Social Tokens, Ownership Economy and Timeswap

Towards a world co-owned by creators as well as consumers , powered by web 3.0

Social Tokens have played a pivotal role in the development of online communities in the crypto ecosystem in the last couple of years. Many believe that social tokens are the last piece in the puzzle to truly establish an Ownership Economy by giving creators the power to earn using their content without any intermediaries.

In this post, we look at the basics of what social tokens are, how they are being used currently by creators & communities, and how Timeswap could widen the horizon of utilities they come with in the future.

The Ownership Economy

To understand the importance of Social Tokens, we need to understand the shift in digital economy that is taking place at the moment. With the rise of the internet, we have been living in the golden age of Creator Economy for a while now. This enabled individuals to build a businesses around themselves and their content and leapfrog the legacy structures that had held them back for so long.

But we cannot stop here. Although the creator economy has uplifted a lot of individuals, it has its demerits as well in its current state. Creator burnout, lack of necessary support and the looming threat of always being at the mercy of corporations and big tech for their distribution are legitimate concerns.

We are already seeing many creators and journalists like Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald move away from platforms like Twitter and Youtube to having their Substacks and now, their own Mirror blogs in web3 to avoid the risk of getting de-platformed/censored. This beckons the question of a better alternative that is being built as we speak. The Ownership Economy.

The ownership economy using DAOs, NFTs and Social Tokens enables creators in the creator economy to build sovereign businesses on top of their content and reputations. This is a new structure in which creators can build communities that support them in monetary as well as legacy value while also having proof of stake in the common goal. This combines the best of legacy as well as the creator economy to create a new structure in which the creator truly owns the content they produce as well as their distribution and audience.

Think of a world co-owned independently by creators as well as consumers themselves, powered by the tools of web 3.0.

So what are Social Tokens?

The Defiant describes it as:

“A social token represents a fractionalized share in the intrinsic value of a community, brand, or human. It’s a form of the ownership economy giving participants exposure to the growth trajectory of whatever the community is clustered around as well as the potential to help shape that trajectory.”

This definition captures the true essence of Social Tokens as a tool for communities to collaborate and coordinate towards a common goal and share the upside value gained by achieving that goal.

This is a paradigm shift from earlier models as it brings in the aspect of ownership for the contributor as well, creating economies where people have skin in the game and are truly ownership-based.

Types of Social Tokens

Like DAOs and often complementary to them, there are various types of Social Tokens being used in different communities.

Community tokens

These are used by communities like Forefront and FWB for their functioning instead of just one creator or individual. These can be used by communities to self-govern by giving people voting rights through the token allocation on important decisions that concern the group. They can also be used in managing or engaging the community as well by rewarding people for their contributions within their forum, IRL events or on social media. Your imagination is the limit.

Creator Tokens

Creators like Kerman Kohli and RAC are front-running this movement of creators incentivizing people to join their communities using Social Tokens. Creators can use these tokens to make their private fan clubs by giving perks and special access to the holders. It gives people incentive to become a part of a creator’s 1000 true fans.

Personal tokens

It is also possible for someone to create a personal token of their brand or identity. This could represent their reputation, time or even a piece of their work/art. $ALEX and Matthew Vernon are examples of people innovating in this realm.

Utilities

As we’ve seen till now, Social Tokens offer much more than just financial speculation. The utility of a Social Token is dependent on the creativity of its creator and could be used in ways we can’t even comprehend today.

However, there are some cases in which Social Tokens have been used successfully by creators/communities to serve certain utilitarian purposes worth mentioning here.

• Managing Communities
• Governance of DAOs/Communities
• Creating monetary value
• Creating social value
• Rewarding/providing special access to people

Where does Timeswap fit in?

Social Tokens and Timeswap are like a match made in the DeFi heavens.

Timeswap’s design enables permissionless, oracle-less, and non-liquidatable money markets which opens a new set of possibilities for users to explore using their Social Tokens.

Permissionless Money Markets

Since Timeswap is completely permissionless, anyone holding a token of their favourite creator can create a lending and borrowing market for it. This enables users access to liquidity using their tokens without losing their ownership by selling them. This enables communities to self-organize and create a native economy within their community itself without relying on any external entity

Yield for Community

Community members can earn a yield on the social tokens they hold or even use them as collateral for debt without having to sell them off when they need liquidity. This enables long-term value alignment between community and creator.

Creator Debt Financing

As Timeswap enables fixed-term lending and borrowing, it can also be used by creators to issue debt directly to their community by deploying their social tokens as collateral.

Timeswap is leading the way in bringing a paradigm shift in how creators, communities, and DAOs use Social Tokens and NFTs to create and capture value for their members and followers as we enter into the new age of Ownership Economy powered by web 3.0.

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