The State of Network States in Fall 2022

Summer has come and past, and network states are coming fast. (Or not - TBD).

Wake me up - September has ended and the world is flirting with new models for organizing countries via “network states.”

Balaji Srinivasan launched his canonical e-book on July 4th (lol) to much tech Twitter fanfare. In it, he introduces the concept of the network state, for which he provides several definitions of various lengths (one sentence, 1000 words, one essay) and makes the sociopolitical case for why crowdfunded archipelagos of land are necessary and perhaps inevitable.

For those too lazy for the hyperlinks, here’s the Jackson Plain English© definition of a network state:

A network state is a possible kind of future country that starts as an online community and eventually crowdfunds sovereign territory that provides goods & services to its citizens

The purpose of this essay is not to reintroduce Balaji’s work in my own words, but rather to 1) provide analysis on how current startup societies are progressing towards becoming network states (Network states are not recognized as such until they achieve political recognition, which none have done yet. ‘Startup societies’ is the more appropriate, cocoon-phase term to the network state’s full-fledged butterfly term) and 2) observe how network state discourse has evolved in the last three months.

Startup Societies’ progress

Scorecard

Number of current network states with political recognition: 0

Number of startup societies tracked on thenetworkstate.com/dashboard: 26 (+4 since the dashboard launched with 22 societies in mid-July).

Promising startup societies

Balaji outlined 11 core features of a network state. I made each one of those a row in the following table, and picked a few startup societies (not all of them are intentionally building network states - mostly I just picked borderless organizations with which I am familiar) to organize by feature so that we can better visualize the progress of varying startup societies.

Other than the above table, here are a few thoughts on the development of others in this space over the last three months:

• build_republic: They launched their public beta for their protocol for building startup cities this week. I’m excited to interview their founder, Angelo, next week on Campfire. Much of their integration infrastructure seems to be a building block towards what Balaji imagines when he visualizes a network state dashboard:

  

• Seasteads: Seasteads are floating, politically autonomous, environmentally restorative cities in the middle of the ocean. Much of what they are building is still theoretical and dependent on ocean thermal energy conversation tech (OTEC) innovation, but present a compelling case for those who want to build a society from scratch because of their potential modular nature.

  Jackson Steger @JacksonSteger

  Seasteading has a ways to go on the technical side, but can be a desirable option for humanity if we can figure out the following pieces: - Modular design - Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) implementation - Flagging registries - Safety & anti-piracy More on each of these:

• Launch House: I was bullish on what Launch House was building until news broke of repeated disregard and jeopardization of the safety of its members. While I’m not currently convinced this is the team to keep carrying this particular URL + IRL torch, I had previously been excited by the idea of themed houses in major metropolises throughout the world. Let Launch House’s missteps be a lesson to others: member safety, community compassion, and general respect are paramount. Nothing else can happen for an org if it doesn’t etablish these things first.

Network state discourse

Part of the intent of this essay is to try to ground expectations for the speed of adoption of network states in reality by examining the proliferation of the term ‘network states’ in media/discourse. As it currently stands, the conversation about network states is still largely confined to Twitter, crypto circles, and quasi libertarian communities. Here are some observations about how widespread/limited the term currently is:

• The first five google results for “network state” are all still either direct links to Balaji or his book, meaning that the idea isn’t remotely close to being a ubiquitous term like “google” or “uber.” This isn’t surprising, but once this changes, it’s a signal that this space is seeing early signs of mass adoption. Probably still a few years away, if ever.

• The first three pages of google results only include a single “mainstream” media source (Politico) covering The Network State when the book was released. FWIW, the author of the Politico article followed up in September with two more related pieces, including a profile of Afropolitan which is building a Pan-African network state.

• YouTube and TikTok searches net similar Balaji-heavy results (podcasts, talks, etc). I intend to try to affect this myself in the coming months by creating non-Balaji-specific network state content.

• Crypto news outlets cover network state developments, but always with a crypto-oriented lens.

• The most significant contribution to network state discourse so far by anyone other than Balaji is probably this essay from Vitalik Buterin, mostly because of the significant sway he holds in the Ethereum community, which currently has lots of crossover with the network space community (if network states grow in popularity, this correlation should get looser).

With much still to prove, here are four small observations I’ve made building a network city with Cabin.

• Balaji’s book should not be taken as gospel (he’s the first to say this). While it is full of useful frameworks, it is not itself a blueprint. He is making educated guesses about what is likely to happen, but those building will need to make decisions from first principles.

• The “moral innovations” that Balaji uses as examples (similar to Zach Caceres’ “product city’ approach) are likely too simple to be enough to launch a whole new nation. What we are imagining at Cabin is complex. We envision a solarpunk, regenerative world full of walkable communities that worship the creator and nature at the same time. “Conserve, colive, create” is the combination of many simple moral innovations into a multifaceted “one-commandment.”
  
  The idea of a “Fitopia” (a city designed for fitness first) is likely too one-dimensional to ever take off as a city, though it could be a neighborhood theme in something modular like a seastead. In the meantime, if you’re looking for a fitness-first city, I recommend Boulder, CO. Good year-round workout options.
  
  While Fitopias are unlikely, a nuanced network state with myriad policy proposals and world views seem more reasonable, provided a founder can be charismatic enough to attract a global, distributed audience by coordinating a community.

• Nobody builds a city/country overnight (see: cliches about Rome). To build a city, we first need to build something simpler so that we can prove out an MVP. For us, our MVP is a coliving network. And in order to build a coliving network, we need to incentivize people to grow both sides of the coliving marketplace (neighborhoods on one side, residents on the other).

• Nobody is talking about language barriers in network states, which seems like an inherently huge challenge if your goal is to build a global netizenry. LanguageDAOs and translation tools/processes are overlooked in the network state discourse, including at Cabin. This is something I intend to tackle later this year/early next year.

Concluding thoughts:

Network states are still very niche and are only a small part of the future of living puzzle. There are a few dozen “startup societies” working on making some version of a network state a reality. There will probably be many more, and also most of these will probably fail. Those who don’t are the ones who can produce significant value for their “netizens” and simultaneously develop leverage + reasons for sovereign nations to give them diplomatic recognition.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading the first edition of Future of Living. I would love to hear thoughts via comments, DM, or email, especially if you are helping to build a startup society OR you had never heard of any of this and can identify the parts of my writing that were confusing so that I can help clarify.