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Token Economy (Third Edition), Shermin Voshmgir, 2025
Shermin Voshmgir, April 27 2025
After three years of intensive research, writing, an editing, I’m thrilled to announce the third edition of Token Economy. What I though would be only a minor update, ballooned into a comprehensive overhaul—where I expanded, deconstructed and then restructured the text into a book that aims to reflect the maturity and depth of today’s crypto-economic landscape.
Since the second edition was published back in 2020, the crypto landscape had rapidly matured, and there were so many more topics to cover. I initially felt that I needed three separate volumes to cover the necessary depth and scope:
After publishing the first two volumes, I realized that readers preferred the all-in-one format of earlier editions, and I pivoted back to the idea of one unified book.
In the final process, I also experimented with ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini for research, copy editing, and text condensation. While their utility for research proved somewhat mixed, they were exceptionally helpful for copy editing. I mostly used AI to condense the text of the already published volumes–”Money, NFTs & DeFi” and “DAOs & Purpose-Driven Tokens”–in order to create a more compact third edition that integrates all three volumes into one book. These tools proved particularly effective in refining my sometimes verbose language, enabling me to compress the text to approximately 60 percent of its original length without sacrificing depth or scope—though the process was not without its complexities: They were very effective in helping me streamline certain sections, but struggled with topics that required more nuance. In these cases I reverted back to my original writings. The synergy between AI and my own writing and editing process ultimately produced superior results compared to what either could have achieved independently.
While I would have loved to experiment with other AI tools as well, I simply did not have the time to do so. The choice of tools is not an endorsement but was the start of an experiment. I might write a separate post on my experience with the different tools.
Understanding the cryptoeconomic fundamentals of blockchain networks and complexities of token design is the foundation for sound investments, resilient applications, and sensible regulation. This edition bridges idealism and realism, offering both a high‑level overview for newcomers and in‑depth analysis for seasoned practitioners: