Tokens, from their means of issuance to the economies they coordinate, can operate as infrastructure for different kinds of currencies and institutions built using blockchain technology. As institutions shape social outcomes by defining the incentives and constraints for how people participate in an economy, these tools can empower anyone to rethink and redesign these systems, enabling citizens to direct the evolution of their societies. By democratizing mechanism design on top of permissionless blockchain networks, tokens have the potential to invert the traditional power structures of institutional design in favor of bottom-up discovery that is more sovereign and adaptive.