A Year in Review: Token Engineering Academy’s Top 10 Highlights in 2023
Are you looking to level up your token engineering knowledge in 2024? Subscribe now to #TEWeeklyReads, our bi-weekly newsletter sharing the best resources from the space.
2023 — what a year! The token engineering discipline has made significant strides despite facing tough market conditions. If anything, these challenges have demonstrated the need for robust and responsible token system design — further helping promote an understanding of token engineering fundamentals across the broader crypto ecosystem! It’s been a busy year connecting with the dedicated folks and projects in the space, with anticipations high for an exciting 2024.
We want to thank all our partners, mentors, study group hosts, and students for our shared achievements. Find our top 10 highlights in 2023 below, just a handful of so many more we’ve enjoyed with our community in the past year!
What were your 2023 highlights? Let us know in the comments below or by tagging us on X/Twitter/LinkedIn!
1. Hosting the First-ever Token Engineering Track at EthCC Paris
For the first time, TE Academy hosted an entire stage day dedicated exclusively to sharing the latest token engineering developments at EthCC — the largest annual Ethereum event! The day’s program focused on a maker perspective, showcasing how token design, verification, and optimization can be put into practice. As the organizer, TE Academy featured 12 talks in total, with topics ranging from pitfalls to avoid in your token sale and listing to tips for startups establishing token engineering and more.
“It was encouraging to see the fast-growing and vibrant Token Engineering community. We had a dedicated track for a whole day, hosted by TE Academy with Angela Kreitenweis. This growth is a clear indication for more maturity of the space.” — Dr. Achim Struve, Token Engineer at Outlier Ventures
🔥Spoiler alert: we’re returning to EthCC with another Token Engineering track in 2024, with a space 4x as big! Speaker applications will open in January 2024. Subscribe to #TEWeeklyReads to be notified and for further announcements.
Among the featured speakers included: Angela Kreitenweis (TE Academy), Trent McConaghy (Ocean Protocol) Roderick McKinley, Marina Markezic (European Crypto Initiative), Dimitrios Chatzianagnostou (Outlier Ventures), Robert Koschig (1kx), Dr. Mark Richardson (Carbon), Gabe Pohl-Zaretsky (Gauntlet), Dr. Achim Struve (Outlier Ventures), Jan Osolnik (Block Analitica), Rohan Mehta (TE Commons) Lukasz Szymański (Tokenomia.pro), Tom Mellan (CryptoEconLab), and Kris Paruch (Token Engineering Labs/Adim).
🎥 Find the full recordings playlist here.
2. Token Engineering Barcamp: An Event for the Community, by the Community
This community-led event took place days after our EthCC Token Engineering Track in Paris, attracting ~200 token engineers for a full day of presentations, deep dives, and networking around cutting-edge token engineering subjects. Co-hosted by TE Academy, TE Commons, and our French TE Study Group, the day featured a total of 15 talks and workshops, with topics ranging from demand-side tokenomics to measuring GDP of crypto networks to AI-powered token engineering and more. The Token Engineering Barcamp was an amazing testimonial to this community’s dedication to developing the discipline — and we could not have done it without our students, volunteers, and partners — special thanks and kudos to StephaneSG and Patricia Brolezzi.
“What really stands out to me is that the level of conversations is very high, attendees are very constructive with their feedback, and also the networking here is excellent — many good friendships and connections will be made here, I’m sure.” — Kris Paruch, CTO & Token Engineer at Adim
Among the featured speakers included: Angela Kreitenweis (TE Academy), Lisa JY Tan (Economics Design), Tesa Ho (Fight Club VC),Andy Boyan (Infinity Keys), Vasily Sumanov (PowerPool Finance), Nate Henderson (Token Dynamics), Rohan Sundar (Fyde Treasury), Rohan Mehta (TE Commons), Rex (TE Commons), Roderick McKinley, Madhuri Rahman and Lena Hierz (TE Academy Womxn in Web3 Study Group), Stanislav Kapulkin (Viete), Viroshan Naicker (Plural), and Jesus Perez Sanchez (Crypto Plaza).
Find links to the talks and speakers here and watch the highlights video here. Full talks were delivered in person and not recorded.
3. Growing TE Fundamentals to 3.5K Students in 1 year
“Coming from a background in physics, I began TE Fundamentals in October 2022 and became a study group host. Upon graduation, I received an opportunity to join the cadCAD GPT team, focusing on developing LLM applications for token engineering, which turned out to be a big success. Thanks to these experiences with TE Academy, I was offered a role as a Research Engineer at BlockScience, a firm specializing in complex systems engineering and R&D in the crypto sector. I am deeply grateful to TE Academy for providing the platform to connect with incredible individuals, showcase my skills, and contribute to the broader field of token engineering.” — Rohan Mehta, Research Engineer at Blockscience
One year after launching TE Fundamentals at Devcon Bogotá, thousands of students have successfully enrolled and completed our bachelor-level online study program. Comprised of five modules, TE Fundamentals is the only existing educational resource focused on token engineering — something you can’t learn at any traditional schools or universities.
TE Fundamentals represents the emergence of token engineering as the first-ever engineering discipline being developed on-chain. After passing modular exams, students are building their professional careers with NFT proofs on the Optimism Network. Interested in enrolling? Find the full educational program here and join a study group here.
4. Announcing cadCAD GPT
Everyone knows that artificial intelligence was a huge topic in 2023. With the support of TE Commons, TE Academy’s Angela Kreitenweis and Rohan Mehta took advantage of the AI boom and created cadCAD GPT: a new open-source Large Language Model (LLM) framework to support token system simulations based on radCAD or cadCAD Python models. With cadCAD GPT, token engineers can access token system simulations just by prompting a Python model with a natural language request. With its modular design, cadCAD GPT can support a wide array of use cases in a token engineering context and helps teams establish simulation routines and a deeper understanding of the systems they design.
Check out the recording from the first Demo Session here and subscribe to #TEWeeklyReads to be notified of future sessions and developments.
Read more:
Part II: This is me — cadCAD GPT!
5. Launching Our New “NFT-based Reputation in Web3” Course
When predicting key focus areas for 2024, NFT-based reputation in the context of token-based governance is high on our list! In anticipation, we developed a new course, “NFT-based Reputation in Web3” teaching how to design, gain, and prove reputation in Web3. The course also explains how more and more protocols are leveraging NFTs to establish reputation-based voting, access rights, grants rights, and more. Following course completion, students mint NFT proofs on the Optimism Network.
Stay ahead of the curve and enroll now!
6. Meeting the TE community IRL at Devconnect Istanbul
Attending DevConnect Istanbul was a great experience. We enjoyed meeting dozens of token engineers from across the globe to discuss the state of the field and what’s needed in crypto in 2024. In addition to these conversations, TE Academy Founder Angela Kreitenweis was featured at d:pact Istanbul as a keynote speaker, panel moderator, and workshop host. d:pact was an excellent event showcasing crucial token engineering topics like mechanism design and NFT-based reputation to the regen and public goods communities. We look forward to bringing this crucial knowledge to more events in 2024 — thanks to the organizers Merkezsiz and Paribu Hub for these opportunities! Stay tuned for session recordings coming soon.
The final Devconnect shoutout goes to ENS DAO for bringing ENS grant recipients together for a roundtable discussion during notDEVCON. Check out the recording here to hear how TE Academy and TE Commons made the most of our $50K Large Grant received in June 2023.
7. Success in Optimism RetroPGF2 and Fingers Crossed for RetroPGF3 🤞
2023 was a big year for TE Academy and Optimism combined, considering our growth meant thousands more users were brought to the OP ecosystem! Even better, the 3.5K+ economists, data scientists, and complex systems engineers from around the globe that we’ve onboarded had their first experiences with Optimism. This inbound rise in rich talent promises an engaged, secure, and advanced road for the ecosystem ahead.
This recognition for onboarding thousands of top talent to the ecosystem led TE Academy to be awarded 50K+ OP tokens as part of RetroPGF2. With RetroPGF3 ending recently, we look forward to learning the results in mid-January 2024! Meanwhile, we will continue providing education and tools like cadCAD GPT to the OP ecosystem and beyond to help the crypto space design tokens rigorously and responsibly.
Shoutout to Optimism Ambassador Fuji AR for publishing a great interview with TE Academy earlier this year, which won the Thank Optimism Content Creator Reward!
8. Surpassing 5K+ #TEWeeklyReads Newsletter Subscribers
At the beginning of this year, we recognized the demand for more extensive thought leadership sharing in the token engineering space. In March, we launched #TEWeeklyReads, a bi-weekly newsletter sharing the best resources in the space. Fast forward months later, we’ve grown our audience to 5K+ subscribers and achieve a regular 40% opening rate. We’ve featured token engineering case studies and token business models and collaborated with thought leaders in the space for deep dives on relevant topics, including Carbon, 1kx, CryptoEconLab, Messari, and much more.
Exciting news for 2024! TE Academy has welcomed Tokenomia.pro onboard as our new sponsor for #TEWeeklyReads. Subscribe now to boost your TE knowledge in 2024 — the next edition will come out on January 24, 2024.
Top 5 #TEWeeklyReads editions in 2023:
- Finding/adapting/verifying token models at Aave, PancakeSwap, 6thManVentures
- Innovation through Limitations
- Overcoming a Romantic View of Web3 Governance
- The Future of Cryptoeconomics Primitives Research
- Can token engineers predict token prices?
9. TE Academy Featured at Funding the Commons Berlin
Funding the Commons is doing excellent work highlighting and incubating the best-emerging research topics and trends across the global crypto ecosystem. Presenting at their Berlin conference enabled TE Academy Founder Angela Kreitenweis to share our work with the broader community, emphasizing the need for greater awareness surrounding token engineering as a means to design, verify, and optimize robust and resilient token economies. It was great to connect again in person with like-minded researchers and experts from Gitcoin, Curve Labs, Sovereign Nature Initiative, Protocol Guild, and many others. Find Angela’s talk recording here.
10. Celebrating Our Study Groups
Studying TE Fundamentals is no easy task — with students having to master concepts of Economics, Game Theory, Systems Engineering, Political Science, and more. To foster peer-2-peer collaboration and community building, we launched study groups in September 2022. Within one year, our community has kickstarted 45+ study groups, held across 14 languages and 21 time zones.
We are proud of our study group hosts offering specific learning environments for Visual Learners, Womxn in Web3, or DAO Pals. Moreover, we’d like to give a big shoutout to those who are making great efforts to study token engineering in a non-English language, such as Spanish, Arabic, French, Italian, Polish, Turkish, Japanese, and Portuguese. Congratulations to everyone who studied hard for months and passed their exams!
Interested in joining a study group? Find the full list here and join our Discord community to get in touch.
Conclusion
Thank you to our passionate community and team members for all your support throughout 2023. Together, we took the token engineering discipline to new heights, and we can’t wait to see what’s in store for the space (and market!) in 2024.
As always, stay tuned for more updates from Token Engineering Academy by subscribing to #TEWeeklyReads and following us on X/Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Medium. See you again in January!
