Tokens == Attention

These are just early thoughts—ramblings, really.

What the Hell Are Tokens, Actually?

When I first stumbled onto the blockchain, there was only Bitcoin. The BTC narrative was pretty straightforward for someone like me: a decentralized payment ledger, with BTC as the currency. Simple enough. Then Ethereum showed up, and my understanding of tokens started to evolve. Initially, I saw tokens as transaction fees—a way to play the game. But then the ICO craze hit, and suddenly tokens felt more like shares or stocks. My understanding kept shifting.

As I got deeper into DAOs, tokens took on a new role—giving me decision-making power. Then tokens could be anything: monkey pictures, digital art, memes. Anyone could create a token, and we all got swept up in the memecoin hype—a bizarre blend of cultural moments and liquidity pools, wrapped in speculation. It’s gambling, and let’s face it, humans love to play, even when we’re destined to lose.

So, Where Are We Now?

Lately, I’ve been deep into the on-chain and web3 space. But here’s what I keep asking: Where are the actual products? Where are the consumer goods? Where are the users?

For the past few years, I’ve been working with teams to build products, trying to improve user experiences, and brainstorming new use cases for crypto, on-chain, and web3 tech. But recently, I’ve started to wonder: Have I been thinking about tokens all wrong?

Tokens Are the Product

Here’s the thing: tokens are the product. When I talk to people outside my on-chain bubble, I’m often struck by how little they know about the products I use every day. Aave, Uniswap, Metamask, OpenSea—these names mean nothing to most people. But they’ve heard of BTC, Ethereum, LUNA, Bored Apes, Solana, and memecoins. These are the products they recognize, not the tech or protocols behind them.

This got me thinking about an analogy I keep coming back to. In our bubble, we’re obsessed with infrastructure. We’ve built these sophisticated pipes, valves, and fittings, but most users don’t care about the pipes—they care about the water. But even that’s only part of the story. Users don’t just want water; they want hot showers, Toto toilets (if you know, you know), dishwashers, washing machines—actual products. Tokens, then, might be like water: essential, but often overlooked.

The Evolution of Tokens

Tokens are evolving fast. Every new technology goes through a skeuomorphic phase before it finds its true form. Early cameras were used to replicate portraits, then they became tools for news, and now they fuel everything from clickbait YouTube videos to emotionally charged shows like The Last of Us. Blockchain tech is no different. At its core, a blockchain is just an open, massive multiplayer immutable spreadsheet—one that’s getting increasingly real-time. So far, we’ve used these spreadsheets to recreate what we already know, translating old concepts into new media.

It reminds me of my early design days. I started making UI designs in Photoshop because there weren’t better tools available. Looking back, the limitations of Photoshop shaped the apps we created back then. Then Sketch came along, the first tool that really embraced UI as its own design space. Tech starts by mimicking what already exists, then evolves to fill new spaces. This pattern repeats over and over.

Tokens as Identity and Attention

At first, tokens were just currency. Then they became shares and votes. During the pandemic, NFTs blew up as an easy way to buy into or associate with online communities, turning tokens into a form of identity.

Now, as the memecoin mania seems to be cooling off (at least for now), I’m left wondering: What’s happening with tokens right now?

Tokens are becoming attention.

For years, my obsession wasn’t with decentralization, ownership, or distributed systems, but with collaboration and multiplayer experiences. The internet is rapidly redefining our social interactions. It’s mind-blowing—and a bit soul-crushing—to see how we’ve all turned into content creators, whether we like it or not. We’re all part of the creator economy now.

This got me thinking about reputation systems, which became an obsession of mine last year. It recently hit me that reputation is just another form of clout chasing. A wallet, an avatar, or a profile ID without clout is basically invisible—there’s no surface, no way to be recognized. That’s why so many of us are obsessed with sharing and gaining attention. But here's where it gets interesting: in the traditional world, capitalism reigns supreme, with businesses building walls around their resources to extract value through rent-seeking. On the internet, though, we’ve entered an era of what Yanis Varoufakis calls "technofeudalism," where "cloudalists"—the new digital landlords—control and extract value from the platforms and ecosystems they own. These platforms have become the new feudal lords, building clouds around our data, attention, and content, locking us in and monetizing our digital presence. For individuals, this translates into "cloutalism," where the currency isn’t money, but attention, influence, and the ability to navigate and leverage these digital ecosystems. In this world, clout is power, and tokens are emerging as a way to capture and quantify that power.

Capturing Clout with Tokens

So, how do we capture that clout? Early social tokens were one experiment in this realm, but it’s the memecoins that really took off. Tokens are productized attention—a way to claw back some power from the clouds that capture our attention and turn it into data and insights. Tokens can do everything they’re already doing, but they also offer a way to manifest and visualize attention in a novel way. They give it value, track it, trace it, and even use it as input.

I’m not sure where this is all going, but here’s the thought I can’t shake: What if tokens are just a way to manifest and capture attention?