Blockchain and tokenomics research shifts toward infrastructure, partnerships and economic growth

Blockchain technology was once synonymous with speculative cryptocurrency trading, but a growing body of interdisciplinary research now treats it as something far more consequential: a new layer of global infrastructure that could reshape how societies allocate, redistribute and conserve both financial and natural resources. The second volume of a major research collection on blockchain and tokenomics for sustainable development, published in the journal Frontiers in Blockchain, brings together reviews and domain-specific implementations that map where this technology is genuinely advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and where the promise still outstrips the evidence. The collection, led by Charalampos Alexopoulos of the University of the Aegean, Enrico Ferro of the LINKS Foundation in Turin and Claudio Schifanella of the University of Turin, concentrates on two intertwined questions: how blockchain can support a triple-sustainability paradigm within the global economy, and how the technology’s transparency and immutability can enhance trust, the ultimate prerequisite of any kind of collaboration.

Tokenomics, the design science behind blockchain-based incentive systems, sits at the heart of this agenda. Rather than viewing a token merely as a digital asset to be traded, researchers in this field treat token structures, issuance rules, burn mechanisms and governance arrangements as the economic architecture of decentralized systems. When those mechanisms are well designed, they can coordinate the behavior of strangers at scale, circulating value through networks without a central intermediary. When they are poorly designed, they invite speculation, volatility and misaligned incentives that can undermine even the most technically sound platform. The new volume explores both sides of that equation across domains ranging from health insurance and intellectual property to community governance, food-waste recovery, agentic artificial intelligence and financial portfolio optimization.

One of the most striking contributions is an empirical, artificial-intelligence-based mapping of blockchain applications across the European Union public sector, compiled through the Public Sector Tech Watch observatory. The analysis examined 306 projects, assessing the degree of alignment between project descriptions and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The results show strong alignment with SDG 9, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, and SDG 17, Partnerships for the Goals, followed by more moderate alignment with SDG 8, Decent Work and Economic Growth. Meanwhile, goals such as SDG 2 on zero hunger, SDG 6 on clean water and sanitation, and SDG 14 on life below water remain weakly represented. For policymakers, the mapping offers a rare evidence base for judging how sustainability-oriented public sector innovation is actually being framed, and it highlights which goals may need deliberate attention if blockchain adoption in government is to serve the full breadth of the 2030 agenda.

The volume also takes a hard look at one of the most ambitious emerging models in the blockchain ecosystem: decentralized physical infrastructure networks, or DePIN. These networks use crypto-economic incentives to coordinate the crowdsourced deployment and operation of physical infrastructure, from wireless networks to energy systems. A review and research agenda on DePIN tokenomics identifies a recurring model the authors call the DePIN Flywheel, built on a Burn-and-Mint Equilibrium. In this arrangement, network demand is monetized through usage credits denominated in fiat currency, generated by burning the network’s native token. Combined with governance-adjusted token issuance and collateral requirements, this mechanism forms the economic core of DePIN networks. Yet the literature points to persistent challenges: token price volatility affects provider profitability, incentive alignment is difficult to maintain, non-speculative demand remains underdeveloped, and regulatory uncertainty looms over the entire model. Similar challenges are already observable in decentralized markets involving physical-world resources, including energy data.

In the domain of healthcare, a comprehensive study of blockchain-enabled tokenization for health insurance claims examines the challenges currently associated with claims management and the growing role of blockchain in strengthening trust within healthcare insurance systems. Reviewing the existing literature, the study identifies five fundamental components as central to the development of blockchain-based healthcare insurance solutions: smart contracts, identity tokens, claim tokens, the orchestration of off-chain medical data, and interoperability mechanisms. The technical logic is elegant. Smart contracts can encode claim rules directly on-chain, identity tokens can verify participants without exposing sensitive records, and claim tokens can represent the state of a claim as it moves through adjudication. But the hard problems lie off-chain, where medical data must be orchestrated across institutions, and interoperability mechanisms must bridge heterogeneous systems if tokenized claims are ever to function at scale.

Intellectual property receives an unexpectedly creative treatment in a study on thermodynamic control of patent tokenization. The research develops a framework for improving the efficiency of patent tokenization, thereby broadening opportunities for IP monetization and facilitating innovation aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, including resilient infrastructure and climate-related technologies. Rather than depending on rigid, predetermined plans, the framework offers a more adaptable approach to innovation financing. More provocatively, the study demonstrates how thermodynamic reasoning can connect theoretical perspectives with practical applications in innovation finance, suggesting that universal variational principles observed in physical and biological systems may also provide a useful basis for understanding and structuring financial decision-making. It is a reminder that the mathematics of decentralized finance increasingly borrows from the deepest patterns in science itself.

At the community scale, a study on tokenomics design for local communities develops an interdisciplinary method for examining and designing socially embedded tokenized systems. The research proposes a participatory co-design methodology that stresses the importance of aligning token structures with community values, non-market forms of social integration, and the relational and context-dependent characteristics of money and digital artifacts. The methodology was preliminarily assessed through a case study focused on food-waste recovery, extending a research direction established in the previous volume on the token economy of community-oriented blockchain systems. The underlying insight is that tokens in local communities are not simply miniature currencies; they are social artifacts whose meaning depends on relationships, context and shared values, and co-design is essential if incentive mechanisms are to complement rather than corrode non-market forms of social integration.

Trust and privacy converge in a study that develops and validates a conceptual framework for applying zero-knowledge proof cryptographic primitives within the context of European regulatory requirements. Zero-knowledge proofs allow claims to be verified without requiring disclosure of the complete underlying dataset, a property with obvious value in legally sensitive settings. The study demonstrates the implementation of an agentic AI system designed to support pre-litigation analysis, then develops the concept of an agentic AI marketplace, identifying and describing the technological interactions that may occur within such an environment. Finally, the research formalizes demographic representation as a verifiable property that can be implemented across different technology stacks through smart contracts and oracles. In effect, fairness itself becomes an auditable, on-chain property, a technical achievement with significant implications for how AI ecosystems might be governed.

Financial applications round out the volume with an optimization analysis of cryptocurrency and European equity markets. The study demonstrates that cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum offer substantial return potential, although their pronounced volatility also introduces considerable portfolio risk. In contrast, European equity indices exhibit relatively low correlations with other asset classes and can therefore contribute to greater portfolio stability. Diversification across these asset classes may consequently provide an effective means of reducing overall risk while maintaining opportunities for higher returns. The research also examines the role of blockchain-based financial products in expanding investment opportunities, highlighting their potential to broaden the range of assets available for portfolio construction, a sign that tokenized finance is moving from novelty toward a recognized asset class.

Collectively, the studies in this volume illustrate both the transformative potential of blockchain and the challenges associated with its implementation. They show increasing maturity and versatility in blockchain technology and tokenomics as mechanisms for supporting sustainable, transparent and decentralized innovation across public and private sectors, with the capacity to enhance operational efficiency, trust, security and stakeholder participation. They also reveal a notable shift in SDG alignment: the previous volume emphasized SDG 11 on sustainable cities, SDG 7 on clean energy, SDG 12 on responsible consumption and SDG 13 on climate action, while the current volume expands toward SDG 9, SDG 17 and SDG 8. That shift reflects the evolving scope of blockchain applications and suggests that ongoing technological developments are increasingly aligned with broader sustainable development objectives. At the same time, the findings emphasize the economic, governance and regulatory challenges that must be addressed for long-term adoption, and the delicate balance between promoting transformative innovation and maintaining economic and institutional stability. Effective implementation, the editors conclude, requires carefully designed tokenomic models, interoperability among technological infrastructures, compliance with regulatory frameworks, and effective alignment between technological development and society’s wider goals.

Subject of Research: Blockchain applications and tokenomics design for advancing the Sustainable Development Goals

Article Title: Editorial: Blockchain and tokenomics for sustainable development, volume II

Article References: Alexopoulos, C., Ferro, E., & Schifanella, C. (2026). Editorial: Blockchain and tokenomics for sustainable development, volume II. Frontiers in Blockchain, 9, Article 1952615. https://doi.org/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1952615

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fbloc.2026.1952615

Keywords: blockchain, tokenomics, Sustainable Development Goals, DePIN, smart contracts, zero-knowledge proofs, health insurance claims, patent tokenization, cryptocurrency portfolios, decentralized governance, Editorial, sustainable