Polycentric Equity Swap Game, Devconnect Buenos Aires, Argentina 2025
The Polycentric Equity Swap Game was a workshop held at Devconnect 2025 in Buenos Aires, Agentina. Polycentric is a governance role-playing game first instantiated by Michael Zargham. Many games have been played including the inaugural IRL physical version at Stanford CODEX in 2024.
This version was a fully digital version of the game developed by Ven Gist that focused on the idea of players role-playing founders and negotiating to form agreements for equity swaps, an idea from Jesse Katz. The equity swap game also minted verifiable credentials for each step of the agreement process, including the final on-chain signatures from the parties upon bilateral agreement.
In the game, players would:
- Create a founder profile
- Negotiate and proposed equity swaps with other founders
- Review and either accept swaps, or propose revisions to swaps from other founders
- When both parties had signed agreement, each could download a verifiable credential of the completed agreement
The game was facilitated by Ven Gist and had 12 players. As with other Polycentric games, the agreements formed a visual network of the agreements between players, allowing a quick overview of the results of agreements made or in progress.