Thinking about creating your own token economy? You probably have many questions already sorted. What is the utility of my token? What kind of mechanisms and incentives should I include? How should I distribute the tokens and set the initial TGE price? We covered a lot of these topics in our previous blog post, 'Tokenomics Essentials: Key Definitions, Mechanisms & Utilities' (which you can read here). It's a great resource for your first steps on building your Token Economy in 2024.
Once you have some initial ideas, the next big question is: 'Are my tokenomics robust enough?' To answer this, you need more than just ideas, you need to test them out. That's where our Tokenomics Calculator comes in. It's a practical tool to check if your tokenomics is solid and ready to face real-world challenges.
A tokenomics calculator is a tool that helps users to simulate and understand the economics behind their token economy. It's essentially a platform where you can experiment and visualize how your economy might evolve over time. A tool designed to analyze and visualize the evolution of your economy and be able to test how different factors will change your economic dynamics, so that you can understand and assess the potential growth of their economy and the value accrual of their token.
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Designing tokenomics is a two-step journey. First, you plan how your economy will function and what makes it valuable - this is what we call Tokenomics Design. Following that, you enter the phase of Tokenomics Simulation, where you continuously refine and test your design to achieve the optimal setup.
Advanced tools like our Cenit Finance Token Calculator use a technique known as agent-based simulation that is based in two principles: 1) 'agents', who are the key players in your economy, like users and investors, and 2) the ‘environment', which includes all the rules and options in your economy.
In our tool, you start out by filling in a form with the information of your tokenomics, including things like allocations, vesting schedules, utilities, and incentives. Once filled in, we automatically translate your inputs into an agent-based simulation of your token economy and create an interactive dashboard in which you can analyze the results or run new simulations with different input parameters.
The goal of our calculator is to give you a full preview of your economy, so that you can understand ahead of time how it might work in the real world. You can try out different ideas and make changes before you show it to your community or investors. It's an important step to make sure your token economy is strong, practical, and ready to be launched.
Let's take a look at an example:
In the following sections of this post, we will guide you through the various aspects of designing your tokenomics with the help of our tokenomics calculator. Let’s dive in!.
Let's start by defining the different key elements of designing your tokenomics. When using our Tokenomics Calculator, you'll follow these crucial steps to shape the backbone of your token:
Here you will input essential information such as the name of your project, the initial price of your token, the total number of tokens available, and whether your token will have governance capabilities.
Next step is setting up how your tokens will be distributed. This involves two aspects: (1) who gets which percentage of the token allocation, such as your various stakeholders, the treasury, market makers, on incentives reserves; and (2) when do the tokens unlock for them (the vesting schedule). You will get some nice visualizations of this allocation and vesting schedule as you add the information.
Here, you will define the value proposition or propositions of your protocol or business, and how they interact with the token through different possible token utilities. For example, if you are a DEX, you might want to assign a percentage of your protocol fees towards users who stake your native token. Or, if you are a gaming platform, you might offer special discounts or perks for users who hold a certain amount of token. In this section, you will set up these utilities for the token, as well as the growth trajectory of the value propositions they are associated with.
With our tool, you have the flexibility to create multiple economic value propositions tailored to various types of operations and services. This includes, but is not limited to, designing tokenomics for decentralized exchanges (DEX), lending platforms, derivatives exchanges, liquid staking protocols, Infrastructure protocol, GameFi applications, and decentralized applications (dApps). You can even define a custom value proposition to fit any unique business model.
In this step, you define which aspects of your economy you wish to incentivize. This will depend on your project's nature - incentivizing operators in a staking protocol, rewarding liquidity providers in a DEX, etc. You also have the option to introduce new token emissions as temporary incentives for specific parts of your economy.
Finally, you'll hypothesize about how users might interact with your economy. This involves forecasting treasury expenses, estimating the selling patterns of the various stakeholders, or the behavior of your token stakers. Don’t worry if you are not too sure about these values. You will be able to easily alter these hypotheses and test out different scenarios once you have the simulation dashboard.
Once you've navigated these steps and filled in all the necessary information, simply click “Update simulation”. You're now ready to see a dynamic simulation of your carefully designed token economy.
With the Tokenomics Simulator now set up, you've got a powerful tool customized to your unique token economy showcasing the results of the simulation. It's flexible and visual, allowing you to experiment and modify various aspects, from the foundational design elements of your protocol to its growth predictions.
As an example, we’ve filled in the form from the previous section with the data of a lending protocol. Within seconds, we have our simulation dashboard ready, in which you can test out a variety of scenarios: adjusting transaction volumes, playing with different fee percentages, altering staker benefits, or seeing the effects of offering discounts for token payments. It's also possible to experiment with various vesting schedules for your investors and stakeholders. Check it out on the following link:
As you'll see in the image below, our tool provides a comprehensive range of options for you to fine-tune and tailor your economy to test it in a real world scenario.
But our simulator isn’t just for lending protocols. You can explore and test various models including:
This simulator is a go-to resource for understanding the strengths and vulnerabilities of your economy. It's designed to show you how your tokenomics would perform under different conditions, helping you identify when your economy is working and when it might face challenges.
Remember, sharing is a key part of building a transparent token economy. You have the ability to share your tokenomics simulations with your community and investors.
Let’s build more transparent and understandable token economies together.
Our tokenomics calculator was created to do more than check your tokenomics; it's there to showcase the strength of your token economy. We go a step further than simple pie charts or a spreadsheet by providing a dynamic, user-friendly, and interactive dashboard