Publications

Working Paper: Foundations of Cryptoeconomic Systems

Working Paper: "Kultur-Token" Sustainable Business Model

Research Questions of our Core Team: Token Economics & Economic Systems Engineering 

Tokens seem to evolve as the “killer applications” of Blockchains but the community still lacks a clear taxonomy for tokens - from a business, technological and legal perspective - as well as modeling, forecasting, and evaluation tools. The aim of our core research is to define a clear vocabulary, outline use cases, and develop these methods for modeling, forecasting, and evaluation. For a first scoping and definition of the token landscape the book “Token Economy” was written and published. As a second step we are working on a research roadmap that will outline our future research activities. Here an excerpt of the roadmap:

“As technology evolves, economic systems are co-evolving with the technological infrastructure they build on. Our research is based on the assumption that Blockchain networks and similar distributed ledger networks are complex socio-economic systems that provide a rich and real-time data set reflecting the economic activities in their systems, based on which a combination of economic and engineering methods enables the steering/regulation/control these systems. The fields of network science and advances in data science can be leveraged in combination with this data of improving our understanding of these tokenized economic systems. Using these foundational models of networked economic systems it becomes possible to design and analyze economic systems, including purpose-driven tokens, in a manner consistent with the best practices of systems engineering. The research road-map that we are currently working on intends to set a framework for future research activities outlining assumptions our research is based on, outlining selected research questions and methodologies of future research in this field.”

Research Questions of associated researchers of our Institute:

• Deposit Insurance for Decentralized Finance Projects 

  Development of a prototype smart contract implementing a decentralized version of a deposit insurance for token holders in the Ethereum ecosystem.

  Study of different pool types, failures conditions and fund distribution

• Blockchain Applications
  (selected research areas)

  • Identity & Certification
    Evaluate and develop new identity solutions.
    Decouple data storage and data verification.
    Researching decentralized reputation systems that could expand current centralized certification models

  • Supply Chain & Trade Finance
    Provenance of goods and services for certificates Provenance of goods and services for rights management Blockchain based document handling solutions Blockchain implications on trade finance

  • Business Model Research
    Disruptive potential of smart contracts New data sharing models in distributed ledgers Customer relationship management, loyalty programs, new billing and reporting models for tourism or facility management. Assessment of different types of distributed ledger technologies Classification and evaluation models for smart contracts and tokens New forms of marketing with curation markets and attention tokens Success-Factors fore new financing and crowdfunding models like ICOs Limitations & threats of blockchain based solutions

• Microeconomic foundations of a token economy

  • Monetary theory

  • Crypto assets as a method of payment

  • Valuation models of crypto assets

  • Liquidity analysis and other monetary policy aspects
    Incentive Design & investment descision of Miners.

  • Game theoretical analysis

  • Agent based modelling

• Technical Aspects, Business Processes & Smart Contract Security

  • Atomizing business processes through smart contracts and machine consensus.

  • Agent based systems

  • Smart contract security und formal verification

  • Smart-legal languages

• Legal & Governance

  • Legal aspects of the use of DLT
    Private, public and tax law International and national legislation Governance and Smart Contracts Changes to the current contract paradigm as a result of DLT contracts Execution of contracts, incomplete contracts and judicial awards Self-regulatory codes of conduct
    Legal aspects of DAOs 

  • DLT and investment
    ICO/ITO and capital markets Regulatory law Company law Codes of conduct and enforcement 

  • Information Privacy and Information Security
    Right of data protection, protection of privacy and the Blockchain GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation Enforceability of data protection rights (e.g. the “Right to be forgotten”) within Blockchain systems Compromised Blockchains Smart regulation

  • Tax Law
    “Digital tax transformation”
    Income tax
    Corporate tax
    VAT implications

  • Politics
    Political implications of future legal frameworks of Cryptosystems for political and governmental processes