Token engineering is a multidisciplinary field for building safer, more resilient blockchain systems. It brings engineering discipline to the design, verification, and optimization of these complex new forms of economic coordination.

When you support token engineering, you’re helping to build an important new form of public goods. Civil engineering exists so people can feel safe crossing a bridge at rush hour without having to read its blueprints. Token engineering serves a similar role for complex crypto-economic systems. It builds an engineering-backed assurance layer that enables us trust that these systems are safe and that they will do what they say they do. This newly emerging discipline is critical to fostering the public trust needed for widespread adoption of Web3 technologies.

Since the opening of its bonding curve in January 2021, the Token Engineering Commons (TEC) has granted some $600,000 to token engineering projects. In addition to our own direct grant making, the TEC has run numerous Gitcoin grant rounds, including as a featured Community Round. Through these efforts, the TEC has funded the development of the Token Engineering Academy’s free Token Engineering Fundamentals course and its research into tooling for AI-powered token engineering. It has also provided critical funding to the Inverter Network’s open library of programmable workflows, the Bonding Curve Research Group, and CadCAD simulation tooling, among many other projects.

The Token Engineering Commons (TEC) has made significant contributions to the Web3 grants ecosystem through the development and implementation of innovative funding mechanisms and grant allocation strategies. One of our key achievements is the creation of the Tunable Quadratic Funding (TQF) mechanism, which enhances traditional Quadratic Funding by incorporating on-chain signals from donors. This funding method allows grant round operators to amplify the voting signal of donors that exhibit particular attributes valued by their community. Examples include Subject Matter Expertise (SME), token holding, attestations of community contributions, and reputation (e.g. delegates and badgeholders). Many of these TQF signals also contribute to improving sybil resistance and overall allocation effectiveness.

Please join us in supporting this critical new public goods infrastructure for ushering in a new era of human coordination!