By Reuben Bramanathan, Blockchains, cryptocurrency & law. Helping crypto teams solve hard problems. Previously product & legal@coinbase

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One week ago I created a personal token that is redeemable for an hour of my time. Here’s an update on the project.

First, some stats on Counsel (CNSL) at the end of week 1:

It was great to see some initial demand for the token, and I especially enjoyed chatting with the two new clients who redeemed their CNSL this week.

Here are a few things that I’ve learned so far.

The Market Moves Fast

Even though there is plenty of liquidity, it didn’t take long for the price of CNSL to increase in the Uniswap pool. The USD price rose from $155 to $256 after only 20% of the supply was purchased.

Although price discovery is an important benefit of a personal token, too much volatility is not a good thing. I will need to carefully manage liquidity, or risk pricing people out of the market. Different bonding curve models could ensure better price stability in personal token markets.

The Right Tools For The Job

One of the most exciting aspects of crypto is the emerging, open tech stack that lets anyone build and experiment. Personal tokens like mine wouldn’t be possible without a bunch of really important tools for building on the Ethereum blockchain: OpenZeppelin, Remix, Uniswap, and Etherscan, all of which were made easier by Zora.

One small but really helpful tool is the Uniswap iFrame integration, which makes it easy for people to buy tokens directly from my website.

Building With The Blocks

Personal tokens are an interesting example of a cryptoeconomic primitive. The token both represents an individual, and coordinates the flow of information and value to, from and around the individual.

When you combine personal tokens with other DeFi building blocks, you can do some cool things

What’s Missing?

If we want to give personal tokens a real chance to succeed, we still need to make it easier to issue, manage, and redeem them, and enable more efficient price discovery.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be writing more about the process and some of the details and options involved in creating a personal token. I’ll also explore the legal issues in this space. If you want to collaborate, please get in touch.

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