you impress me. There is little literature on this subject.

However, there is one thing I do not really agree with.
"A blockchain without a token is just a database"

it's true for public ledger but it's less relevant for permissioned blockchain.
In fact, there are (at least) two permissioned ledger (Hyperledger and BigChainDB).
The first one has been created by IBM and is now under Linux Fundition.

None of them uses token. Hyperledger uses PBFT "Practical byzantin fault tolerance" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_fault_tolerance). This conssensus is more relevant than DPOS in permissioned blockchain.