To date the world of cryptocurrency is abuzz with hundreds of new Initial Coin Offerings (also known as ICO’s) as companies scramble to raise funds for their newest technological ideas. Investors are interested to get in early on the future of the technology that they think will dominate the world in a few years. But what if the company plus cryptocurrency model is wrong? What if it’s not tokenized companies such as EOS or Bancor that will win the war for the future but something different?

In 2011 we saw the potential behind bitcoin’s blockchain technology and although we foresaw the tokenization of companies, which in our opinion is a lot like the stock market, we also foresee something much more interesting, the tokenization of the individual. Cryptographic tokens, assets and blockchains don’t need to be limited to the world of business and finance but can also be used in ventures to empower the individual. Imagine being able to support and finance the successes of talented individuals in their respective fields like Michael Jordan, Taylor Swift, Stephen Hawking, or Pablo Picasso.

In the near future the individual can present themselves and their work to the world through the form of a cryptographic token and receive backing from investors who believe in their talents and abilities. The individual can offer their supporters, as examples, a transparent look into their lives, a portion of their profits, or even complimentary access to their upcoming concert or event. With the tools provided by Ethereum, Counterparty, Waves and many others, individuals can now create their very own cryptographic token to represent them in a variety of manners. This means that instead of a DAO or Decentralized Autonomous Organization we can have a DIR or Decentralized Individual Representation.

With the tokenization of the individual, support can be created to not only build an audience for their work but also provide access to avenues that before were limited or inaccessible due to financial restraints.

For our project, The Scarab Experiment, we went one step further and have tokenized an individual that’s actually made up of its audience and members. This means that we have flipped the process and tokenized the supporting crowd itself! This helps ensure that the support for SCARAB doesn’t benefit a single entity but all members that decide to join our community. The more time a single community member devotes toward working through SCARAB the more benefit the entire project receives. The only requirement to become SCARAB is that you hold one cryptographic SCARAB Token that we created using Counterparty.

Since SCARAB is an artist collective identity most of our members work in two ways, as a representative or as an artist. Artists create artwork either for inclusion into SCARAB’s official work or to help inspire the vision of The Scarab Experiment. Representatives can work in many ways such as putting on exhibits, posting flyers or even just word of mouth. Artists and representatives are not held to working through our limited examples but can work in new ways that they come up with themselves, that’s just a little part of the creative power in a tokenized community supporting an individual.

To find out more please visit http://thescarabexperiment.org