Can infants be tokenized? An encryption experiment to solve the population crisis.

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Abstract generation in progress

Written by: Lauris

Compiled by: Saoirse, Foresight News

For most of human history, infants have been considered economic assets with productive value. Children are not only objects that need to be raised, but also a source of labor — they can herd sheep at five years old and participate in farming or become apprentices at ten. The more children there are, the higher the output, the stronger the risk resistance, and the greater the family wealth. This model has been effective, with a positive growth trend in birth rates, and childbirth has been an upstream driving factor of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Later, everything changed.

At some stage in the 20th century, children no longer participated in productive labor and instead became consumers. School education replaced labor practice, laws restricted child labor, and the focus of social education shifted from fostering initiative to emphasizing obedience. Parents still had children, but now each child became a "net liability" for the family for up to 18 years, and the marginal utility of having children fell below zero.

This has led to the situation we face today: a sharp decline in birth rates, an inverted population structure, and an aging economy.

The model of relying on child labor in farms has become a thing of the past, but incorporating infants into the "bonding curve" mechanism (a mathematical model used for the issuance and pricing of crypto assets) can achieve the following goals:

a) Develop a brand new financial infrastructure tool to help families accelerate their journey to financial freedom; at the same time

b) allow children to become assets with economic productivity again, thereby releasing beneficial effects for society in terms of increasing birth rates.

Opportunity: Babies as On-Chain Financial Primitives

Cryptographic technology provides us with the tools to address this issue. With the help of composable smart contracts, identity metadata, and financial instruments, we can now reintegrate infants into the economic system.

When a baby is born, a "Baby Bond" is minted. This is a hybrid ERC-404 token: part NFT (for identity identification), part fungible token (for providing liquidity). This token represents the potential economic value that the baby develops over time, covering multiple dimensions such as cultural memes, social, and intellectual aspects. The second derivative of value, i.e., the acceleration of growth, is also reintegrated into considerations related to birth rates.

Contract Standard: ERC-404 and INFNT Token

Traditional NFTs are not suitable for this scenario due to their lack of liquidity. Therefore, baby bonds adopt the ERC-404 standard. This is a hybrid standard that allows each token corresponding to a baby to achieve:

  • Fragmented trading through INFNT tokens
  • Achieving individual identity recognition through parent NFTs
  • Implement dynamic valuation by combining badges and bonding curves.

This design allows us to combine two major advantages: the permanence of identity and the composability of liquidity.

From a mathematical perspective: Let B(t) be the baby bond at time t, then its value change formula is: dB/dt = ∂INFNT/∂milestone + ∂INFNT/∂meme speed, where both variables exhibit convexity with respect to public interest and institutional validation.

Features, Artificial Intelligence and Badges

Baby bonds are not just a type of token; they are a vibrant modular carrier that embodies value accumulation and reputation transmission.

  • Characteristics metadata for AI intelligent experience verification: From the moment of token minting, the AI entity will monitor and record the early developmental characteristics of infants, such as movement speed, social behavior, audio signal complexity, etc. These characteristics are attached to the NFT through semi-immutable metadata (which can only be modified by trusted update oracles), ultimately forming a vertical, verifiable, and privacy-protecting "infant characteristics profile."
  • Educational Certification Badges: Schools, universities, digital academies, and other institutions can issue encrypted badges that are directly attached to NFTs. These badges are used to identify milestone achievements for infants (such as "Literacy at 3 Years Old", "Accepted by MIT", "Top 1% in Spatial IQ"), which are public resources for token holders and also provide exclusive advantages.
  • Dynamic feature accumulation and modular governance: Before the age of 18, infant bonds are managed by parents, smart contracts, or trustees from decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs); after turning 18, governance rights are transferred to the infant themselves. Additionally, the "exit right" can be granted to the infant starting at the age of 13. The weight of early voting decisions can be in the form of a square to prevent manipulation of governance by radical large investors.
  • Fully Auditable on the Blockchain: All data and operations are recorded on-chain and can be audited at any time.

Example: Trait Score Formula: TraitScore (t) = ∑ (Badgeᵢ * wᵢ) where Badgeᵢ represents the verified achievement signals, and wᵢ represents the weight coefficients determined by the market.

Convexity and Mechanism Design

The value of baby tokenization does not stem from linear cash flow, but from "unlocking convexity" – significant non-linear returns can be generated based on the developmental achievements of the baby, the popularity of meme dissemination, and external certification.

  • Bond Curve Based Issuance: The INFNT token (the native token of non-fungible baby bonds) is issued through a bond curve to reward early supporters. As the baby reaches more milestones or its social impact increases, the token value will grow exponentially, and "baby investing" will become a new form of "seed round investing."
  • Third-party feature injection: Validation badges issued by authoritative organizations will drive the token value to grow along a nonlinear trajectory. For example, after adding the "Olympic Gold Medal" badge, the NFT may experience a discontinuous upward adjustment in value due to a "supply shock" at the meme level.
  • Protocolized Fertility Incentives: Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), Layer 2 networks, and even nations can implement composable incentive mechanisms. For example: providing gas fee subsidies for families with children, matching the second degree of infant bonds held by low-income parents, launching the "Fertility Farming" program for rural users, etc. The design space is completely open.

downstream application scenarios

After the tokenization of infants, they will become programmable financial infrastructure. The following are some downstream application directions:

1. Baby Mortgage Loan

Families holding high-potential baby bonds can use the baby's expected income or meme rights as collateral to obtain long-term low-interest mortgages. The basis for loan approval is no longer the parents' income, but the child's expected economic utility. For example: "We pay a 30% down payment, of which 10% is in ETH and 20% is in baby bond shares."

2. Baby Index ETF

Construct a selected portfolio of baby bonds based on themes such as geographical regions, talent areas, or characteristic profiles. For example: "Nigeria Top 50 STEM Potential Babies", "Genius Portfolio - First Tier IQ Score Tier", "Elite Violin DAO Organization". Such portfolios can be issued as ERC-4626 standard vaults or tradable basket tokens.

3. Baby Perpetual Futures

Build a complete derivatives market where users can perform "long" or "short" operations on the future socio-economic returns of specific groups. Contracts can be settled based on the on-chain comprehensive key performance indicators (KPI) when the baby turns 21 years old, and oracle disputes are resolved through multi-signature arbitration or meme resolution mechanisms.

4. Baby Influence DAO

Achieve "tokenized charity" from the moment a baby is born. Donors can contribute to baby bonds in impoverished areas to receive "impact returns" and obtain governance tokens in the "Baby Uplift DAO." The "impact proof" mechanism will replace traditional charity models, forming a regenerative reproductive financial system.

5. Narrative Derivatives

Betting on speculative development trajectories for infants, for example: "Will Child X become a billionaire?" "Will Child Y get embroiled in public controversy before the age of 12?" On-chain prediction markets will become "narrative carriers," with token value increasing as the trajectory results materialize.

Ethical considerations

Some may consider this proposal to be "dystopian," believing it to commodify life. However, in reality, life already possesses financial attributes in today's society, and children themselves are cost centers for families; we have simply been using a model with low transparency and unreasonable incentive design. Tokenization is not exploitation but rather a readjustment of the existing system, allowing "the meaning of life" and "capital" to coexist.

The subject of the transaction is never the baby itself, but rather the value assessment of its growth trajectory.

Conclusion

We cannot go back to the era of relying on child farming; that model is long outdated. The practice of infant labor on farms has become history, but by tokenizing infants (combining real-world assets RWA with decentralized physical infrastructure DePIN attributes), we can leverage token incentives and cryptographic technology to address one of the most pressing issues in modern society.

Reproduction becomes a source of income.

Being a parent has become a matter of following a protocol.

Human society will also regain "liquidity."

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