Introduction
The Token Engineering Commons was born as an ambitious experiment to implement the world’s first blockchain-based commons. We dedicated it to advancing the field of token engineering.
This commons is now at a crossroads. Without decisive action, the TEC risks a drawn-out decline that undermines its legacy and leaves its community in limbo.
This proposal builds on Rex’s recent proposal for sunsetting the $TEC token with a budget and plan for sunsetting not just the $TEC token, but the TEC itself. History is watching to see whether we bring this experiment to a close in ways that are in keeping with the great care with which it was created. The proposal is based on three basic principles:
1. Honor the Legacy of the World’s First Blockchain Commons
As the world’s first explicit economic commons on the blockchain, we have valuable lessons in decentralized governance, collective funding, and community-driven economic design for those who might follow in our footsteps. The application of Ostrom’s principles, including their successes and failures, are just some of the many important insights that can inform the next generation of economic commons.
2. Exemplify the Token Engineering Values Behind Our Mission
The TEC was a bet on a novel engineering field for building new socio-economic systems, like our commons. Our Hatch demonstrated how a community can be engaged around the design, verification, and deployment of these crypto-economic systems. We now have an opportunity to echo token engineering values in how we sunset these systems and the social and economic layers they enabled.
3. Care for the People Behind the Commons
The TEC was more than just mechanisms and money; it was people. As most of the original community moved on in late 2021, a small team of contributors stayed behind to continue to steward the TEC’s work. Their innovative grants programs generated real awareness for token engineering, and they did this largely without touching the Common Pool for the last two years. As part of a principled sunset, the TEC community has an opportunity to recognize this sacrifice and dedication.
Sunsetting TEC Assets
This Sunsetting Plan includes steps for responsibly retiring the TEC’s 4 primary remaining non-financial assets:
Technical Infrastructure
The dissolution of the Augmented Bonding Curve (ABC) and removal of all funds within the Common Pool will follow the implementation plan set out in the original proposal by @Rex.
At the same time, this proposal provides the necessary flexibility for General Magic and the Coordination Team to exercise reasonable discretion in making specific adjustments as needed. This ensures that, while we remain faithful to the framework already agreed upon, the teams are empowered to respond pragmatically to the realities of winding down a complex engineering project.
Knowledge Resources
Throughout its hatch and operations, the TEC community learned a great deal that could be useful to those who come after us. It is important that we document what we learned, both in launching and running a blockchain-based commons as well as the core mechanisms we used to do that. As part of the shutdown process, we will capture this knowledge through:
- Ensuring the preservation of critical knowledge from Gitbook, the Forum, and any other TEC knowledge platforms by archiving them for public reference. Contents will be licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International deed.
- Supporting the Bonding Curve Research Group’s retrospective analysis of key TEC mechanisms (the Augmented Bonding Curve, Conviction Voting, and Praise System) with a $10K grant. This funding will be the final grant made by the TEC.
TEC Brand
To preserve the integrity and avoid muddying the narrative of the TEC’s legacy, the TEC brand will be retired as part of the shutdown process. For posterity’s sake, TEC branding assets will be archived on Github under its existing GPL-3.0 license.
Communication Platforms
The TEC has two types of communication platforms: social media profiles (X, LinkedIn, and Discord) and publishing sites (Discourse, Medium, Paragraph, and the TEC website). During the 6-month tokenholder notification period, both platform types will be used for outreach to tokenholders (see below). After that period, the social media accounts will be closed after archiving them to the best of our ability. The publishing accounts will also be archived and then shut down.
As part of the TEC’s closure process, we considered the feasibility of archiving our various communication platforms. For social media accounts, the general assumption is that archiving is either impractical or unnecessary, with the exception of X. Given its relevance, we plan to request the archival data of all interactions, store it in a .zip file, and secure it by hashing into Arweave for long-term preservation. While some of the X data may be messy to work with, the cost of storage is negligible and may prove valuable for future reference.
Much of our media content from X Spaces has already been recorded and uploaded into the TEC Youtube, and we will also publish some of the unpublished recordings as well. Other platforms such as LinkedIn, were considered less relevant, and Discord presents additional challenges due to the complexity of archiving, though it may still warrant exploration.
All avenues of preserving TEC history will be attempted so that those wishing to study this experiment in the future will be able to with relative ease.
Responsibilities to TEC Stakeholders
The TEC has served many stakeholders, with token engineering practitioners serving as a key constituency. Since launch, the TEC has funded $433,316 in direct grants to promising token engineering projects. In addition, its Token Engineering Grants Rounds collaboration with Gitcoin catalyzed an additional $250,000, while simultaneously generating important visibility for the field. The TEC has fulfilled all outstanding obligations to its grantees.
The only remaining obligations for the TEC are to two stakeholder groups: current contributors and tokenholders.
Contributor Severance and Backpay
The number of TEC contributors shrank dramatically in its first year of operations. The skeleton crew that remained behind faced challenging circumstances as they sought a sustainable path in fulfilling the mission of the commons. Its members worked well-under market rates, donating many hours. Severance is a common method for providing financial and transitional support to employees after an involuntary job loss such as this shutdown. One-to-two weeks of severance pay per year of service is considered the norm. This proposal uses 1.5 weeks.
Over the last three months, Coordination Team members worked without pay to help the TEC navigate several possible futures. The first such proposal, which would have funded their work, was set aside and never voted on because of subsequent proposals for the $TEC’s sunset. The team continued working throughout this time. In recognition of this show of good faith and dedication, this proposal recommends an award discounted to one-half of that missing pay.
| Backpay and Severance Calculations for Coordination Team | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ratios | Nate | Bear | Mon | Rex | Total | |
| Monthly pay: | $3,600 | $3,400 | $2,200 | $500 | ||
| Years of service: | 4.78 | 3.5 | 1.29 | 3.42 | ||
| Months worked without pay | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | ||
| Backpay Discount | 50% | |||||
| Severance Ratio (Years:Weeks) | 150% | |||||
| Severance Weeks | 7.2 | 5.3 | 1.9 | 5.1 | ||
| Backpay: | $5,400 | $5,100 | $3,300 | $750 | $14,550 | |
| Severance: | $6,453 | $4,463 | $1,064 | $641 | $12,621 | |
| Total: | $11,853 | $9,563 | $4,364 | $1,391 | $27,171 |
Tokenholder Distribution and Notification
With this proposal, tokenholders are given the opportunity to vote on how the TEC’s remaining financial assets will be distributed. It proposes that all remaining TEC financial assets after allocations for the TEC Sunset Budget outlined below be distributed, pro rata, to token holders. To prevent token speculation, disbursements will be calculated based on the lower of: (1) the number of $TEC tokens held as of July 23, 2025 (when the sunset plan was first publicly announced), or (2) the number of $TEC tokens held as of the dissolution date (when this proposal is enacted). The distribution process will be implemented via a claims contract outlined here.
The claims process requires tokenholders to take action to claim their funds, so tokenholder notification is an important part of this sunsetting process. To this end, the Coordination team will maintain a 6-month notification process, marked by heavy upfront notification and ending with a final month of high-frequency notifications via TEC communication channels (see above).
Any unclaimed funds at the end of the 6-month notification process will be donated to the Given Galaxy Cause on Giveth.
TEC Sunset Budget
The below table summarizes all associated costs for the work outlined in this proposal. Note that the sunsetting operations will happen over the course of six months, with most of that work happening in the first month and the remaining five months being mostly focused on ongoing tokenholder outreach.
| TEC Sunset Budget | |
|---|---|
| $27,171 | Severance and backpay |
| $10,000 | Retrospective token engineering analysis grant |
| $10,500 | Sunsetting operations |
| $5,000 | Claims contract for tokenholder fund distribution |
| $52,671 | TOTAL |
Severance, research funding, and claims contracts will be paid out immediately to relevant parties. The sunsetting operations budget will remain in the Coordination Team Multisig to fund remaining shutdown operations including archiving all relevant TEC knowledge bases, and any unforeseen costs associated with the shutdown process.
Call to Action
The TEC was an experiment in building a commons for the digital age. Its success lies not in its permanence, but in the courage to act decisively when its purpose has run its course. This proposal allows us to close TEC with integrity and dignity, leaving a clear legacy and redistributing its resources responsibly.
We ask token-holders to come together to support this proposal and ensure the TEC’s conclusion is remembered as a model for how blockchain communities can gracefully close, just as they boldly begin.
The most valuable roles you can play in ensuring an honorable and orderly sunset of the TEC include:
- Voting in favor of this proposal if you currently hold $TEC
- Bringing this proposal to the attention of others who may currently hold $TEC
- Showing support with likes and comments
- Providing constructive suggestions for improvement in the comments as part of the TEC Advice Process
On a final note, the Coordination Team is eager to wrap up their work at the TEC and move on to whatever comes next for them. Should this sunsetting process become further delayed or overly complicated, we risk losing their assistance in effecting an orderly shutdown. Should that happen, there is a risk of this community and its commons being left in limbo or that we haphazardly close down the TEC without adequately protecting the various assets outlined above.
