Power of Tokens

Tokens will disrupt global economics and radically change how commerce will be transacted. While various implementations exist today for tokens specific to numerous blockchain platforms, the industry lacks a venue for all participants to collaborate on a shared description and approach – resulting in a lack of interoperability, reuse, and common ground to address regulatory issues. The IWA is this venue, developing a clear definition and scope of the token concept including use cases, taxonomy, and terminology, and a specification neutral to underlying technology.

The Token Taxonomy Framework bridges the gap between developers, line of business executives, and regulators, allowing them to work together to model existing and define new business models based on tokens. The Framework’s purpose is to:

• Clearly define common token concepts and terms in non-technical and cross-industry language using real world, everyday analogies so that business, technical, and regulatory participants can understand them.
• Produce token definitions that have clear and well-understood requirements for token properties and behaviors that are implementation neutral for developers to follow and standards organizations to validate.
• Establish a base Token Classification Hierarchy, driven by metadata, that is simple to understand and navigate for anyone interested in learning and discovering tokens and underlying implementations.
• Deliver tooling meta-data that enables the generation of visual representations of classifications, and modelling tools to view and create token definitions mapped to the taxonomy.
• Produce standard artifacts and control message descriptions mapped to the taxonomy that are implementation neutral and provide base components and controls that consortia, startups, platforms or regulators can use to work together.
• Encourage differentiation and vertical specialization while maintaining an interoperable base.