Hi everyone, I’m filing a Community Hub on Token Rights for Devcon 8 India.
Every attendee holds tokens. Almost none of us can say precisely what those tokens entitle us to, or who can take that entitlement away. This hub exists to answer that question. It is built for tech & non-tech attendees and it names no projects.
Summary
For years a vote was the most discussed token right, but tokens have outgrown that. The wider question: what does this token entitle you to & what makes that claim enforceable. Ownership, access, cashflow & voting rights across fungible tokens, NFTs & RWAs. CROPS in action at the stakeholder layer.
Motivation and Rationale
How would this Community Hub enhance the attendee experience?
Everyone at Devcon holds, earns or issues tokens. Very few can say precisely what those tokens entitle them to. The information usually exists but is buried in docs & contracts. We are asked to DYOR but we rarely know what that means.
In addition to learning about solutions being worked on, attendees leave with four questions they can ask of any token they hold: what do I own, what can I access, what am I owed, what can I decide.
How would it complement Devcon 8 India? In what ways does it add a unique piece to the overall experience?
Devcon covers Capture Resistance thoroughly at the protocol layer. The application layer, where the overwhelming majority of user value is actually captured or extracted, has no dedicated home. Token Rights is that home: the value of Capture Resistance applied to stakeholder economics.
It is also asset-class-agnostic by design. Fungible tokens, NFTs & real-world assets all make a claim to a holder & all three have similar issues. Existing hubs are organised by asset class or by function, this one is organised by the claim itself.
India is the specific reason this hub belongs in Mumbai. The fastest-growing user base in the ecosystem meets Ethereum at the application layer first, through tokens, airdrops & points. A hub that teaches people to read what those tokens owe them is the most useful thing this venue can offer this audience.
Why is this topic significant, & why is a Community Hub the best format to address it instead of a one-time talk or workshop?
In crypto, Token Rights is not a settled body of knowledge that one person transmits from a stage. It is an active argument with informed people on several sides: designers who believe a mechanism can be made honest, users who have watched entitlements get diluted, lawyers who know the scope of code. At the most, a panel can give you a summary on one or more of those perspectives. A hub will incorporate all of the nuances across 4 days.
The topic also has a difficulty gradient. The same question (“what does this vote get me?”) is a 101 question on day one session one & a research question on day three. Four days gives us enough time to introduce the topic & dive deep without choosing between them. A single session forces that choice.
How would this Devcon Community Hub support builders & their journey?
Sessions are built around patterns: what happens to holder rights when emissions fund growth, when a vote is advisory, when an off-chain entity holds the asset the token points at. Teams designing tokens get to pressure-test their assumptions. Builders leave with a token design checklist before a badly designed token ships & the rights become unfixable
Have you organized a Community Hub at a past Devcon edition?
No. This is a first-time hub. What I carry in is applied practice: six published protocol assessments, each working through how a live token design distributes value across its stakeholder groups. That method is encapsulated in the hub as a shared tool, generalised into patterns & stripped of any named subject.
Implementation
The standard RFP-13: Devcon 8 India Community Hubs 
provision covers this hub. The hub needs:
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Dedicated space, ~30 person capacity
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10 bean bags / cushions / chairs
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1 LED TV on a stand + HDMI
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2 cork or wooden boards
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2 whiteboards
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1 worktable for up to 6
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Power outlets, small cabinet, Ethernet
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Shared storage
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Limited tickets for the organising team & engaged contributors
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Coordination support from the Devcon team & inclusion in official communications
Nothing exotic sourced separately.
Programming
Shape of the day
A typical day from 9am to 6pm looks like this:
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Chai & Chill, morning open floor: warm-up, low-stakes
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Three facilitated sessions, spread across the day, 45 to 60 minutes each
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Office Hours: networking with governance & token rights mentors & experts
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Open mic hours & Games in the late afternoon for informal discussions
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Always-on layer, all four days: Pin board activities, questions board, & a “what I thought I knew / what I know now” reflection card attendees fill on the way in & on the way out
Roughly 12 facilitated sessions across the 4 days. I’m not fixing a timetable at the proposal stage: the schedule gets set with facilitators & the Devcon team after selection.
Potential Topics
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Token Rights 101
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Voter Apathy
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Delegate Roles & Responsibility
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Vesting Schedules & their alternatives
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Token Rights in RWAs
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Token Rights in NFTs for holders, creators
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Enforcing token rights
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Alternative Governance Models
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Role of AI in token rights & governance
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Reputation & Verification systems
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Tokens vs Equity
Stage session
Our dedicated stage session will be audience-driven rather than a talk. The hub collects poll results & “what I thought I knew / what I know now” answers from attendees across all four days & the stage session presents the findings back to the wider Devcon audience. It brings the hub’s programming to the main floor as a finding, not a summary.
OPEN CALL: Possible speakers & facilitators
I’m actively recruiting facilitators in the open. Confirmed names get added to this post as they lock in, ahead of August 12.
Profiles I’m looking for, matched to the sessions above:
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Token & mechanism designers who have shipped a live design
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Governance practitioners & delegates
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Onchain researchers & data analysts
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Lawyers & RWA structurers who know the evolution of token rights
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NFT & creator-economy builders on royalty & access rights
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Local communities who can run the 101 in Hindi or Marathi
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Users with a good story about a token that did not do what they thought it would
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Any profile related to Token Rights that I’ve missed but moves the conversation forward
If any of this is your work, reply here or reach out. The arc & the topic themes are set. What’s open is the slot: which session you take & the specific angle or example you bring to it. That part is yours to own. There is deliberate room for topics I haven’t thought of.
How does this topic support Ethereum’s core properties, open-source ethos & community bridge-building?
Capture resistance is a named Ethereum property & a prioritised criterion this year. At the base layer it means keeping governance, roadmap & critical entry points out of the long-term control of a small interested group. This hub applies the identical property one layer up, to a Dapp’s stakeholder economics: who captures the value the Dapp creates & whether holders can verify or enforce their claim on it. A cypherpunk base chain running captured applications still produces centralised outcomes for users.
On open-source ethos: The plan is to have a daily blog update like the Governance Geeks forum last year so that all hub activities are published openly & reusable by any community after Devcon. None of it is a product.
On bridge-building: the token rights question is the same question the RWA, DeSci, Governance, Art & Fintech communities each answer within their own scope. I’d actively like to run cross-hub sessions with any of them & will reach out during onboarding.
Audience
Who this hub is for:
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Anyone holding tokens who has never had a clear answer about what they entitle them to. Largest group at Devcon & the least served.
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Token & protocol designers who want their design discussed with by the people it affects
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Governance participants, delegates & DAO contributors from the voting side
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Researchers & analysts working on distribution, incentives & value capture
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Founders about to make token-rights decisions for their porojects
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Lawyers, RWA teams & anyone working where the onchain claim meets an off-chain one
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Creators & NFT builders on royalty, access & ownership rights
Groups & regions to engage:
The Indian retail & builder base is the priority. India is the fastest-growing user market in the ecosystem & Mumbai is its financial hub. Most of this growth comes to Ethereum through tokens. The Token Rights 101 runs twice on day one, once in English & once in Hindi or Marathi, so local-language access is a deliberate design decision. I want to explore ways to extend this to more Indian languages & am actively looking for facilitators who can solve this.
I also want the attendees who arrive curious rather than credentialed. The day-one floor, the Questions board, Open Mic & Office Hours exist specifically for them.
On the India-based prompt: the organising lead is Mumbai-based & embedded in the local ecosystem.
Team
Pree (@preegee) - Mumbai-based crypto analyst & consultant. 15+ years in business consulting, 5+ years in crypto. Publishes structured assessments of how live token designs distribute value across their stakeholder groups; six published to date across DeFi, AI, launchpad & consumer protocols. Studying those designs one by one is why I think this hub & the conversations in it need to happen now..
Why am I best suited to lead it: the hub’s core contribution is a method for reading token rights & the method exists because it has been applied in public, on live protocols, with the results posted. This is NOT a proposal to develop an approach at the event. It’s a practice brought to an audience..
Contributors: I’m building the organising team & facilitator bench in the open, on this thread & across the Ethereum community. Additional core organisers & session leads will be named in this post as they confirm.
Languages: English. Marathi & Hindi via local contributors. Scoping solutions for more.
Neutrality & Code of Conduct
Neutrality is enforced by the following:
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No session names a protocol, critically or promotionally. Sessions run on archetypes & design patterns. Where a concrete example is needed, more than one will be used..
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Every session opens with the same line: we’re here to understand token rights, not to shill or FUD any project.
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No organiser or facilitator presents their own project’s design. Anyone with a live affiliation to a design under discussion discloses it before the session starts.
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No branding, tokens, product demos or sponsor placement anywhere in the space.
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Examples rotate. No single design pattern is carried across the days in a way that would read as a case for or against a real project.
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Written facilitator briefing before the event covers all of the above & every facilitator confirms it.
Note: The lead organiser’s published assessments are independent work with no protocol affiliation, funding or token position behind them. No assessment, brand or methodology name appears anywhere in the hub’s programming, signage or materials. The method is universal & that gets discussed.
Open to feedback & very open to contributors. If a session above is your topic, say so in the thread.
I’m @preegee on X, Telegram & Discord