Summary, my other summaries are here
I watched The Network State Conference 2023, 7 hrs stream, really interesting, my summary is the following:
Balaji’s intro:
– Big idea is that from startups like Google, communities like Facebook, and money like BTC – there is a chance for new [decentralized] countries. An old dream of crypto-maximalists
– How to get to network states? Simply build a parallel establishment: villages around the world, 1000 startups to disrupt outdated institutions, new media like Substack/Twitter
– I found that Balaji has indeed a quite long dream of exiting some country into some another ideal society like his dad from India to USA? ) (check Balaji’s video at YCombinator 2013 (!) on exiting from USA, the name of the video is “Balaji Srinivasan on Silicon Valley’s ultimate exit”)
I. PARALLEL SOCIETIES
– Offline: a village without a car like Culdesac. Cabin with 24 co-living spaces around the world for 4K people. Nomad: you can have your own container house of 50 sq.m. transported between various villages. Praxis: US guys want a charter city in the Mediterranean to accelerate the technological progress of the world by new policies. Prospera: goal to build a pack of Singapores around the world (offshore, warm ocean climate, ease of business), now on Roatan island in Honduras. Fractal: co-living in NYC for 32 people from 11 flats. Vibecamp: Twitter friends are going to Bali to festival together. Cover: prefabricated container-type houses + they hack permits in the USA/zoning laws (Gigafund VC of Luke Nosek are investors into them). Spectra in Puerto Rico. Casa Orascom in Egypt
– Virtual: Metacartel – DAO of eth grants, $1.5 million sent, 137 people. Coordinape: a tool to simplify voting in DAOs. Plumia: startup of non-state unemployment insurance for digital nomads, $800/year, 30 thousand clients and raised $50 million for 150 FTE, since 2018, from Norway. Patri Friedman, grandson of the libertarian Milton Friedman, created a seasteading institute with Peter Thiel’s $, now VC Pronomos: $100 million invested around the world in new self-governing cities/charter cities – see their site. Yayem: dope houses for nomads in 20 countries, 500 people, by girl who is ex-top of Uber Africa. Zuzalu of Vitalik Buterin: pop-up network research school like Harvard, first attempt 200 people did live for 2 months in Montenegro
II. PARALLEL INSTITUTIONS
Media: Glenn Greenwald that after 9/11 both NSA and UK began to have authoritarian surveillance in the USA, the constitution was forgotten (that was revealed by Snowden). Or censorship of media/press from bunch of NGOs (behind which are the same billionnaires and Western intelligence services) -> you need to use anti cancel culture video hosting like Rumble etc.
– The book Gray Lady Winked by Ashley Rindsberg that NYTimes (top1 media brand in the world) has been lying for 100 years: that there was no Holodomor, that Poland attacked Germany, etc. -> we need media based on community consensus, like Farcaster
– Founder of nas IO service for community creators (in messengers?), that the role of online communities will grow further
Education: Synthesis, teaching children mathematics, started at the Musk children’s school. 1517 VC – they did Thiel Fellowship very successfully (10 unicors like Luminar or Buterin/ETH from 150 recipients), and then they became VC and also invest in dropouts. Emergent Ventures grants in the style of Thiel Fellowship, but around the world. Replit ($20 bln unicorn) is a cloud-based IDE for 50 programming languages: everyone can learn to code/make $. Gary Tan, CEO of YCombinator, that we need parallel institutions in everything, because everything has become bad in our decadant society
AI: Anonymous effective accelerationist Beff Jezos (he is on Twitter) that big tech are taking advantage of public fears of AI (whatever it means), and they successfully pushing oligopolistic laws/regulatory capture about AI -> so, we need to continue the fight for open-source AI
Security
– Ex-military guy & founder of Spearbit, that network states need online security (encryption) and offline (drones + private armies)
– Luis Cuende about second passports + North and South Americas provide citizenships mostly by birth and all other countries by blood (showed nice slide)
Biomedicine
– Infinita VC in Prosperos wants a network state for longevity and do Vitalia.City: to gather hundreds of biotech firms into a cluster for 10x cheaper clinical trials by simplifying regulations/regulatory arbitrage
– VitaDAO, crowdsourced funding for research in longevity, a few dozens of recipients of $4 mln. already
– ResearchHub is made like Github, but for open science, by former Coinbase CEO
Finance: Anatoly Yakovenko that his Solana is a parallel finance system. Winklevoss brothers. Some girl on search funds for blue collars (who will also live in such co-livings of digital nomads mentioned above). Kathleen Tyson, gov. banker, about de-dollarization and that there, she believes, will be no new ccurrenccy hegemon as before. Peter St. Onge, researcher, that the global crisis of national government debts is coming
– By the way, the map of startup societies ecosystem is wow (at 5:15:44 time)
P.S.:
(But please kindly change the term ‘state’ to ‘society’, since state is different – that’s what the UN recognizes: (a) what is priced in real lost lives or (b) exists on the humanism of superpowers or local players, e.g. Singapore vs. Hong Kong)