It's interesting, your point makes sense with the caveat of a blurring of terms.

I mean in the sense of, state formation was of such significance that I don't think you can say something like "currency came first" as if currency prior and post state formation is the same thing. It feels like the same sort of "pseudo-currency" with "currency" equivocation.

So if your model is - basic credit in that communal reciprocative sense, then you start trading with more distant outgroups, for this credit doesn't work, so everyone agrees on a currency, someone off in the distance doesn't agree, then states form to adjudicate disputes.

Then it is sensible as a primitive model, but I would just merely suggest that in the same way trying to say currency comes first is kind of a blurring the meaning of currency perhaps to the point of being a stretch, I think in this case to, it will be less orderly. One way this is blurred almost intrinsically in your articulation is via the term dispute resolution process. This could mean anything. It occurs to me that outright conquest and banditry is one way to resolve a dispute. Perhaps in places were there was "spontaneous" centering around a particular currency, this sort of violence was a predicate. I tend to think the need for violence and domination (and mitigations against the same) - what I think of when I think of states "resolving disputes" - was baked into the germ of humanity much earlier than what we might term "state formation". This gets back to the "pseudo-government" point I was trying to make earlier. I think of these things in parallel, rather than in sequence. If at their core humans are violent, such that they make violence, fear violence, and seek tradeoffs to manage violence, then this violence is a driver across currencies and states and trade networks, regardless of a determination of which "came first", if such a determination is even meaningful without greater specificity.

Similarly, I'm not sure if "State formation is a consequence of extended trade networks transacting with currency, currency and trade is not a consequence of state formation" is accurate in the same way. I suppose we have to unblur what "state" means.

I thank you for the back and forth though, which I enjoyed. I feel a need to do more reading on this topic, though I would guess much of these questions are not really falsifiable, as some of the answers are surely lost to history. Thanks, have a good day!