the future of value lies in triangles

Business has always been performed around the transfer of value between two parties. However, nowadays value is often transferred between three parties in the form of a value triangle.

Value triangles are excellent for all parties involved, because each party gets a slice of the value cake. Let’s take a look at a few examples.

In the first example, we see the value triangle of the BAT (basic attention token) cryptocurrency, a new token developed on the ethereum blockchain that just held it’s ICO (initial coin offering) this past week. I won’t go too in-depth as the value triangle is pretty self explanatory in the diagram below.

For our second example, we’ll look at an inverted value triangle using Melonport as our reference. Inverted value triangles still include the key three corners that are required to create a value triangle, except that there’s a key intermediary between the three corners. The intermediary does not really take any value away from the triangle, it only helps facilitate the exchange of value between the three corners. Melonport, like BAT, is also a cryptocurrency token. However, there are many value triangles as well as inverted value triangles that are not cryptocurrencies. These are just some examples that had good diagrams.

Another key indicator of value triangles is that they are often extremely efficient and may sometimes even have one party do the heavy lifting for another party. This is specifically true for the sharing economy with companies such as Airbnb and Uber as well as eCommerce sites such as Amazon. In these examples, the Airbnb host, the Uber driver, or the Amazon seller are providing services on the behalf of their respective parent company therefore giving the parent company value, and they receive value from their customers, and the customers receive value from them in return through using their services. For example. Uber is a great company, but they would be nothing without their drivers, which does their heavy lifting for their passengers but they get compensated accordingly and therefore are incentivized to lift heavily.

Value triangles are the future of business, when creating your own business models, I highly encourage you to think about using a value triangle model instead of a linear value exchange.