Access Tokens and the GDP: SaaS Consumer market tokenization.

Access Tokens and the GDP: SaaS Consumer Market Tokenization.

Access tokens allow for computers and software services to distinguish users and their level of access. Their use and the term predates cryptocurrencies and blockchain, a quick google search shows their current use being largely unrelated to the “token economy”.

For years, access tokens have been generated on-the-fly, for free in a bid to collect as many users as possible. Cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) relies on access tokens as well, and users typically pay a subscription fee to access the service, with the access token being a supporting technological nuance generated for free or with negligible computational resources.

Access tokens have independent value, and they can provide pricing exposure to the value of the underlying service. Currently, access tokens are an under monetized resource, like a dirt mound hiding rare earth metals. When polished off and refined, this resource will contribute to the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of nations or the world economy.

With distributed ledger technology — such as blockchains — we are able to demonstrate this, primarily due to their ability to tap into a permissionless free market, allowing all parties to trade without any knowledge from a central issuer. This is in direct contract to having a revocable virtual currency, with units maintained in a central company database.

I help steward a SaaS product called the Pareto Network, using network requires an access token called PARETO Rewards ($PARETO). Specifically, a single PARETO Reward contains the same attributes as non-fungible access tokens:

• It is a cryptographic hash
• It can be uniquely linked to a user
• It’s absence or presence can be used to gate access to a SaaS product
• It adheres to a uniform schema

PARETO is an access token. By limiting the quantity of the access token, demand for the service to be accessed is reflected in the market value of the access token itself. Outside of this system, access tokens are generated randomly, for free, leading to market inefficiencies such as not knowing the value of the software service being offered.

PARETO adheres to the ERC20 standard, ratified in Q4 2017 for the Ethereum blockchain.

New markets and the GDP

Tokenized consumer products inherit transferability allowing for any consumer or prospective consumer to participate in vibrant wholesale markets.

You can see all transfers of PARETO Rewards on any Ethereum blockexplorer.

These markets enjoy relative degrees of efficiency which are more improved than local and online consumer marketplaces, and aiming to become more efficient than stock markets.

The market price of a freely fungible access token can be a proxy for the current market value of a network or service. This enables a transparent way of understanding the value of goods and services sold.

The GDP — by definition — is a metric that seeks to count economic activity domestically. This becomes increasingly hard to count as global economies become intertwined, and marches towards irrelevance when understanding actual economic activity.

Tokenization and tokenized assets are settled on global payment networks which are not under the control of any country’s specific corporation or any government. Thus tokenization is also a further catalyst in the GDP’s march to irrelevancy, while also making it easier to count when the specific criteria allows it to be included in the GDP.

This flexible model has the capability of unlocking massive markets and wealth. Ultimately moving the GDP and meeting the benchmarks of national and supranational economies worldwide, as long as the primary role of the GDP also maintains flexible enough to convey any meaningful metric.

I hope you enjoyed reading, I write about the interrelation between monetary policy, fintech issues, programming, blockchain and distributed ledger technology. Follow my latest projects and research on Twitter

Sincerely,

Eric Lamison-White

Access Tokens and the GDP: SaaS Consumer market tokenization. was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.