Save the Planet with Token-Based Economies
Why we’re developing a network of local hubs for Token Engineering.
The world is facing a growing range of serious challenges. Take climate change, the accelerating loss of biodiversity, disparities in wealth, political instability, or pandemics.
All these challenges depend on economic incentives. If we don’t get economic incentives right, there’s no hope for bringing about needed global structural shifts, such as accounting for negative externalities.
The legitimacy of token engineering as a new engineering discipline will depend on our ability to offer solutions to these problems. In fact, token engineering can contribute hugely.
Token-based economies offer a whole new tool kit for (re-)shaping economies:
- infrastructure for implementing and enforcing policies at the micro level;
- data for aggregating, monitoring and optimizing economic transactions at the macro level;
- and governance mechanisms for continuously balancing the interests of stakeholders across the globe.
There’s so much potential.
Local Perspectives for Building Better Economic Systems
Still, it’s not only about sophisticated economic designs. The experience of economic participation, the perception of money, and access to wealth vary greatly around the globe.
For the Global North money seems to be viewed as a tool [1], and that probably comes from how easy is it to access credit in Europe and USA. So you can ask for credit to start your business, and you’ll not be charged abusive fees like it is common in the Global South.
Here, in the Global South, we are raised within an inequality that is not only about rich and poor, but about who will be able to be helped by their family and who will depend on the State, who will be able to choose a job, and who will accept anything in order to provide for the family. This background turns money, to us, into a metaphysical experience of search for freedom. In the global South we live with the conscience that: God may forgive us, the lack of money may not.
– Marcelo de Almeida Silva, TE Host Brazil
At Token Engineering Academy (TE Academy), we believe that one of the key requirements for building better economic systems is respecting and integrating local perspectives.
Global economic wealth won’t sustain itself by exploiting local communities. Global wealth is rooted in place and in physical and cultural resources. Climate change is a lesson in how economic activities that create wealth in one area of the world can destroy it in others. We share these views with organizations and movements beyond crypto, like Regenerative Finance.
Building solutions that work requires designers who deeply understand the local context. Myriad knowledge lies untapped regarding wealth and prosperity within the context of local history, resources, and culture. Educating and developing talents from all parts of the world is our best investment for leveraging these local perspectives in token engineering.
That’s why we’ve kicked off a program to establish local hubs for token engineering. Our community gathers token engineers from all across the globe. With our TE Local Hosts program, we collaborate with community members in different parts of the world. We support them in spinning up local learning groups. And we open routes to global collaboration and joint #OpenScience initiatives in token engineering. Our first cohort of hosts are located in New Zealand, India, Italy, UK, Dominican Republic and Brazil.
And how it often happens when you start to pull together a few really passionate people in the name of #OpenScience, suddenly, what before were separate individuals and groups, begin to fervently collaborate and share resources for the common good. What before were stand-alone communities, then become a larger interconnected one, where strong bonds are created and new business synergies arise spontaneously.
– Davide Pasini, Local Host TE 360 Italy
Growing the Spanish & LATAM Community
We are excited that Crypto Plaza is joining this effort by becoming a sponsor of TE Academy. Located in Madrid, Crypto Plaza is a space to work, collaborate, invest and invent, and they lead the Spanish-speaking and Southern European crypto community.
The Internet has made it possible to democratize access to information, which has had a transforming effect on our civilization. But it is necessary to continue working to facilitate this access and language is now one of the great barriers for many people. One of the missions of Crypto Plaza is to work to facilitate access to all the knowledge of Crypto to the community in Spanish. Those of us who have the privilege of being able to speak another language must help in this work. And this work in many cases goes beyond bringing information closer, because in many cases it is also a way of bringing us closer as a global community. Diversity is one of the great contributions to innovation and when we can communicate and learn from other cultures is when we understand that the sum of all in any challenge that we have as humanity is our greatest strength.
– Jesús Pérez Sanchez, Founder and CEO Crypto Plaza
In related news, we’re running token engineering sessions in Spanish on a regular base. Just recently, our community members in Columbia, Mexico, Argentina, and Spain teamed up to provide an “Introduction to Token Engineering” session in a language other than English. While we acknowledge English as the main language of coding and scientific publications, we support the idea of offering discussions and collaborations in various native languages.
We are thrilled to see our local Token Engineering Hubs grow. We need talents from all around the globe to build new, token-based economies and tackle the world’s most pressing challenges.
This is our invitation:
Where ever you live, we need your perspective to design better economies. Join our local token engineering communities to find more information about groups in your local area, peer group, and native language.
Are you interested in starting your own local group?
Become a member of our TE Local Host network, and get support in content, connections and trainings. Drop us a line, and we’ll get back to you!
Notes:
[1] — Marc Andreesen and Chris Dixon speak about the potential of Web3, and the “original sin” of Web1 in this episode of Bankless podcast “Reinventing the Internet”. They give the typical Western perspective on money: “Money is a tool, a way to do things, money is crystalized human effort, human productivity (…) to be able to actually incent people to do things, to be able to actually measure the value of things to people in price signals” (1:05:44). This is a valid view, however one that many on this planet don’t share — because they grew up in an economic environment that never allowed them to look at money this way; and they came to different conclusions that are relevant for building our future economies.
About TE Academy
The mission of TE Academy is to offer education, develop talents and match token engineers to Web3.0 projects. More than a thousand students from all parts of the world have taken part in our courses since TE Academy was founded in 2020. All our courses are free of charge for students, and available online. Follow this link to learn more about our program.
