No-Token apps: an alternate vision for the blockchain

&quot;My hope is that, going forward, entrepreneurs explore the idea of building Ethereum apps where the only financial instruments involved are in Eth itself, or perhaps stablecoins if necessary.&quot;<p>Yeah, but then how would &quot;innovators&quot; maximize their grift?

OpenSea is a good example. One of the most successful dApps that doesn&#x27;t have a token.<p>Uniswap, arguably THE most successful dApp, has a token that&#x27;s hardly used and doesn&#x27;t accrue any value. It was arguably released to gain a competitive edge when Sushi was still strong enough, but now its neglected and the dApp can exist without the token.<p>Most token-focused narratives have failed. Governance is a sham and value accrual runs into a host of legal issues the moment the project becomes large enough for regulatory scrutiny.<p>Removing tokens from dApps will also help solve many of the current problems of speculation, leverage, and straight up scams.

KarmaCall was built on nano and so was FynCom. Building apps without tokens removes the speculation [ and the volume of activity associated with it :( ] and lets you focus on your core business models.<p>At a recent online event, I was asked to talk &quot;what is the riskiest thing about building on crypto&quot;. The answer I gave was &quot;it can distract you from your core business model, from making your customers happy&quot;.<p>EDIT: I echo your sentiment though. I wrote something supporting your thoughts (I think?) a while ago. Do you think this is a similar sentiment? [1] [1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linkedin.com&#x2F;pulse&#x2F;using-crypto-tool-investment-adrian-e-garcia&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linkedin.com&#x2F;pulse&#x2F;using-crypto-tool-investment-...</a>

Wasn&#x27;t the original idea that tokens would &#x27;fund&#x27; the project without requiring external venture capital etc? The problem was the speculation part of the equation began to dominate the underlying story about building decentralised processes and that&#x27;s when the media smelled blood.

When creating a startup, you have to solve a problem for your users. When creating a token, you now have two problems — solving your users&#x27; problem, _and_ launching a new currency.

This is what bitcoiners have been saying for years. Most apps don&#x27;t need to be decentralized, and those that need, don&#x27;t need a blockchain. There&#x27;s only a very narrow scope for apps which actually benefit from a blockchain.<p>This is also a major differentiator between web3 and web5[0]. Web5 has the idea that identities can be decentralized with Bitcoin blockchain, but everything else is basically old-school P2P. If needed, incentives and payments can be done with bitcoin.<p>There&#x27;s apps like fountain.fm[1] which allows people to easily spend and earn bitcoin. Such apps don&#x27;t even need to be decentralized, but can benefit from the properties of digital currency.<p>Trustless financial apps will be possible on Bitcoin too, when RGB or Taro are released. Some financial apps are already possible, such as Itchysats[2].<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.tbd.website&#x2F;blog&#x2F;what-is-web5&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.tbd.website&#x2F;blog&#x2F;what-is-web5&#x2F;</a> [1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fountain.fm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fountain.fm</a> [2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.itchysats.network" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.itchysats.network</a>

My alternate vision is a future with decentralization without tokens or blockchains.

One objection I&#x27;ve heard to this idea of mine is that proprietary tokens are like coins at an arcade, etc--reducing transaction fees. But I think there are probably ways to get around this by preloading Ethereum or other stablecoins into your account. And governance tokens like DAOs etc are probably way too avante-garde a structure for most software production.

Not every app needs a token. But it&#x27;s an alternative way to fund a project, one that any dev on earth can do, and any investor on earth can fund, and the team can remain anonymous if they want. Not passing judgement on whether this is a good thing, I&#x27;m just stating how it works.

Tokenomics create a micro-economy complete with speculators, bad faith actors and legit users. Like economies, this can run well for a while and then completely collapse.<p>I just don&#x27;t see why so much complexity is required. I want to help an initiative, not get burned because of rampant speculation.

Skiff [0], ENS [1], etc are great examples of this.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;skiff.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;skiff.org</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ens.domains" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ens.domains</a>

The issue is that if one launches a non-token app someone will just fork the project and add on a token and out compete by offering airdrops and other incentives. Definitely an unfortunate part of the crypto ecosystem.