Committer of the Month – Simon Bowles, Tokenomics Lead

In our latest edition of ‘About Shardeum Team‘, we have Simon Bowles, who is also the committer for the month of July 2024.

Simon is the Tokenomics Lead at Shardeum, where he is responsible for the design and implementation of our crypto economic system. Previously he worked at other layer 1 blockchains and start-ups within the space designing crypto economic models, helping with strategy and monetization, and also works in academia.

Utilizing that experience, he’s now focused on helping Shardeum become a leader in the layer 1 space through its unique technology and its ability to attract value to its ecosystem. Simon is particularly interested in applying both the theoretical and practical approaches to value creation and value accrual to Shardeum. In his spare time he can often be found researching emerging Web3 topics, occasionally teaching at Oxford University, or walking the dog!

You can find Simon on Twitter.

Let’s Now Chat with Simon!

Jereme/Will: What does a tokenomics lead actually do?

Simon: Great question! There can occasionally be the perception that working in tokenomics is focused on creating some kind of token, marketing it, and then listing it on an exchange. Whilst this will correctly be the case for many Web3 start-ups, at Shardeum and other well-funded projects, some of those aspects will be handled by dedicated teams. This can enable much more of a focus on building a robust crypto ecosystem and then subsequently testing ways to drive value to that system/token.

An analogy I often use is that value in Web3 is like filling a bucket with water and then throwing it in a communal river – so for us truly understanding ‘value’ is critical. The approach we are rolling out at Shardeum involves primarily elements of game theory and behavioral economics, but also with a nod given to complexity theory, emergence, and scale theory – for those who are interested! 🙂

Jereme/Will: What sets Shardeum apart?

Simon: There are two things that set Shardeum apart in my opinion. Firstly, how we bring together many facets of sharding is unique, giving us an ability to conduct linear auto scaling. Secondly, our massively lower barriers to entry for setting up a node, which we hope will make us truly decentralized.

Jereme/Will: How can our community members help Shardeum?

Simon: Communities are, alongside the underlying technology, the primitives of Web3. Without an energized community, whose individuals feel like their needs are being met, Shardeum will not succeed. So I certainly try to support our community team as much as I can to help them reach that goal.

Jereme/Will: What was your journey into Web3?

Simon: Ah, the eternal question! I am afraid my journey will probably sound very boring: in 2016 I simply moved jobs from tradfi to crypto, when I was offered a position outside of the UK (where I am from) at a broker looking to start trading Bitcoin. I am still working in crypto and still living outside the UK, so let’s see what the next eight years looks like!

Obviously there have been changes in that time, and I am sure some of our readers will have been in the space even longer than that, but for me one thing I do distinctly remember was in 2017 a real narrative evolved in crypto that a SEC-regulated spot BTC ETF was actually about to be approved. Now, of course, that sounds completely ridiculous, but for some reason back then it was believed (honestly). Considering it took roughly another seven years for it to happen, what this story highlights to me is the amount of time it will take to build a new decentralized web, aka Web3.

The ushering in of the new economic system will not be as it was visualized back then. One could say it will be more phased and transitional – or at least that is what has happened to date. The layer 1’s being rolled out now are the structures on which this transition will take place over the next few decades. And from what I have personally seen at least, more and more of the major organizations globally, such as banks, sports franchises, airlines, and even central banks are exploring and building on blockchains – so the next few years definitely has the potential to be just as interesting for anyone looking to ‘BUIDL’!

Jereme/Will: Thank you, Simon, for sharing your stories, ideas, and insights with our community. We are grateful for your contributions and are confident you will continue with the same zeal and energy.

---

Note to the community: If you want to be part of our exciting team or any of our ecosystem projects’ team, please do keep a tab on our careers page on the website where you’ll find hundreds of job opportunities.