Mintonomics

Methodology

The mintonomics pipeline.

Six stages. Sequential. Each one finishes before the next begins. Skipping a stage - typically simulation or adversarial testing - is the modal failure across the token industry.

01

Research

Before designing anything new, find five existing launches in the same category.

Catalog the model, the distribution, the outcome, the failure mode. The answer to "should we tokenise" is usually here. If every comparable project with a token is down 80%+, the default-to-no-token rule is already doing the work.

Failure mode: You design a mechanism that has already failed in production, because you didn't look.
02

Spec

A token spec answers, in order: problem, stakeholders, utility, supply, distribution, demand.

Who is promising what to whom? What utility does the token actually provide? Where does demand come from, and is it real (fees, service payments) or implied (emissions, speculation)? The spec is the contract. Everything else is commentary.

Failure mode: Utility is vague, demand is speculative, the token's purpose changes after TGE.
03

Personas

Stakeholders become persona files: utility function, constraints, action space, decision rule.

The workspace ships eight standard personas: four cooperative (end-user, builder, capital provider, operator) and four adversarial (exploiter, mercenary LP, governance capturer, attacker). Every simulation runs against all eight. Project-specific personas layer on top.

Failure mode: The design only works because you assumed all actors are cooperative. The first adversarial user breaks it.
04

Simulation

Agent-based, parameter sweep, observed outcomes. Not a price forecast.

Each persona becomes an agent. The protocol becomes an environment with state and rules. We sweep parameters across a defined range and observe what breaks. The output is a heatmap of outcomes - not a prediction, but a falsification boundary.

Failure mode: You discover the mechanism doesn't work at scale, after launch.
05

Adversarial testing

Re-run with adversarial personas dialled up. Most designs break here.

Can any persona extract disproportionate value? Can governance be captured under stated rules? Does the protocol survive a 50% loss of cooperative participants? Questions with a "yes" answer send the design back to stage 2.

Failure mode: The launch looks fine. The mercenary LPs extract all emissions and leave. The governance attacker accumulates voting power and drains the treasury.
06

Decision

Yes, no, or not-yet. Documented with rationale, signed off, and filed.

A recommendation file with: the decision, the reasoning, the key parameter values, the adversarial tests passed, and the revisit triggers if the answer is "no" or "not-yet". The decision is a living document - if conditions change, the file is updated and the change is logged.

Failure mode: The decision is oral and folkloric. It erodes under the first founder who "feels" a token is needed.

Ready to put your mechanism through the pipeline?

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