Early this year, I stepped down as COO of a Cork Protocol I cofounded, and found myself on a Caribbean island run by a startup government. Three months later, I moved into a ghost town designed to become the world’s first Network State
I flew to Honduras to explore Prospera, the Sepcial Econominc Zone (SEZ) that resides in a beautiful Carribbean island of Roatan, of which I had heard of before but did not pay much attention to it. Prospera is very special because it is a zone with the greatest degree of sovereignty and freedom in the world. I will write about it in greater length in the next newsletter. Meanwhile you can check this short documentary on it if you are curious.
While spending my January and February in the Caribbean, Balaji announced V2 of Network School which got me thrilled. After exploring one version of sovereignty in Honduras, I wanted to see another — the digital kind descending to earth. I have been excited about this project already from the last year, when I wanted to attend the V1 in September 2024, but I had to be in New York for the Crypto School by a16z for the whole autumn. It was clear to me that this time I am not going to miss out on this. I applied right away, and got in 2 days later immediately buying my flights to Singapore. Afterwards, I shortened my planned stay in Paraguay, stopped by briefly in Europe, and went on to Asia.
The main reason I have been excited about NS is that its kinda first implementation of the Network State concept, from the Balaji’s book. It’s a Startup Society that is being built in a Ghost town near Singapore. While it too resides in a Special Economic Zone, it doesn’t have the legal sovereignty. At least for now. Network School isn’t just a co-living for crypto builders — it’s a prototype for how digital tribes become physical societies. You can literally watch cloud communities condense into atoms.
In his book, Balaji predicts the new playbook for creating modern states. They will get materialised from digital communities that are often times more aligned in values (e.g. bitcoiners, cypherpunks, extropians etc.) than people residing in the same geographical area. Once these cloud communities get enough capacity for collective action and funding they are going to descend to the ground. To what kind of ground, and at which conditions may vary, but the direction is clear. I’ve summed it up in my presentation here. Nonetheless, I feel that Network School could be start of something really big.
Spending initially two months at NS, I had the chance to experience this pulsing energy vibrating in this space via every physical node, embodied in amazing humans here, first hand.
In Jedi words: “The Force is strong with this place.”
Network School currently resides mostly in a beautiful coastal hotel surrounded by a green lush you can see on the picture above. The project also expands further though. An amazing co-working is a short walk away, right next to a piece of land that is going to be the NS farm. Also, long term residents are increasingly more populating the apartments outside the hotel, which are abundant in great numbers. Indeed one of the perks of a Ghost town.
The place is designed to :
provide you with very convenient life where you can minimise time and energy spent on life logistics
make healthy food and lifestyle choice your default
hustle mentally and physically
help you meet new interesting people
upgrade yourself
The default food provided here is made Blueprint compliant, and you have access to an amazing gym, sauna, and cold plunge 24/7. All included in your monthly membership starting at 1500 USD/month. What’s more, the community here organizes dozens of events, sport activities, meetups, workshops and seminars every week. And on top, every once in a while some of the brightest minds from tech, like Vitalik Buterin, come here to give lectures or just to hang out. Of course, Balaji gives talks frequently as well.
The whole project kicked off in September 2024 with trial V1. Throughout this year hundreds of people have come here for at least a month. Many for more. And more than 120 signed up to live here long term. I am excited and honoured to be one of them. I think it is a great place to live if you are building, exploring what to build, or learning how to build tech. And if you don’t mind tropical humid climate :) I spent here initially April and May to get the vibes, and have moved now here for the foreseeable future.
The project evolves rapidly, and also attracts increasingly more attention. For instance, Arc now made NS their permanent base. The momentum of not only this space, but of the whole Network State movement, culminated during the Network State Conference (NSC) in early October in Singapore. The vibrant energy of this movement reminds me early days of crypto. Even though the event was in the prime location in Singapore, Marina Bay Sands, held only 1 day after the world’s largest crypto conference - Token2049. The difference was stark. Instead of 25 000 people that went to Token2049, NSC attracted “only” 3000 people. Though, a few hundred thousands viewed it online. There was just one stage, that was full of very insightful, interesting and on-point content. The kind of people showed to speak says it all: Founder of Etheruem, CEO of Binance, CEO fo Coinbase, representatives of Solana, and the governments of Singapore and UAE. It was intense and mesmerizing. You can see the recording of the showcase of (almost) all the major Network State projects here.
Simply put, If you are excited about technologies, crypto, and news way of governing society, there is likely no better place to be. As NS is not directly in Singapore, but technically in Forest City in Malaysia, the costs of living are very affordable. In practice you can jump in a cab and be in Singapore within an hour ride, subject to the traffic situation on the two border check points you re going to cross.
In my journey, Network State movement, and Network School specifically, feels like natural evolution. Austrian Economic School has brought us an economic theory upon which we can build a free society, Bitcoin has emerged as novel scarcity-based monetary asset and a system for the 21st century. Ethereum has brought us credibly neutral infrastructure for the new permissionless internet allowing humans to freely organize in the digital space. While these technologies enable new nations to be formed in the cloud, once they will have to descend to the actual ground. Even if NS isn’t the final form, it’s clearly where the next ones will be forged. And I can’t think of something more exciting than being part of this.
I moved here because this feels like the frontier where code meets governance — the place where our digital tribes finally start building cities.
If you want to join NS do it via this link so you can get a discount.
Links for your convenience:My web: davidstancel.com
MSc Program in Blockchain adn Digital Currencies by UNIC
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