Braintrust doesn’t pay customer acquisition costs in cash, but it does pay them in tokens. That increases circulating supply. As long as Connectors are willing to accept BTRST tokens for their referrals, the system works; but increase circulating supply too much, too fast, the tokens become worthless, and Connectors stop connecting. It’s a delicate... See more

Thus, establishing reputational capital requires fully (or at least mostly) non-transferable tokens. The question, then, is how to translate reputation into liquidity.

In a cryptonetwork, token holders would also be unwilling to supply capital at a loss indefinitely if the token’s only value is derived from its ability to generate profits in the future. However, this gets into the unique properties and value capture mechanisms of crypto – tokens may have value capture outside of their ability to produce income.

Perhaps most interestingly, there are some potential new opportunities by which protocols might actually be much more sustainable. In the last few years, with the development of cryptocurrencies and tokens, it has become theoretically possible to build a protocol that uses a cryptocurrency or a token that has some value attached to it, with the val... See more