Coin - Token

Coins are in themselves a preferred or agreed upon store of value. Coins are ‘minted’ or exclusively issued by privileged third parties. Tokens in the economic space protocol are not coins. Rather, they are economic objects (bundles of Rights) that refer to an Asset - Liability and can affect the network state (bearer smart contracts). A Token is always attached to (stands for) a ‘real’ asset (encoded as a set of contractual rights). A more precise concept would be a ‘material underlier’ and there are always ‘real’ asset transfers associated with token exchanges. For example, wealth may be stored as stake, and recorded by a token entry in the network ledger to that effect (an asset recorded in a ledger as X stake tokens). Furthermore, in the economic space protocol communication is not exchange of messages, but exchange of objects (bundles of rights, capabilities, authority). Tokens are such objects, but what makes them special is that they are mutually exclusive: they are “tokens of authority”. In this sense they are like an authority modulation logic, transmitting value and authority. Tokens are access to authority and capacity to affect the network in a particular way, plus a measurement (amount). In other words, tokens are quantified authority or quantified authorship, authorship with a strength. That is a formal definition of value for the economic space protocol.