What is the $RUN token?

This transcript has not been edited — please listen to the podcast to confirm any statements made by speakers. 

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Brian Shields, CEO & Co-Founder of Sprinter:

Hi, everybody, welcome to the future at work. I'm Brian shields. I'm here with my partner, Alex Ford-Carther. Hey, Alex, what are we gonna talk about today?

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Alex Ford-Carther, Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder of Sprinter:

Today we're gonna be chatting about the Run token, native token within the Sprinter network, and kind of talk about its utility, its use cases. And just to give you a little bit deeper dive into all things run.

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Shields:

Yeah, you know, I love talking about Sprinter. Yeah, I want to start.

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Ford-Carther: 

I'm just, I don't know, just tell us. First of all, what is the Run token?

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Shields:

Yeah, so the run token will be the main native token for the smarter community. So everyone who transacts within the Native token will be receiving the members discounts as clients and they'll be receiving member premiums as service providers. So basically, the way it works is that anyone who's transacting within the Sprinter platform using a fiat currency is basically paying like a wholesale rate. And then if you're paying within the the native token, you're getting like the membership discount. And so the idea is that, by bringing everyone together onto the single token, we're going to be able to provide both a payment method as well as the method of governance. So we're going to be having these two different tiers of these NF T's for the membership, the individuals, and then the agency owners. Now we're gonna be doing this airdrop of the run token, and the run token will be the actual governance token for the network. So you're not going to be able to join a sprinter team to work on a project as a pro, unless you have some of the run tokens in your wallet, you don't necessarily need to have the NFT to join a project, but you won't be able to lead a project or run an agency without owning the NFT. So what we want to do is make sure that we are decentralizing the governance of the splinter network in a way that is sustainable and has a smooth transition of authority from you know, the founders in the company to the Dow. And so we're gonna be able to do that by the airdrop of the spirit of the Ron token to the spiritual community. So 30% of those tokens are going to be in that AirDrop will be allocated to the NFT holders 30% will be allocated to a treasury, which will be managed by the Dow composed of all the token holders, and then 30% will be going to the company and that's going to be allocated to the the investors that helped launch the project to begin with. And then another 10% will be allocated for you know, rewards and community, you know, sweepstakes giveaway and stuff like that. But the idea is that this is going to be the method where everyone, regardless of are you, young developer, or designer getting started and you aren't able to, you know, purchase a membership and run your own agency or you're not that level your career, whether you're comfortable running your own projects, you can still buy the run tokens, and that's going to give you access to the Sprinter platform, it's going to give you access to the Sprinter community and membership in the Sprinter network. And so it's going to be able to provide a lot of benefits to the members as well as the actual utility of being like the native payment token for the platform and the governance unit for the for the community.

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Ford-Carther:  

Yeah, so just kind of wrap that a little bit. So we talked earlier on one of the episodes about the platform using smart contracts and kind of the escrow payments. So the Ron token itself will be the token that kind of, I guess, utilizes the smart contract. So you'll fill the smart contract with the Ron token. And then as the work gets completed, and the client and project, deliverables get accepted, the Ron token will then be distributed to to the pros who actually worked on on that particular task or requirement. So just Okay, so now I've got the run token, though, like what? Like, can I swap it out? Like, how does that Yeah, I

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Shields:

mean, it's, it's an Aetherium based token, so you can anyone can go to Yoona swap and exchange it for whatever anyone's gonna be able to purchase it with theory. So once the run token has been once the airdrop has been allocated to the community, then anyone will be able to swap it out. And they can do whatever they want with it's their own property. It's their asset, you know.

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Ford-Carther:

So if I miss, like the NFT launch, per se, and I don't have a helmet or a badge, I still can get access to this printer network.

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Shields:

Right, you would have to purchase those run tokens from an additional member who an existing member who either received them in the airdrop, or you know, on an open market somewhere. Okay, cool. Yeah, we don't provide that market, you'd have to find that somewhere else.

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Ford-Carther:

So it just kind of, you mentioned a couple of different aspects of the utility. Let's kind of dive deeper into each one of those. Specifically, you talked about payments, so maybe we'll put a hold on that but but governance right, and we've talked about the Dow and the importance of you know, the governance and people having a say in how sprinters is going to be run in in in the future. So, kind of speak to the runs. importance in governance.

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Shields:

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely gonna be the key method of voting. Right. So I mean, I think that there's a there's a whole other episode we could probably do entirely unpacking data governance. So we'll probably get to that one in maybe at the next one we do. But the the role is going to be is that basically your, the number of votes you're gonna be able to have is going to be equal to the number of run tokens that you have in your wallet. And so basically, it's kind of just like a pro rata voting situation. So the idea is that anyone who joins, you might join the network two years from now and just purchase realm tokens, you might purchase the NF T's, but only the initial NFT membership drive are going to be the ones who are going to be able to participate in the airdrop and receive that allocation. And then yeah, it's just well, you know, you're going to be able to use the tokens, if you have a certain allocation of tokens. If you purchase, you know, a certain number of tokens, you'll be able to run projects, even if you don't have a LEED membership NFT. But that's going to be something that will be revealed to the community a little bit later down the line. But really, it's making sure that you know, everyone who votes whether it's a proposal, you'll you'll need to have run tokens to submit a proposal to the community, you'll need to have like a certain level of tokens allocated to like bringing the proposal forward. So not just everyone can like bring a vote to the floor, so to speak. So it's kind of like goes to the committee process brings it to the floor, and then everyone can vote on it. And the idea is that it doesn't matter if you're a client who holds run, because you won't be able to receive discounts on the services you're procuring. Or if you're an agency owner, if you're a product lead, or you're a designer, you're a developer, if you're a senior, if you're a junior, if you have run, everyone gets to vote. And the idea is that that's actually like, how can we bring a model of stakeholder governance and stakeholder capitalism forward in a way that, you know, equals the kind of levels the playing field for all parties, because at the end of the day, when everyone's relying on a software platform to operate their business, everyone's a stakeholder in it. And like, we don't see that enough, in a lot of the web 2.0 companies, a lot of the kind of consolidated centralized, you know, tech behemoths, is that, you know, we the users don't actually get to have much of a say in how these platforms are built. But we're the ones who are, you know, kids are being fed because we're using them. And so it's about how can we bring everyone's voice forward and make sure that everyone has an ability to kind of communicate what they think is best for the platform, what they think is best for the community and let the community decide collectively what that action should be going forward.

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Ford-Carther:

Maybe just I'll give a couple examples. And maybe you can expound on that. But some things that people might be able to vote on, as far as like, platform features on the roadmap. You know, do we want to build a mobile app for the network? Do we need to Android? Right, like So certain things? You know, do we want a new feature for agencies that allows them to tie into their payroll? Like, there's certain things that you could vote on, from a platform standpoint? And then also potentially, you know, how network hours are spent on marketing? Right, and maybe kind of dig dive a little deeper into specifically what, what someone could vote on as being a Ron token holder?

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Shields:

Yeah, I mean, like you said, beyond, you know, hey, let's build out new modules and new features, and new and new product roadmap, you know, elements that, you know, might be something that you know, somebody who comes from a writing background, or from a video editing background might say, Oh, here's new ways we can improve the platform for people in our industry, we'd want to hear those proposals, we'd want the community to be like, Yeah, that's a great idea, we can open this up to a whole nother industry, that'd be great. And so then I think that that's really important, but just kind of, you know, bringing it back around of like making sure that everyone's able to kind of communicate equally, and not just in terms of the modules and the features and everything like that, but also like in real life events, or do we want to open an office somewhere, do we want to fund like a retreat or something like that? Do we want to allocate resources to new educational materials or training materials to help educate people on how to how to be an active member of the community, even maybe they're not a writer, or maybe they're not a writer, or an engineer or a designer, but maybe they're a salesperson or marketer, and they want to know how they can contribute. So being able to vote on, you know, basically voting on like, almost like Grant allocations from the Dow treasury, like, oh, the Dow is going to allocate funds for the Treasury to this effort or that effort, and making sure that that's done on an equal footing for everyone so that everyone who is, you know, purchasing the NFT, or they're a member of the specter community, everyone who else is run tokens is going to have the equal governance rights of everyone in the community. And so making sure that all the proper disclosures are in place, and everyone knows that the way this works is that it's just kind of like, you're like, kind of like, you know, the the oil that runs the the system type of a thing. Like, we want to make sure that everyone knows that we can operate this thing, as in perpetuity, as long as the membership is strong, and people are at, you know, actively contributing to the to the growth of the platform in the network.

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Ford-Carther:

So we've talked about, you know, how to get them if you're not a member, talk about what that AirDrop looks like. And then, you know, how can I be interested in sprinter? How can I be a part of the airdrop for the Ron token?

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Shields:

Yeah, I mean, you'd have to purchase one of the NF T's to participate in the airdrop and so it would either be purchasing the individual membership NFT or the agency membership NFT. So it's either gonna be the helmet or the badge. And then, you know, those two NF T's will be the kind of initial membership drive for the network and kind of like the initial early adopters of the spiritual platform. And then, you know, shortly thereafter, I'm not going to put a hard date on it because we all know you know, That's a great way to throw off a roadmap. But basically, you know, shortly thereafter, maybe 3060 90 days later, we'd probably be doing the the airdrop of the the Ron token to make sure that the membership is all educated and aware of like how this all works are all joining the discord and everything. So if people are interested in participating in the Sprinter community, and they want to get in on the airdrop, where they want to buy an NF T, you're gonna be able to go to spreaker.io, they'd be able to go to spreaker.io/members. And they're gonna be able to learn more, sign up for the whitelist join the discord, you know, talk to other people in the community, you know, we're in there, you can feel free to ask us questions, we're gonna be hosting a lot of AMA's. Obviously, listen to more of these podcasts, take a look at the White Paper, we have content for days walking through governance and token economics on the website. So I think that there's a lot of content that we've put together, because we really want to make sure that this is like a really transparent process in terms of rolling this out. So yeah, I mean, go to sprinter.io, learn more on the membership page. And we'd love to have everyone get involved.

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Ford-Carther:

So based on specifically which membership type you buy, whether it be the individual or the agency, and those come in that the NFT badges and helmets. There'll be an allocation of Ron token, in kind of correspondence with which NFT you actually purchase. Yeah, so

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Shields:

we've talked about in an earlier episode about how we're looking at this as like a software licenses like in token form, and kind of almost like a digital franchise model. And so the idea that you're going to, you know, depending on which token you have, you're gonna be able to get this allocation of the Ron tokens. And so basically, it's almost like you're replacing that b2b SaaS model in terms of headcount and seats. So basically, depending on how many seats you have, that's how many how much run token you'd be allocated. So if someone gets a badge, they have a single seat, they're able to run projects are sorry, if someone gets a helmet, they have a single seat, and they can run projects, if someone gets a badge, those are going to have a random allocation of seats, according to the badges. So there's gonna be a little bit of a random element in the in the badge NFT purchase where you might get one that has 10 seats, you might get one that has 100 seats, and then that's going to be how much of run tokens gets allocated. And that's just to add a little bit of fairness into the platform so that it's not just like a pay to win model.

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Ford-Carther:

Sure. You talked about kind of the airdrop, as part of the distribution of the full token supply of Ron 30% is going to be going to that AirDrop, you mentioned holding 30% back for the Treasury kind of talk about what that treasuries for?

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Shields:

Yeah, I mean, the treasuries for like the ongoing support of the network, making sure that there is just the ability for the for the community as a Dow to vote to allocate that treasuries to whatever they might see fit. I mean, that at that point, it's not it's not, you know, it's kind of beyond our control. It's whatever people want to do with it. But it's making sure that they can collectively engineer whatever the solution is, they need to make sure that the the platform or the network can continue sustainably. And so making sure that they're able to manage that professionally, responsibly and with transparency, I think is really important. So we've seen a lot of ragas out there, we've seen a lot of mismanagement, and, you know, kind of called the token version of fiscally irresponsible, right. And so it's making sure that the Dow community through its governance process is going to be able to, you know, elect their the governing commission that's going to be able to select and vote on treasury management vendors, whether it's, you know, token fund managers, third party, you know, investment firms, what have you, but the idea is to make sure that the community has ongoing support, you know, funded through the some of the proceeds from the initial token sale, so it's basically just going right back into the membership.

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Ford-Carther:

So just the token holder journey, if I'm someone interested, so I come by either individual membership or by agency membership, I get the airdrop, but Ron tokens. Now I'm part of the community and the governance, I guess, kind of how to how do I get more? How do I earn? Obviously, I combined more about kind of what is the mechanism where I can actually earn more run tokens?

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Shields:

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that's the most important part, right? Because it's not just like, Oh, here's a token you can buy and you can use it that those are gift cards, but this is about you can actually earn them too. So it's whether you're able to, you know, like I said just a second ago about how the DAO may determine that the Treasury should allocate certain token supply or certain funds to build out new features or modules according to platform, then those features would become sprints within sprint or on a project to build out the platform and then everyone who contributes to that sprint and does the work whether designer, developer marketer strategist, practically what have you, they'd be able to earn tokens by contributing to the ongoing development of the platform. And so I think that's really important that, you know, by running projects, or contributing to projects, you know, completing sprints, you're gonna be able to earn those tokens, and you're gonna be able to You choose sprint to sprint, whether you're a product lead or an agency owner or a client or a pro, whether or not you're gonna be, you know, receiving run tokens or just, you know, US dollars or fiat currency, because you need to have that flexibility, like we've always talked about, like everyone's got a mortgage to pay, right, kids to feed that not every school board is taking eath right now. So it's like making sure that people can, can, you know, flip back and forth I think is really important. So making sure that we can kind of serve as that Fiat on ramp for, you know, businesses due to, you know, digital currency, or cryptocurrency but also the businesses that are able to kind of make that transition as well, and do it in a way that's going to help them save money and lowering your operating costs.

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Ford-Carther:

Yeah, I mean, we've talked about just the nature of what we're building, we obviously want it to be community built. And we've built the foundation, once we launched the token itself that we want, I mean, by nature of crypto, the internet, it's the intersection of tech talent and designers and finance people like we're really seeing like, people that are interested in web three, come come in to web three with a lot of different skill sets and talents. We want those people engaged in the network. And then also, you know, the few folks that want to actually participate and helped build the platform itself. The Ron token is naturally incentivizing those people to get involved and get engaged. And obviously, just, you know that the sprint roadmap will be a part of everybody's event, really mention that. But if you are a NFT token holder, you'll be able to see access to the sprint roadmap inside of sprint. So then you can kind of see specifically, what features are being worked on what's upcoming, what's next, what marketing plans are being sold are inside the garage. Yeah. And so if you want if you're a marketer, if you're an engineer, and you think you contribute, you got an idea when people want to hear it, right. So you can you can, you can potentially join the project and actually earn run tokens for building and continuing to grow and build sprinter.

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Shields:

At the end of the day, we've always said, we just want to build cool stuff with cool people. And the idea that this is an opportunity to redefine what the nature of distributed business looks like, you know, using the new technology, using the changes and kind of like the just global macro economic standpoint of people are becoming independent contractors, people are launching their own businesses, people are running their own agencies, we're seeing more and more of a kind of disintermediated economy. And so it's how can we actually let people kind of be their own masters and like run their own platform, run their own businesses on a platform that they can own collectively and actually participate in the governance of we think is pretty important.

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Ford-Carther:

Last episode, we kind of talked about, kind of, you just mentioned it briefly the like the Fiat versus using crypto for the actual payment and the run token for payments for for work through the platform. But break that down specifically in sense of if I'm a pro, I've got my project rate on the platform. If I do decide to take Ron token, I'm getting a premium. But then, like, kind of walk them through that that cycle of like, why they should really be accepting the run token as their form of payment, and kind of what are some of the benefits? Beyond?

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Shields:

Yeah, well, basically, if everyone's transacting in Fiat, there's like a natural Clearing House effectively through the corporation where the companies get the company that built the platform is getting a network, it is getting an agency fee on top of the solution fee that's going to the service providers, and then there's always a network fee, for every sprint that goes through the network fees, we're going to always go to that route treasury, right. So the Dow Treasury is going to be able to, you know, get a piece of every single sprint transaction that goes through and then that's going to be collectively governed by the Dow itself. And so the idea is that if everyone's paying in Fiat, like the company will be basically need to pay banking fees, and all this like stuff to actually operate. So that goes through us. And so we're taking that fee to cover the operating costs there. But there's a natural incentive for everybody. So if the client wants to transact in the run tokens, they're gonna get a 25% discount on services. And then as a pro or a lead, if you're receiving choosing to receive the run token as payment for that sprint, you're gonna get your rate plus 25%. So basically, instead of there being kind of like a traditional, like agency margin markup, and like kind of general contractor or subcontractor kind of economics, that's going to be going back to both parties, because like, we don't need to take a slice of that, because the idea is that everyone's running their own client projects on their own platform with their own team. And so can just go back to both parties, and so that everyone has a natural incentive to just operate in the native token on the platform.

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Ford-Carther:

I love sprinter. I like what they're doing. But let's say I'm not a designer developer, right? Maybe I'm not in the tech space. Maybe I'm just a trader or somebody that just loves crypto. And I'm a account, right? I don't I don't know. But what we've thought about that scenario where it's like, oh, well, maybe I don't want to contribute and get rewards. Maybe I don't want to run my own agency like, but we've talked about staking staking in the run as a means of incentivizing that person to be engaged and be part of the community and the growth of the community talk about what run staking looks like, we think it's important in the long run, but kind of talk what that actually looks like, for the network.

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Shields:

Yeah, well, like you said, I mean, like, you may purchase the NFT, as an agency owner, you know, agency membership or an individual membership, you may just purchase your run on the secondary market, you know, after the airdrop and you okay, I believe in sprinter, I want to support this project, but I don't want I'm not actively working on ASF, I've got a day job, I've, I'm busy, whatever. So that's like, Okay, I got this NFT. And I want to support this project, because I think this platform is going to be something that people are gonna be using, and it's a good thing to be a part of, there's a limited number of memberships, I want to support it. When you get these tokens, you're like, Okay, well, I don't want to use them. I don't have any ideas for building an app or software or website, I don't need to run a marketing campaign. I don't care about my personal brand online, for whatever reason, although they probably should, but then it's going to be okay, well, I can stake these tokens. And so right away, you're gonna be able to stake those tokens over time. And the longer you choose to stake those tokens, the higher rewards, you'll be getting those rewards be coming out of that 10% allocation, and then the Dow can choose from the Treasury to change that over time, that will be up to the Dow collectively to make that determination. But yeah, you're gonna be able to stake your your tokens right away, to be earning more tokens. And again, just kind of continuing to provide support to the network. And showing that of, you know, whatever percentage of tokens that were distributed, this number is locked up kind of just showing, you know, faith and security and stability of the network by the community.

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Ford-Carther:

So in kind of summary, we've got from a utility standpoint, you've got payments, governance. tokens will be airdropped, so you don't have to buy unless, if you're participating in NFT. Membership. There's a reward system, so you can contribute to the network and the platform to get rewards, you can stake them any other potential utility that we haven't talked about.

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Shields:

Yeah, no, I mean, there's definitely stuff that we've talked about in terms of interior life events, where you'd be able to kind of unlock unlock access, a lot of that stuff is, you know, right now, we've kicked it around. But that will be you know, announced after the initial membership drives and like the allocation of the Ron tokens, but we have a lot of plans in terms of making sure that we're able to actively engage our community members, wherever they are around the world and making sure that we're able to activate locally at scale, and making sure that we can kind of you know, engage with, you know, our members and boots on the ground, whether it's, you know, meetups around crypto conferences, or, you know, main tech conferences, whether it's a TechCrunch, disrupt, or Web Summit and stuff like that, or just, you know, the consensus and permissionless kind of conferences, but also, we think that there's gonna be a lot of opportunity to partner with other organizations as well. And so I think that there's going to be additional member benefits that can be kind of built out and determined over time, especially as everyone kind of joins together and works on pushing this forward.

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Ford-Carther:

You kind of want to talk at all about how you see the Ron token being kind of a standard unit of labor. And,

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Shields:

yeah, no, I mean, I do I think, you know, just, you know, I can get pretty heady about this coming from coming from a Debt Capital Markets background, I'm a huge history guy. And like, obviously, I love political science. And so how can we kind of like bring everyone together in terms of, you know, the general history of money and how it's, you know, unit, you know, measured for units of labor and stuff like that. So, the run token effectively is this, you know, just a femoral unit of measurement, that it's basically a function of labor and time. And so the way it all works within the platform is basically like, as people are working as members are contributing to the platform, the more people that are treating today, you know, transact on the run token, the more velocity you're gonna have for that token within the system, but at the same time, it's going to be everyone's sets their own rates, right. And so it's like no one, it's not pegged to any one person or agent or agency or companies individual, our it's not tied to any one individual currency, but it is, what is the network capacity of this human talent in terms of what they can do collectively? And the idea of just having that kind of like, it's like the kilowatt hour, right of like, what it is. And so how can we make sure that we're able to kind of like measure the capacity of the network as a system and making sure that it's a way that it's providing that utility in the valley to where everyone's going to be able to use it for something beyond just the measurement itself? I think it's really important to make sure that we're able to transition the governance from kind of like a singular centralized control to that Decentralized Governance. The best way to do that is through you know, the NFT membership and then you know, the allocation of the Ron token via AirDrop

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Ford-Carther:

awesome so I'm gonna summarize this buyer NFT to get the run AirDrop and if t being either the individual or membership agency membership to sprinter, you get your run AirDrop, you get

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Shields:

it, you can use it, you can stake it, you can build your team, you can start, you know, assembling your Avengers, right have your designers and developers and connecting with the other people in the community and start putting those tokens to work, you know, and engaging with people to build stuff or you can you know, like I said, stake it, you know, We're worried support the platform. But as soon as you get the NFT memberships, but either individual or agency that's going to be a lacks the access to the platform for those user experiences and like access to that user interface for those roles. And then if you're just purchasing the run token, after the airdrop, you're gonna be able to access the platform as a pro, and so you'd have that user experience. So if you want to learn more sprinter.io follow us online, Twitter, Instagram at sprinter dow sprinter.io. For the website. I'm Brian shields. This is Alex forte, Carter, you can find us online. But yeah, we really appreciate everyone's interest and everyone tuning in to learn more about what we're doing

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