Token Classification Framework: Considering the Origins of Value and their Mechanisms of Manifestation
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This article presents the original Token Classification Framework for digital assets (tokens), focusing on the intrinsic value of tokens and acknowledging the significance of demand-side considerations. Traditional classification frameworks overlook these aspects, often assessing tokens based on a wide range of properties, including non-economic ones, without positing a hierarchical structure. In contrast, this work introduces a novel framework that classifies tokens based on their value-capturing roles arising from involved actors’ coordination and primary pathways through which value is realised in the system. In particular, a hierarchical three-level model is developed, wherein a token is attributed several origins of value, and interacting origins of value are grouped by a common pathway they are realised through (termed the Value-Capturing Mechanism). Specific technical implementations of these pathways are recognised. In addition, a method of systematic token design is proposed, and criteria for recognising novel Value-Capturing Mechanisms are given. Application of the novel framework is demonstrated for both token design for a model system and the decomposition of an extant token according to its origins of value and Value-Capturing Mechanisms
Authors: Vasily Sumanov, Jean-Luc Desmarais
Language: English
Subfield: Information Systems
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $962
OpenAlex ID: W4408649087