posts, stay tuned!) to help you see what’s possible in off-grid electrification as well as in engineering complex adaptive systems in a model- and data-driven way! A couple of building blocks already engineered for the commons stack are worth to dig deeper into in the meantime — and see how they are applicable to this case, and how they can be improved by taking on this challenge:
- the Augmented Bonding Curve to provide sustainable funding for communities (check out the simulation! and dig in documentation)
- the Conviction Voting which is a continuous decision making governance process. (Have you tinkered with Quadratic Voting already? Then help improve the initial designs pushing the boundaries with the “Connect2Evolve” challenge!)
- how about making design suggestions and initial hacks for a Commons Analytics Dashboard (powered by cadCAD) which will allow us to measure the value produced in these communities? Be the first!
Are you ready for First Contact? Sign up here and reserve your spot!
