It happens again and again - in 2017, amidst the monumental bull run, it was commonplace for crypto pundits to exalt the properties of various token models. Most of you that were around in that time, will remember.
Conversely, now that prices have collapsed, often the very same pundits have been quick to switch sides, and bang the "tokens are worthless" drum.
It seems fairly obvious to me that there is a lot of System 1 thinking at play here - most likely attributable to a mix of anchoring and bandwagon effects, and a positive feedback loop between price action and sentiment.
While many criticisms of token models have value, I suspect that we cannot come to conclusive arguments about value accrual just yet - only speculation. But also, until we have a suite of repeatable business and token models (like we do in the off-chain world), it is unlikely that we'll get to see what lies on the other end of the inflexion point in the adoption curve.
So, before we move on, cheers to the unsung heroes that are experimenting with all kinds of different models in honesty and good faith; without them, we will probably never find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Now, given that we have a lot more information about what works and what doesn't compared to a couple of years ago, it's worth recapping how the different narratives on token value accrual have developed over time.
For reference, I am borrowing the classification below from Fabric Ventures to help frame the discussion.
After multiple boom and bust cycles, this is what I feel we know collectively about value capture in token economies. This is by no means conclusive, but rather a crutch in navigating a noisy landscape. If you have any thoughts on the classifications above, I'd love to hear them.
If this appears to be too small, you can access the table here too.
At this point I wanted to note a few things, regarding the learnings we can take from this; (i) hybrid models seem like they have a lot of potential - combining properties artfully only widens the potential SAM, as a token can be different things to different stakeholders , (ii) taxi-medallion-like access tokens are the flavour du jour when it comes to narratives, but it might just hold ground, (iii) utility-come-payment tokens are dead in the water, as they introduce hurdles to adoption and that (iv) the jury is very much still out on governance tokens.