Hyperledger Global Forum

Tokens are simply representations of things of real value. Although many physical tokens have been replaced by digital representations, such as the airline boarding pass on your smartphone, these digital representations are only that – representations. The true value of digital tokens comes with the ability to encode behaviors and rules directly into the tokens in order to greatly simplify, unify, and streamline their use. Hundreds of thousands of such tokens already exist on a variety of platforms.

Unfortunately there is no common language for defining the properties, behaviors, and control messages associated with tokens. Without a common means of defining and triggering token behavior, it is hard for anyone without a technical background – such as a business specialist or regulator – to truly understand the purpose of a token. And it is nearly impossible to write contracts that exchange tokens of different types produced by different development teams. This lack of standardization is stifling the advancement of digital tokens in the industry.

The Token Taxonomy Initiative is a member-led organization formed to develop a modular, industry-neutral, and technology-neutral Token Taxonomy Framework (TTF) that will set the standard for tokenizing anything of value. The TTF is being designed by a diverse set of individuals with both business and technical expertise based on their own real-world projects and requirements, and it will drive business-level interoperability between tokens by aligning the underlying technical interoperability across different networks and platforms.

In this session, the speakers will lay out the value of digital tokens and dive into a few examples of how the TTF can be used to simplify the design and implementation of new token classes.