[2603.21690] AI Token Futures Market: Commoditization of Compute and Derivatives Contract Design

Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence arXiv:2603.21690 (cs) [Submitted on 23 Mar 2026] Title:AI Token Futures Market: Commoditization of Compute and Derivatives Contract Design Authors:Yicai Xing View a PDF of the paper titled AI Token Futures Market: Commoditization of Compute and Derivatives Contract Design, by Yicai Xing View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:As large language models (LLMs) and vision-language-action models (VLAs) become widely deployed, the tokens consumed by AI inference are evolving into a new type of commodity. This paper systematically analyzes the commodity attributes of tokens, arguing for their transition from intelligent service outputs to compute infrastructure raw materials, and draws comparisons with established commodities such as electricity, carbon emission allowances, and bandwidth. Building on the historical experience of electricity futures markets and the theory of commodity financialization, we propose a complete design for standardized token futures contracts, including the definition of a Standard Inference Token (SIT), contract specifications, settlement mechanisms, margin systems, and market-maker regimes. By constructing a mean-reverting jump-diffusion stochastic process model and conducting Monte Carlo simulations, we evaluate the hedging efficiency of the proposed futures contracts for application-layer enterprises. Simulation results show that, under an application-layer demand explosion scenario, token futures can reduce...