Abstract This paper presents a token-based accounting scheme for decentralized autonomous systems, such as peer-to-peer systems. The scheme uses tokens as proof of resource or service usage. Conforming to the peer-to-peer paradigm, the tokens are issued using a decentralized mechanism. Within peer-to-peer systems the proposed accounting scheme can be used to overcome information deficits. Thus, it constitutes the basis for coordination and control mechanisms as well as for pricing in commercial scenarios in fully decentralized systems. The presented scheme is compared against an alterative approach showing the advantage of the token-based scheme in terms of communication costs.