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Tokenomics
Back to all articles Tokenomics Tokenomics (“token economics”) refers to the design of a cryptocurrency that encompasses aspects like supply, allocation, and utility.
By Geoffrey Lyons
Published on Aug 2, 2024
Last modified on Feb 26, 2026
Tokenomics (“token economics”) refers to the design of a cryptocurrency that encompasses aspects like supply, allocation, and utility.
There are tens of thousands of cryptocurrencies and they all work in different ways. Bitcoin has a fixed supply of 21 million whereas Ethereum has no supply cap. Solana allows token holders to nominate validators (those who verify transactions), whereas many cryptocurrencies don’t even have validators.
Broadly speaking, these cryptocurrencies have different tokenomics .
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Whitepapers Usually a cryptocurrency’s tokenomics are laid out in a blockchain’s whitepaper , a short document that outlines the project’s:
Vision The ultimate aim of the project
Technical details How things will work under the hood
Early sale info How tokens will be distributed
Some whitepapers just focus on one of these elements. Solana’s whitepaper technical details .
Comparing tokenomics
Supply (amount of tokens)
Utility (a token’s primary use cases)Ethereum
Solana
Burning (removing tokens from circulation) Ethereum
Solana
Allocation (how tokens are distributed at launch)Bitcoin
Ethereum
Solana
Staking (locking tokens to support network operations)Ethereum
Solana
Governance (power of token holders to govern blockchain)Bitcoin
Ethereum
Solana
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