Tokenomics: When Tokens Beat Equity

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Malinova, Katya; Park, Andreas
• 署名单位: McMaster University; University of Toronto
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2023.4882
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 6568-6583
• 关键词: blockchain; tokens; decentralized finance; initial coin offerings

摘要

In a token offering, investors fund a venture in exchange for tokens that grant rights to future economic output. To many financial industry insiders, tokens have no intrinsic merit and exist only as a way to evade regulations. We demonstrate that generic revenue-based token contracts are indeed economically inferior to equity and lead to overor underproduction. However, an optimally designed token contract, which is a combination of an output presale and an incremental revenue-sharing agreement, yields the same payoffs as equity and debt. Moreover, with entrepreneurial moral hazard, tokens can finance a strictly larger set of ventures than equity.