Social Token, with the rise of the Creator Economy, has attracted widespread attention in the encryption circle. However, most users' understanding of it is only "it is a coin", which is not much different from other coins, and they have never thought about what problems social tokens solve and its underlying logic. If we want to fully understand the underlying logic of social tokens, we need to start from the value realization closed-loop chat.

Economists have wondered about the mysteries of pricing since commodities were traded in money. And "value" is generally used to refer to the general expression of the relative price of goods and services.

Economists have different theories for defining value. From the "inherent theory of value" based on the value of objective objects to the "labor theory of value" judged by the amount of social labor input required, there is also the "exchange theory of value" advocated by the Marxist school based on the subjective consciousness of both parties and beyond. From the "money theory of value" where price is the only criterion for judging value, to the "rights theory of value" that deviates from the theory of practical value and labor value, to the "subjective theory of value" that takes customer demand as the criterion for subjective judgment, and the "theory of value" that is dominated by marginal effects. Different theories define "value" from different dimensions.

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Creation, delivery and capture of value

The creation of value is that the ontology of value generation invests in the corresponding production capital to generate and output value through different interactive activities, while the value transfer is to transfer the value from the production end to the receiving end through the carrier, and the final value capture determines the distribution of the final value effect .

From the perspective of value creation, individual value creation is divided into two categories. One is to independently realize value creation through its own resources and with individuals as operating entities. The second category is to join an organization, give full play to individual comparative advantages, carry out division of labor and cooperation with other individuals, and aggregate resources to maximize efficiency.

With the advancement of science and technology, isolated islands of information and resources have been gradually opened up, and the utilization rate of resources has been greatly improved, which also makes value creation on an individual basis more feasible. The Internet platform aggregates the "scarce resource" of human beings, attention, and provides a platform for individuals, so that personal value creation is no longer limited to cashable skills in the traditional sense, which also opens up a new economic market: creators economy.

From the perspective of value transfer, the value producer will price the value carrier according to the market, and the user will judge the value of the carrier from a subjective perspective and decide whether to exchange value. Also taking the creator economic market as an example, the value carrier is no longer limited to physical objects and face-to-face interaction, and the choice of the carrier that creators can give value is becoming more and more abundant with the blessing of technology.

From the perspective of value capture, each value exchange includes different participants, generally divided into producers, middlemen, and recipients, and the value captured by each party in each exchange process is different. In the creator economy, the production side is the value creator, the middleman delivers value for various platforms and service providers, and the user side is the terminal of the final value exchange. These three parties will eventually carry out different degrees of value capture.

The value creator needs to transfer the value to the receiving end through the value carrier and finally exchange the value to cover the cost of value creation, and all parties involved in the process complete the value capture.

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Creator economy built on loopholes

From the perspective of value creation, the current value creation model is extremely limited. Creators can only export the value they create within a fixed period of time in a specific way, and value recipients can only exchange value in a specific way. For example, the anchor can only reward fans in a platform-specific way when the anchor starts broadcasting. For example, short video or text creators can only create value with a specific output carrier, and the recipient decides whether to make value based on the value of a single output. exchange. Therefore, value creation individuals cannot fully release value, and the market cannot continuously discover and capture value.

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Image credit: CBINSIGHTS

From the perspective of value capture, centralized intermediaries capture the most excess value. Taking Douyin as an example, the Douyin platform takes as much as 30%-45%, plus other middlemen, the value captured by creators is finally squeezed by multiple parties. Only the direct value exchange between value creators and value recipients can ensure the optimization of value capture for both parties.

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Social tokens will reshape the value of the creator economy to achieve a closed loop

The advantages of implementing intermediaries in a decentralized network in the form of a license-free agreement should be self-evident to friends who understand blockchain technology. In a permissionless environment, value can be completely transmitted, and there is no risk of rent-seeking for value creators and recipients, and all participants' domain information can be used without resistance between different protocols, and the protocol can be fully implemented according to the rules of the participants. Iterate democratically according to changes in demand.

The essence of individual tokenization of value creation is actually the issue of personal minting or issuing personal credit, which we call Social Token for the time being. First of all, social tokens allow the value created by value-creating individuals to be continuously priced by the market, which means that value creators can judge whether the value they create is valid (whether the value is accepted by the market) based on the price of social tokens, and the market The subjective judgment of the value created by creators can optimize the resource allocation of creators. Secondly, social tokens add liquidity to value, which makes individual value creators an investable target, and because value creators continue to create value, this also makes social tokens an equity asset. When social tokens represent personal rights and interests, then the imaginative space for the practicality of social tokens is unlimited. At the same time, social tokens allow value creators to obtain early capital, and the early cold start costs can be perfectly resolved by issuing social tokens, and the market will make a preliminary judgment on the value of value creation and select high-quality targets. Finally, social tokens can extend the audience to the world. Compared with the regional resource segmentation of the Web2.0 platform, social tokens integrate global resources and can capture value across regions.

So why do social tokens use blockchain technology? As Dragonfly Capital partner Haseeb said, for Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin has no choice but to use a decentralized technology to implement Bitcoin, so there is blockchain technology. Before Bitcoin, many people tried to issue non-sovereign electronic currency (DigiCash, E-gold, and Liberty Reserve), but in the end they were all officially stopped. For officials, the stability of the financial system is the most important thing.

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Social Token Track

references:

references:

Theory of value (economics)：https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_value_(economics)

Why Decentralization Isn't as Important as You Think：https://haseebq.com/why-decentralization-isnt-as-important-as-you-think/

Self-Issued Credit: A Monetary Solution：https://www.corbettreport.com/self-issued-credit-a-monetary-solution/

The Creator Economy Explained: How Companies Are Transforming The Self-Monetization Boom：https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/what-is-the-creator-economy/

The Personal Token Revolution：https://medium.com/@bramanathan/the-personal-token-revolution-754e3fe0987e

Naval Twitter：https://twitter.com/naval/status/1348749450160689152?s=20

New trends in 2021: a list of 7 social token issuance platforms: https://www.theblockbeats.com/news/21408