Network Nations Alliance

1/ Network Nations are born from three major shifts in how we organize power and community 🧵⬇️

@annbrody7 Hi 🏗️ networknations.network/essay/

What is the most exciting research going on around pop up cities and network states currently? Eager to reengage.

Nations once grew from shared land. The nations of the 21st century grow from shared networks. Not by exit but entanglement. 🏗️❣️ Learn more here: networknations.network

Network Nations reach into translocality and manage to govern what current models structurally leave ungoverned. 🌀Explore the concept on our website: networknations.network 🌀In the foundational article: networknations.network/essay/ 🌀In the podcast series: youtube.com/watch?v=Qnqdez… 3/3

This creates a structural gap between the capacity of organized communities and their actual reach. Closing this gap could enable new forms of collective coordination and commons governance. 2/3

The network age has produced communities that operate across borders. 🤠 But the dominant institutions of governance remain tied to territory. 😑 1/3

@regenavocado Love this

@networknations_ We don't owe network states anything. Check out the permaculture designer's manual chapter "Strategies for an Alternative Nation". PS Network States was released July 2022 x.com/regenavocado/s…

If democracy is going to survive (& maybe thrive) in the digital age, we need new institutions built for it. We owe the Network State for reopening the question of new forms of institutional design. But what's missing! is a democratic alternative - new forms of governance grounded in the commons, not in venture logic. We've been exploring this across fifteen episodes. Come listen 🔥 youtube.com/watch?v=Qnqdez…

Last week, BlockchainGov hosted a week of co-creation at Emerge Lakefront. What emerged? A blueprint for political agency in an era defined by algorithmic control and institutional collapse. 🌐 networknations.network

From conceptual framework to embodied movement- how? Ep 15—"Catalysing Network Nations: Movement Building with Benjamin Life & Patricia Parkinson" Patricia & Benjamin, founders of @open_civics join Primavera De Filippi to discuss movement building without charismatic leaders, progressive protocolization, institutional self-negation, the concept of "senius" (collective genius), and why dual power-not exit- is the path to functional sovereignty. These two movement wizards are crystal clear thinkers and the conversation is a great summary of the lay of the land. 🔗Listen here: youtube.com/watch?v=SccLIO… @kosmicgardener, @omniharmonic,@yaoeo, @networknations_,@greenpillnet

Network Nations Podcast! In the latest season of @greenpillnet, Primavera De Filippi and Felix Beer interview a range of (incredible) thinkers who have contributed to the conceptual emergence and ongoing development of Network Nations. If you are new here this is where to start. 🧵

< " moving the trajectory of human civilization towards functional sovereignty for communities as they enact local self-governance over every aspect of their public life, a new political ethos focused on care and mutuality and positive sum coordination. " > Benjamin Life (@OpenCivics ) has been on a roll lately: * Network Nations: From Theory to Practice networknations.substack.com/p/network-nati… "Grateful to be supporting this movement with Patricia Parkinson as an expression of the OpenCivics theory of change in action! I believe the Network Nations movement and the open civic innovation movement are nearly identical, both concerned with moving the trajectory of human civilization towards functional sovereignty for communities as they enact local self-governance over every aspect of their public life, a new political ethos focused on care and mutuality and positive sum coordination. As I’ve noted in my essay Citizen: Rights and Responsibilities in a Networked Age, bioregionalism and network sovereignty are two sides of the same cosmo-local coin. As my dear friend and mentor Michel Bauwens likes to say “bioregionalism and cosmo-localism are the left and right hand.” Where bioregionalism locates itself relative to hyperlocal sovereignties as part of a global commons, cosmo-localism locates itself relative to the global commons as support structure for hyperlocal sovereignties. Time to coordinate!

Network States correctly identify the golden combo: territorial nation-states can't solve transnational problems + sovereignty can be rethought in the digital age to create new political agents. But then build... more territorial states? Network Nations deliver that agency without requiring you to exit, abandon your place, or recreate every institution. networknations.network

What are examples of Proto-Network Nations? Ep. 14 — "Networked Diasporas: The Case of SeeDAO" explores how a Chinese-speaking DAO spanning 25+ countries cultivates kinship and belonging at scale. Helena Rong, assistant professor at @nyushanghai joins Felix to discuss SeeDAO's journey from coordination tool to community of kinship, "non-governance as governance," and what Western DAOs can learn from Eastern philosophy. A much missing perspective and one of the most tangible case studies on the topic of Networked Sovereignties. Listen here: youtube.com/watch?v=VnbJUT… @helena__rong, @felix_beer, @yaoeo, @BlockchainGov

Network Nations pursue functional sovereignty: the capacity to govern their own affairs without territorial claims. But how do you buy land as a DAO? Enforce contracts? Hold IP? Meta jurisdictions function as translation layers - bundling legal wrappers across territories to create coherent interfaces without single points of failure. By @yaoeo & @jessykate 🔗 networknations.substack.com/p/meta-jurisdi…

Network Nations ≠ Network States One seeks territorial sovereignty. The other explores functional sovereignty - governing alongside existing states, not against them. 🔥 Read the intro here: open.substack.com/pub/networknat…

Digital communities are forming with kinship bonds that span continents - yet lack frameworks to coordinate at scale. We’re opening an archive of research + pilots on Network Nations: Welcome to the transition - the first post is now live ▶️📣💙 networknations.substack.com/p/network-nati…

Can Network Nations become political actors without land? In Ep. 13 — “Intentional Communities & New Jurisdictions with Jessy Kate Schingler” Primavera speaks with Jessy Kate who is a researcher in space policy and governance at the Open Lunar Foundation, affiliate at @BKCHarvard, and co-founder of Embassy Network, about translocal co-living communities and how these “embassies of the future” cultivate identity, culture, and entanglement without rigid rules or territorial sovereignty. The conversation explores jurisdictional experiments such as Bhutan’s Gelephu Mindfulness City, charter cities, and regulatory sandboxes, as well as new and old techniques for how digital communities can anchor into the physical world. Jessy Kate is an expert on how to create scaffolding for intentional communities & we strongly recommend to not miss this grounded & illuminating conversation. 👼 Find it here: youtube.com/watch?v=HGNdQj… @OpenLunar, @EmbassyNetwork, @greenpillnet, @jessykate,@owocki, @yaoeo, @BlockchainGov

"A mirror held up to something many of us felt but couldn't yet articulate" 🪞🫡 Conceptualizing Network Nations as an alternative to Network States opens up the design space for communities to self govern meaningfully without needing to tap into exclusion or exit. 🫂

Why does politics always find a way back in? Ep: 12 — "From politics to protocols to protocol politics with Santiago Siri" Primavera De Filippi talks with Santiago Siri (@DemocracyEarth, DemocracyOS, Proof of Humanity) who shares a lot of good stories and key lessons from ten years of experimenting with democratic infrastructure outside traditional institutions. 🤠 They deepdive into identity as the core constraint of digital democracy, why this matters for network nations, early failures and attacks in identity systems, piggybacking on existing legal documentation, the ways power resurfaces within protocols and how legitimacy must be enacted rather than declared. @owocki @greenpillnet @yaoeo @santisiri @BlockchainGov

@VitalikButerin back on @greenpillnet in this week’s episode of the Network Nations mini-series! @yaoeo & @felix_beer are joined by Vitalik to reflect on one of the most influential experiments in recent community-building history: Zuzalu. Vitalik shares the motivations behind Zuzalu, what actually worked (and what didn’t), and why many pop-up cities risk drifting into “long conferences” instead of becoming real communities. Together they explore kinship vs telos, culture vs mission, permanence vs mobility, governance by forking, and how zones, tribes, and regulatory sandboxes might interlock to form durable network nations. A deep, reflective conversation on how digitally aligned communities can evolve into lasting political actors without losing their soul. @BlockchainGov @owocki ⏱️ Timestamps 00:00 – Why Zuzalu matters for network nations 02:20 – Introducing Vitalik & the Zuzalu experiment 03:40 – From ideas to action: why Zuzalu was created 05:40 – Bringing 200 people together for two months 07:10 – When a pop-up becomes “real life” 09:10 – Membership, visas & selective curation 11:20 – Zuzalu’s offshoots: Edge City, Vitalia & more 13:30 – Decentralizing after Zuzalu 15:30 – Why permanence matters 18:10 – Building culture through physical proximity 20:20 – Cities vs tribes vs nations 22:30 – Membership as a spectrum, not binary 24:50 – Bitcoin embassies & cultural recognition 27:00 – Interests vs vibes vs kinship 29:10 – Shared experiences as the glue of community 31:30 – Why kinship is hard to design 33:50 – Internal purpose vs external purpose 36:10 – Telos-driven communities & corporations 38:50 – Prospera, regulation & culture 41:00 – Zones as platforms for tribes 44:40 – Regulatory sandboxes & state experiments 46:50 – Libertarian vs developmentalist approaches 49:10 – Why niche cities beat generic hubs 51:40 – The “archipelago” vision 54:00 – Zones and tribes: separation or fusion? 56:00 – Governance by forking 01:10:00 – Why governance still matters 01:12:10 – Reinvigorating crypto’s political vision 01:14:10 – Low-hanging fruit for network nations 01:16:40 – Ethereum as a proto-network nation 01:17:50 – Closing thoughts