Building a Creative Alternative Economy with HypeDAO
There are many types of social tokens in web3 and many ways that they are being used. Some of them cost some money and are tied to another currency, requiring participants to buy into the community. Gaming tokens are an example of this type of social token. A few celebrities and influencers use social tokens for their fan clubs. Other creators and communities use social tokens to create small peer-to-peer economies and token gated communities.
Some of the more popular social tokens are $FWB (Friends With Benefits), a token-gated community, and $ALEX, Alex Masmejean’s token to finance an international move and payout token holders based on his success. In the NEAR ecosystem, there was a flood of social token experiments during a hackathon in 2021, including a BEER token that was traded for a beer at events.
HypeDAO’s social token, $HYPE, is different because it is not connected to any outside economy and you receive tokens when you participate in the community. We do not expect anyone to “buy in” to be a part of our artist collective. HypeDAO wants to be open and welcoming so we have been distributing tokens to people participating in Hype Battle, Telegram chats, and other community events. The $HYPE social token is a peer-to-peer alternative economy that we have the freedom to build into anything the community wants or needs.
For many years I have been finding and building alternative economic networks in my life so that I can get my needs met without exchanging money. Many people are surprised to learn that I have been living for years without exchanging cash for food, clothes, rent, cars, salon services, and many other things. Alternative economies exist where people do not use cash, and instead use barter, trade, and gifts as forms of exchange. They might take the form of a neighborhood cooperative or relationships in a traditional village. People enter into these communities and economic relationships for many different reasons.
Living in the high-tech, international, modern web3 world requires a currency of some sort, but it does not need to be connected to any other currency. We can think about our web3 communities as a neighborhood cooperative or village to create value and utility within our peer-to-peer social token economy. Barter and trade is possible online with a social token. HypeDAO can’t bake bread for you or help you fix your car. We can build creative projects for the exchange of HYPE tokens that have utility and value for your life.
The HYPE social token is not tied to any other coin or currency. It only has the value that we as a community give to it. The value is controlled by relationships within our community and not by any politics, government, or wealthy elites. Of course, this limits the type of value the token might have, but it also gives us the freedom to build a small independent economy that is unique to HypeDAO.
