Social tokens — or tokens created around an individual, brand or community — are giving social groups new meaning.

Token-permissioned chat groups and governance are the latest way creators are offering their community unique benefits in the latest experiment to help web3 cross the mainstream chasm.

Using tools like Collab.Land, social tokens enable gated communities where members must hold a minimum amount of tokens to join the group. If at any point the connected wallets balance drops below the predefined threshold, that user is kicked out.

This same premise applies to other forms of content like newsletters and subscriptions, with the general intent of knowing others have skin in the game. This has historically weeded out the spam common in crypto chat groups in favor of high quality, curated discussions.

Zerion has just released a new segment dedicated to this new kind of asset, allowing users to track and trade the most popular social tokens on the market.

Please note that social tokens are still very nascent and should be approached knowing that they are commonly more volatile than other assets on the market.

Why Social Tokens?

Social tokens are creating new ways for communities to better interact with each other.

While permissioned chat groups have quickly become the foundation of social tokens, the notion of ‘token-permissioned’ anything is one that has many creators eager to test the waters on their own.

With COIN, tokens can be used to access different puzzles and quests, either created by coin_artist herself or by the wider E-den syndicate. COIN offers gateways to different features, perks, and wearables in the Neon District ecosystem, one of the first examples of a social token proliferating coveted sectors like NFTs and gaming.

We’ve seen RAC, a Grammy award-winning artist, tease early access drops, giving only those with a certain amount of $RAC the ability to participate in an exclusive product launch on digital goods marketplaces like Zora or SuperRare. Social tokens can even act as a reward kicker with tangible use and value, best exemplified by $TAPE redeemers, Patreon and Twitch subscribers earning $RAC for their contributions to the musician’s growing community.

Other communities like JammSession are storing their social tokens in a JAMM treasury governed and distributed through off-chain proposals and a community multisig. Substack subscribers were the first to earn JAMM through the product-focused outlet, the first of many experiments to earn social tokens for completing value-added actions in the JammSession ecosystem.

Social Token Issuance

Outside of the creators themselves, issuers are expanding on the ways creators can easily have a social token made for them.

With key players like Roll, Rally and Zora offering different designs for social token creation, individuals now have a growing toolkit of ways to join the conversation without any previous technical experience.

Social Tokens on Zerion

While Zerion has always been quick to integrate new social tokens through the Overview tab, their latest segment offers users a way to discover and join communities natively through a trusted asset management dashboard.

Each social token’s asset page features a detailed About section with links to the project, the ability to swap to and from the token, and the tokens’ historical performance over time.

What’s more, the team has worked closely with each social token creator and has a number of features in the pipeline, all geared at offering users the most comprehensive overview of this unique DeFi asset class.

👉🏼 Check out Zerion’s Explore page to get started. You can also request and vote for new social tokens on Zerion’s public roadmap, or join the discussion on Discord.