Tokens Matter

During the global pandemic, information workers were abruptly forced to engage in virtual work. This paper reports on an experiment seeking to formalize the formalization of small team coordination at London Blockchain Lab through the use of blockchain-supported tokenization. The Web3 organizing vision promotes the technology as an enabler of new ways for individuals and organizations to engage in the transparent exchange of scarce digital rights. However, little attention has been paid to the use of blockchain technologies to coordinate distributed collaborative activities. This paper seeks to understand the viability of this vision amongst a community of expected early adopters through design experimentation resulting in interview data. The study points towards the significant gap between the Web3 vision and the problems of realizing this in practice. This highlights fundamental barriers to using blockchain for team collaboration while also pointing toward its potential. Even the most willing and able find it hard to turn code into law through tokenizing collaboration.