The Many Roads to The Network State

Welcome to the first installment of the DAOs & The Network State Newsletter

Jan 21, 2023

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” ~ Chinese proverb

The initial step in a journey of ideas is not always easy to identify, as ideas don’t mature in a vacuum. However, there are often important changes in trajectory, a point where a set of ideas gains momentum.

Many have pondered the concept of creating a new nation-state that is more accountable, transparent, and democratic than the ones we currently see. In the journey towards realizing such a state, one can pinpoint Balaji’s release of The Network State as an inflection point.

The goal of this article, and the Twitter Space it is meant to summarize, is to create channels of communication for any and all ventures aligned with the ideals of The Network State (see this link for a recording of Network States Chat #1).

A clear narrative from the first talk was that there are many potential paths to a network state. Each participant reflected a desire for the same goal but was not necessarily taking the same route. This is fine; if the goal is the same, and we are not sure how exactly to arrive at the desired point, let's try a few different paths.

To illustrate these different paths, let's ask a few key questions.

Where is The Network State?

While official recognition of a geographic territory is the goal, a network state must begin within a current state's borders. Given you can’t throw a dart at a map and land on a piece of land that a current nation-state doesn’t have jurisdiction over, The Network State must come from within a state.

The key question, then, is how such a physical location forms within a state. Well, it will start online. As our lives are lived more and more online, our meaningful connections will be formed through online communities. As those connections become more important, we will seek geographic points to cement those relationships - simply, we will meet in a chat room and discuss where we can connect IRL. As this step repeats, the path toward a network state gains momentum, and its physical location will become more apparent.

It is important for pockets of people with aligned interests to meet in the real world. These pockets can take many forms. The most interesting, perhaps, is outlined by Kift, a DAO devoted to “building a geo-distributed city with a community of Van-Lifers and digital nomads.” The mission is to enable the ability to roam as you live and work. The open road is a path toward The Network State.

Cabin focuses on small pockets of spread-out citizens. Cabin seeks “coliving neighborhoods at the intersection of tech and nature.” The path to a network state can have a campfire. Jackson from Cabin stresses “creating, conserving, and coliving.” The goal is a network of communities connected throughout the globe, a “network city for solarpunk builders.” The slow and steady building of a network state is one piece of dislocated land at a time.

CityDAO has the mission of building a Web3 city of the future. The goal is to build a city within the United States, but that doesn’t mean it will be forever bound to the US. A city within the US could be an ideal candidate to seek diplomatic recognition as a separate state.

Nation3, perhaps is taking the most aggressive path towards a nation-state by trying to build a nation-state in the cloud; “We are building a zero-tax, Web3-powered, solarpunk society.” The network state, in this sense, will exist in a cloud dimension; then, when a physical space is realized, the network state is just downloaded, and software becomes hardware. As Lewis from Nation3 outlines, we want a direct path to a network state, cloud-first, land later.

The Network State is wherever you decide to meet IRL.

Who will fund The Network State?

Zachary Caceres is the founder of a well-known and highly recommended blog titled startupcities.com. In the newsletter, Zach mainly explores the ideas of start-up cities. Cities that are formed more like startups than traditional governance. In exploring the topic, the idea of what a city, or government for that matter, should or shouldn’t be is eloquently explored. Can a Network State be a start-up city? I don’t see why not.

Build cities is an organization to build start-up cities from within existing cities. The goal is to develop protocols that can govern cities within cities. To start from within and grow out. The project hopes to allow capital to flow to start-up ventures. Kernels of network states are beginning to grow through Build Cities protocols.

Cohere is a “network of impact-driven co-living communities” that might hold the answer to funding. Dakota from Cohere explains how the key to funding a network state might lie on the bridge between Web3 and traditional finance. The network is more like a traditional business; they are a C-Corp in Delaware that seeks to use traditional capital to fund the untraditional future. Use traditional capital to fund regenerative communities; these communities then fund themselves.

The Network State will bootstrap itself.

Who Coordinates all this?

The ideas thus far are very grandiose, but one might ask – who ensures all these dots fit together in some coherent pattern?

The Sapien Network is all about coordination. Their goal is to build the tools to build the communities. They launched a passport this past year with the idea of it becoming a real passport someday. A Web3 representation of your credentials and rights in a new network state of the future.

Origami is taking a similar approach; its mission is to empower DAOs by giving them the tools to succeed. The Network State will be founded by DAOs and run much like a DAO. The key primitive is to allow DAOs to scale. Origami is the scaling solution. Andrew from Origami suggests a key limitation to many Web3 projects is the lack of ability to market their products. A network state is a grandiose idea, but this will all fall on def ears if “the world doesn’t know what we are doing!”

Coordination is the key to it all. You might argue we are stuck with traditional nation-states for the simple reason that those who seek something better can’t coordinate and turn dreams into reality. The directions, tools, and vision are all there. Let’s coordinate and make it happen!

How to Stay Connected

We are hard at work developing a meeting place for these conversations. We are looking into a platform, a discord channel, and a Twitter account devoted to these conversations. For the moment, please follow the host of the Twitter Spaces @MemeBrains, and he will be sure to keep you up to date. I look forward to future conversations!!