2025-10-13 03:23:30
Network State Conference 2025 was a smash hit. Thousands of attendees, millions of followers, and billions of dollars heard about starting new societies from the Internet. We had the CEO of Binance and the CEO of Coinbase, the founder of Ethereum and the Solana Foundation, the government of Singapore and the government of the UAE, all talking about startup cities, tech hubs, and in-person communities.
Watch this to see the sheer size of the crowd:
All talks are now available for free here, and you’ll see a full recap at the bottom of this post. But before I cover what our speakers covered, I want to explain why we organized the Network State Conference in the first place…and why we think it’s so important to move from digital communities to physical societies.
The old world is fading, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of popups.
Yes, that’s a joking paraphrase1 of Gramsci. Yet it’s also serious. Because the old postwar world is fading rapidly, as you can see from every headline on political chaos, military pullback, and monetary collapse. At the same time, the new world struggles to be born, because it’s not yet obvious what comes next.
One answer, half2 the answer at least, is that the successor to the rules-based order of America is the code-based order of the Internet. The rationale is that (a) the Internet is the only thing with global economic scale comparable to China and has also (b) given birth to an entirely new digital legal system that already de facto manages ~99% of global communications and transactions…yet is (c) still somehow largely invisible3 in the discourse despite its ubiquity.
That invisibility of the Internet is why so many struggle to see the code-based order as the successor to the rules-based order. The typical riposte is that the Internet just isn’t even a place4…so how could it possibly succeed the physical part of the old world?
The riposte to that riposte is to note that Christianity also isn’t a place, yet there are Christian5 places…because there are churches, cathedrals, and entire countries with the cross on the flag. Similarly, yes, the Internet itself is not a place, but there are Internet places…like startup offices, tech conferences, datacenters, and entire countries with Bitcoin as the national currency.
That means the cloud can take physical form. And that brings us to popups.
We define a popup as an internet community that temporarily meets up in the physical world, and terraforms it in some fashion while doing so. Concrete examples include:
And the dozens of popups featured at the Network State Conferences
Here are some photos of popups. Starting from the top left and proceeding row-wise, that’s Cursor Cafe, Anthropic’s Claude Hat popup in NYC, AngelList’s Founders Cafe, Coinbase Basecamp, the ZCash Network School popup, and finally Ethereum’s Zuzalu:
Obviously, the term popup implies something evanescent. But if it’s successful, you can go from from a popup (which is a physical prototype) to a permanent (which is a production deployment). To make this concrete, below are photos of permanents, starting with the Tesla Diner, our own Network School, then SpaceX’s Starbase, and finally the new Solana Economic Zone in Kazakhstan.
Moving from popup to permanent may mean graduating from leasing real estate to buying it, much like starting on Heroku and eventually moving to your own datacenters. And it may even mean negotiating with governments for a measure of diplomatic recognition, as the Solana network state just did.
Seen in this light, a popup is similar to a startup, with a roadmap for starting up small but eventually scaling up big. It’s the third6 kind of thing: from internet company to internet currency to internet community. And it may also be the next big thing, at least according to no less than Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz.
And that leads us to the Network State Conference.
This year’s Network State Conference was huge, with thousands of in-person attendees and more than a million views online. Our primary goal was to demonstrate that it is now politically, financially, and technically feasible to materialize your internet community into a friendly in-person community.
And I think we succeeded in this aim! We put tiny communities on stage alongside Vitalik Buterin, Richard Teng, Ben Horowitz, Brian Armstrong, Amjad Masad, Ranveer Allahbadia, Nas Daily, Noah Smith, Arthur Hayes, Bryan Johnson, Andrew Huberman, and the governments of Singapore, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and El Salvador. In doing so, we established that there’s now an entire ecosystem now available to support you socially, politically, and financially as you turn your digital community into a physical society.
Of course, it’s rare to have so many prominent speakers at a single conference, or to see attendees glued to their chairs long into the evening. I think the reason is that Network State is not about selling a product. We are instead advocating an idea: the idea that a better world is possible, that you too can found or find your ideal community, and that we can take the once-functional parts of the 20th century rules-based order and rebuild them in a 21st century code-based order.
All right. Now to the recap.
The core of each year’s Network State Conference are the talks by physical startup societies, both popups and permanents. We also feature governments, investors, coins, companies, services, writers, and creators with an interest in startup societies. Below we’ve organized speakers by category, with a link to their full talk on YouTube. We’ve also included a few relevant talks from previous years’ conferences (2023, 2024, 2025) and the Network State Podcast.
Governments
🇸🇬 Singapore (Jacqueline Poh): Jacqueline Poh runs JTC, which is Singapore’s $40B real estate arm. They’re recruiting global technologists to relocate both to Singapore and to the new Johor-Singapore special economic zone.
🇦🇪 Abu Dhabi (Wai-Lum Kwok): Wai-Lum runs Abu Dhabi Global Markets (ADGM), the financial regulator that created pro-crypto rules early on. They now run regulatory sandboxes where global companies can work with Abu Dhabi prior to full regulatory approval.
🇦🇪 Dubai (Rashid Mohammed, Expo City): Rashid is CTO of Expo City Dubai, an exhibition site that Dubai converted into a startup city. They’re building an open city OS for startups to test urban tech.
🇸🇻 El Salvador (Stacy Herbert, Bitcoin Office): Stacy directs the National Bitcoin Office of El Salvador. The country now offers streamlined AI rules, 180-day tourist visas, and pro-business/tech regulations to bring in global founders.
🇵🇼 Palau (Surangel Whipps Jr, President). The President of Palau spoke to Balaji about embracing crypto and implementing rns.id for a new kind of state-backed digital ID card, which has already been issued to figures like Tim Draper and Vitalik.
🇲🇭 Marshall Islands DAO (Adam Miller). Adam Miller’s talk covers the new Marshall Islands DAO law, which is perhaps the best legal framework in the world for crypto-native entities, AI agents, and DAOs. More than 250+ of these entities have already been registered via midao.org.
Investors
Naval Ravikant. Naval is one of the world’s most famous investors. In his fireside chat at Network State Conference 2024, Naval discusses the right to exit, the fractal frontier, and how technology enables people to opt into new forms of political and social organization.
Andreessen Horowitz (Ben Horowitz): Ben Horowitz is cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz, the world’s largest venture capital firm with $46B under management. A16Z is now interested in funding internet communities as the third step after internet companies and internet currencies.
Polychain (Olaf Carlson-Wee): Olaf founded the first crypto hedge fund, now a multibillion dollar firm named Polychain. He sees network states speed-running the path from bare land to Dubai and Singapore, given the >100X increase in internet-native youth from 1995 to 2010.
AngelList (Avlok Kohli): Avlok is CEO of Angellist, a platform with $100B+ in assets. Influenced by Network State book, AngelList recently opened a Founders Cafe in San Francisco. He thinks of popups as the natural next step for tech.
Dragonfly (Haseeb Qureshi): Haseeb is cofounder of Dragonfly, a multibillion dollar crypto hedge fund. He views crypto as “laboratories of democracy” for ownership experiments, and spoke about the mechanics of token distribution from proof-of-work to points.
YCombinator (Garry Tan). Garry Tan is CEO of YCombinator, which has seeded companies with $600B+ in combined portfolio value. In this talk from Network State Conference 2023, Garry discusses SF’s many problems (drugs, cleanliness, education, crime) and noted that only some are due to elected officials. He recommends building parallel systems—particularly in media and academia—to replace the dysfunctional-and-unelected parts of the legacy system, thereby complementing voting by building as a civic duty.
Animoca (Yat Siu): Yat Siu’s Animoca manages 600+ portfolio companies with billions in assets. He views internet communities as more like peer-to-peer networks than traditional hub-and-spoke companies, and wants to build the (productive) GDP of network states as opposed to simply boosting their (financial) market cap.
Maelstrom (Arthur Hayes). Arthur Hayes is the self-made billionaire cofounder of BitMEX and Maelstrom, and a well-known writer. In this fireside, he discusses his new stem cell clinic, on the 80-year cycle forecasted in the Fourth Turning, and why he advises you to get your Bitcoin and get out.
1517 Fund (Michael Gibson and Danielle Strachman). Michael and Danielle are cofounders of the Thiel Fellowship. They spoke about shorting the higher education bubble through VC, and returning $219M on just $18M invested.
Pronomos (Patri Friedman). Patri created the seasteading movement and is now focused on new cities. Through his Thiel-backed fund Pronomos, he’s an early investor in Prospera and Alpha City.
Startup Societies (Popups and Permanents)
Infinita (Niklas Anzinger). Infinita is a longevity network state, an L2 built on top of Próspera’s L1. It has Minicircle gene therapy, and it’s hosting the new Rejuvenation Olympics.
Prospera (Erick Brimen, Lonis Hamaili). In talks from 2024-2025, Erick and Lonis present Prospera’s physical plant and its governance-as-a-service model, now with 300+ companies and 2000+ paying Prosperians.
Culdesac (Ryan Johnson). Ryan is the cofounder of Culdesac Tempe, a car-free, mixed-use community in Arizona. The city offers residents a variety of mobility options like light rail, ride sharing, electric bikes, and autonomous vehicles, with integrated retail and residential spaces to promote walkability.
Edge City (Janine Leger, Timour Kosters). In talks from 2024-2025, Janine and Timour describe the origins of Edge City and how it’s now held seven pop-ups across four continents, with 10k+ attendees and $1M+ in grants, and multiple permanent sites on the way.
Esmeralda (Devon Zuegel). Devon spoke about Edge Esmeralda, a pop-up city inspired by the Chautauqua movement.
Crecimiento (Juan Benet). Juan Benet’s talk outlines his work on Crecimiento, and how Argentina might become a global crypto leader by fostering hundreds of tech startups.
Zu Georgia (Veronica Schrenk). Veronica’s talk covers how Zuzalu evolved from a single gathering into a decentralized movement, with spin-off experiments like ZuVillage Georgia pushing forward new ideas.
Zu Thailand (Nicole Sun). Nicole helped organize Zuzalu and then built ZuThailand, a pop-up city experiment inspired by the first Zuzalu event.
Oz City (Olly Kovalieva). Olly created Oz City, a popup for AI and web3 builders, with seventy founders building together in Argentina before Devconnect.
Nuanu (Sergey Solonin). Sergey built Nuanu, a creative community in Bali focused on art, entrepreneurship, and co-living.
Threefold (Florian Fournier). Florian presented Threefold as a foundation for building sovereign digital communities.
Arc City (James of Arc). James is building Arc, the first L2 at Network School. The aim is to gather a group to eventually build their own charter city.
Forma (Farhaj Mayan). Farhaj created Solana Economic Zones in Kazakhstan and Georgia. Kazakhstan in particular has now launched a national crypto reserve and announced a crypto city.
Zuitzerland (Isla Munro-Hochmayr). Isla founded Zuitzerland, an Ethereum-centric popup focused on d/acc. Their token economy is based on Switzerland’s 700-year governance history.
Liberland (Vít Jedlička). Vít is a Czech-born politician and the president of Liberland. He shares his experience of trying to build a country in unclaimed land between Serbia and Croatia.
Ipe City (Jean Hansen). Jean Hansen is the founder of Ipé City, a popup city for techno-optimists in Brazil. He discusses their recent agreement to build a special economic zone in Florianopolis.
Alpha City (Bradford Cross). Bradford is CEO of AlphaCity and managing partner at Pronomos. He gives an overview of the startup cities they’re architecting in Africa.
Bitcoin Sranam (Maya Parbhoe). Maya Parbhoe of Suriname talks about why it’s smart to work with small countries, and how she’s been working to make Bitcoin the national currency of Suriname.
Fractal NYC (Alexander Grintsvayg). Grin is the founder of Fractal Boston, which began in NYC. It’s a community of friends living/working together, with 1000+ in NYC, and now expanding to Vancouver, Porto, and Geneva.
Wagon Box (Paul McNiel). Paul McNiel is the founder of the Wagon Box, a 20 acre property in the Wyoming mountains, that hosts events and retreats with a Christian/classical culture focus.
NOMAD (Zach Milburn). Zach has built NOMAD, a worldwide network of villages for remote workers. He’s also architected a unique modular unit at nomad.homes that can be built and shipped anywhere.
Vibecamp (Brooke Bowman). Brooke organizes VibeCamp, a volunteer-driven event that transforms online connections into co-created in-person communities.
Charter Cities (Mark Lutter). Mark explains the idea of charter cities, highlighting their role in economic development, historical examples, and the ongoing efforts of the Charter Cities Institute to foster new city projects worldwide.
Plumia (Sondre Rasch). Sondre’s Plumia is an aspiring internet nation with a social safety net and a digital passport.
Aaron Renn (Christian Network States). Aaron Renn, founder of American Reformer, speaks about how Christians can build startup societies and network states to congregate with others that share their values.
Cover (Alexis Rivas). Alexis Rivas of Cover talks about hyperdeflating the cost of homes via rapid modular construction.
Coins
Ethereum (Vitalik Buterin, Founder). In this fireside, Vitalik discusses the progress of Zuzalu, a family of Ethereum-aligned popup cities, the idea of d/acc, and the contrast between geographically central startup societies (“embassies”) vs geographically remote cities (“monasteries”).
Solana (Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal, Cofounders). Anatoly explains how Solana is building a parallel, decentralized financial system that outperforms traditional finance in efficiency, cost, and composability. Raj highlights how the Solana stack empowers the creation of network states by enabling communities to build and govern themselves.
Solana Foundation (Akshay BD, CMO). Akshay explains how he scaled Solana globally in the physical world, drawing on his experience at Uber.
Base (Xen Baynham-Herd). Xen Baynham-Herd, lead of Base Global Growth, describes Coinbase’s progress towards a Base Network State.
Telegram TON (Veronika Kapustina, CEO TON Strategy). Veronika Kapustina, CEO of the new Telegram TON Strategy Co, outlines TON’s plans for a global superapp that can create physical communities and fund space travel.
Zcash (Zooko Wilcox, Founder and Josh Swihart, Electric Coin Company). Zooko is the cofounder of Zcash, and explains what principles allowed Zcash to last for a decade. Josh Swihart is the CEO of Electric Coin Company, which helps develop Zcash. He discusses Zcash’s huge week prior to the conference, with ZEC hitting a “god candle”, with enormous energy finally flowing into unstoppable private money.
Eigenlayer (Sreeram Kannan, Founder). Sreeram Kannan, cofounder of EigenCloud, spoke about how verifiable AI enables smart governance.
Companies
Binance (Richard Teng, CEO). Richard Teng is the CEO of Binance. In this fireside chat with Balaji, he discusses why the Internet becomes the world’s largest capital market and why small countries love cryptocurrency.
Coinbase (Brian Armstrong, CEO). Brian Armstrong, CEO and cofounder of Coinbase, talks to Balaji about their joint history of success, and tells the audience that anyone working on real cryptocommunities and network states should build them on Base and reach out to Coinbase Ventures.
Replit (Amjad Masad, CEO). Amjad Masad is cofounder and CEO of Replit. In this fireside, Amjad and Balaji talk about their shared interest in educating the developers of the developing world, the history and future of Replit, and how the physical world is becoming more programmable.
Gemini (Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Founders). In this talk from 2023, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss discuss the failures of the SEC, and the successes of red states and foreign states on crypto regulations.
Kraken (Jesse Powell, Founder). Jesse Powell is cofounder and chairman of Kraken, a multibillion-dollar crypto exchange. He discusses parallels between the rise of early crypto and the rise of network states with Balaji.
Farcaster (Dan Romero, Founder). Dan gives an overview of Farcaster’s decentralized media platform, and offers thoughts on how network states can be built on Farcaster’s open protocol.
Catena (Sean Neville, Founder of Catena and Circle). Sean is cofounder of Circle and Catena. In this chat, Sean and Balaji discuss how they worked together to launch USDC, the second largest stablecoin in the world, and now fully legally recognized by major governments.
Synthesis (Chrisman Frank). Chrisman Frank speaks about building a parallel educational system with AI tutoring.
Research Hub (Patrick Joyce). Patrick Joyce of Research Hub talks about decentralizing science and creating incentives for distributed replication.
Henley Global (Dominic Volek). Henley Global shares how to build a portfolio of global citizenships, and how migration trends highlight second citizenships as essential tools for mobility and security.
Writers
Noah Smith (Noahpinion). Noah Smith is the founder of the popular Noahpinion newsletter, with 400k+ subscribers. In this talk, he describes his idea for building a New Hanseatic League, a network of states. See also his recent Substack post on the topic.
Tomas Pueyo (Uncharted Territories). Tomas Pueyo runs a popular newsletter called Uncharted Territories with 100k+ subscribers. Here, he speaks about the pending end of the Western nation state.
Glenn Greenwald. Famous independent writer Glenn Greenwald speaks on digital privacy, internet censorship, and the decentralized technology that could deliver us a free and open internet.
Niall Ferguson. Bestselling author and historian Niall Ferguson reflects on the changing world order in the internet age, debating the question of whether states that have waged wars against gold and oil can effectively wage war against Bitcoin.
Ayaan Hirsi-Ali. Author Ayaan Hirsi-Ali shares her journey leaving Somalia to seek asylum in the Netherlands, and talks about why building new communities outside traditional systems is essential for freedom.
Tyler Cowen (Marginal Revolution). Tyler talks about Emergent Ventures, Marginal Revolution University, and radically slashing the overhead associated with academic grants.
Alana Newhouse (Tablet Mag). In this 2023 talk, Alana introduces the idea of brokenism as the true American political axis. Her idea is that the real debate isn’t between the left and right, but between those still invested in Western institutions, and those who think they’re broken and want to build anew.
Ashley Rindsberg (Gray Lady Winked). Ashley Rindsberg’s book details how the New York Times Company has faked the news for more than a century, from Stalin’s USSR through Castro’s Cuba all the way to the present day.
Bruno Macaes (World Builders). Bruno Macaes is former Minister of European Affairs for Portugal and a bestselling author. In this talk, he notes that geopolitical power is “God Mode” in the video game sense, the ability to change game variables. He defines a superpower as one that can run such a video game, and relates this idea to the concept of a network state.
Kathleen Tyson (Multicurrency Mercantilism). Kathleen says the alternative to the dollar actually already exists: it’s the dollar and all other currencies. She presents a series of graphs that show the multi-currency world is already here, with the dollar down ~50% vs gold.
Avik Roy (FREEOPP). Avik Roy, founder of FREOPP, examines how repeated expert failures have shaped public policy and explains how network states can harness these lessons to create more resilient societies.
Parag Khanna (AlphaGeo). Parag Khanna speaks about the age of global mobility and digital nomadism.
Murtaza Hussain (Drop Site). Murtaza Hussein is a writer who covers surveillance, privacy, Bitcoin, and decentralized media. He sees network states as inevitable, given that nation states are now lumbering like empires before them, and given that networks in particular can guarantee inalienable rights.
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry (Catholic Network State). Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, founder of PolicySphere, spoke about the Catholic Church as the original network state.
Rajeev Mantri (A New Idea of India). In this 2024 talk, the author of A New Idea of India assesses India’s rapid upward trajectory with technologies like UPI, and previews the next 25 years.
Michel Bauwens (P2P Foundation). Michel Bauwens is the founder of the P2P Foundation. He speaks about how web3 can be used to regenerate local communities and strengthen the digital commons.
Hive Mind (Garrett Jones). Garrett Jones, economist and author of Hive Mind, explains why a nation’s collective intelligence drives long-run prosperity more than individual intelligence.
Creators
Bryan Johnson (Blueprint) (2024 fireside, 2024 talk, 2025 talk). Bryan Johnson, founder of Blueprint, is an anti-aging and longevity pioneer. Balaji sits down with Bryan in 2024 to compare how their two distinct paths somehow led them both to have a very similar conclusions. Later, in 2025, they flesh out a proposal for a longevity-focused network state.
Pieter Levels (NomadList). Levels is a self-taught dev who has built and launched 40+ startups, including highly successful projects like Nomad List. In this fireside, Pieter explains how he runs multiple companies as a solo founder, why finding your tribe matters, and what the future holds for digital nomads.
Andrew Huberman (Huberman Lab). Huberman discusses what the ideal Huberman community materialized into the physical world might look like, and why that’s better than just building a device.
Nuseir Yassin (Nas Daily). The founder of Nas Daily has 10M+ followers worldwide, and joined Balaji at the 2025 Network State Conference to discuss content creation and community building in today’s social media environment.
Ranveer Allahbadia (The Ranveer Show). Ranveer is the founder of India’s largest podcast, with 10M+ followers worldwide. He joined Balaji at the 2025 Network State Conference to discuss how he built a global media following from nothing, survived being cancelled, and is refocusing on community.
Rudyard Lynch (WhatIfAltHist). Rudyard (aka Whatifalthist) has 730k+ followers on YouTube. In this 2024 chat with Balaji, he discusses the sheer scale of the internet, notes that it’s as significant as any shift in human history, and talk about why that’s likely to rework the state.
Beff Jezos (e/acc). In this 2023 talk, the cofounder of the now-successful effective acceleration (e/acc) movement outlines the alliance between AI acceleration and crypto decentralization.
Punk6529 (NFT Network States). Punk6529, a well-known NFT investor with 400k+ followers, drops virtually by to give three quick ideas on network states.
Molson Hart (Can we Build Hardware if China Wins?). In this 2024 talk, Molson of Viahart asks the hard questions about how to build hardware in the world where China wins.
Farb Nivi (Minicircle). Farb Nivi explores his personal health journey, his successful experiment with Minicircle, and why radical longevity research could reshape the future of health.
Codie Sanchez (Blue Collar Network States). In this 2023 talk, Codie Sanchez talks about making the network state accessible to everyday people and blue collar workers in particular, to build the largest possible political coalition.
Wow! OK, that’s sovereign governments, billion dollar funds, billion dollar coins, billion dollar companies, creators with millions of followers, famous public intellectuals, and dozens of startup societies…all of whom are now interested in the broad idea of bringing online communities into the physical world.
Of course, our short recap of each talk doesn’t fully convey the energy of the event. So if you want to see the full videos, go look at the Network State Conference playlists for 2025, 2024, and 2023.
Now let’s recap the recap.
Clearly, quite a lot of successful people now have an interest in startup societies. But one thing I want to stress is that anyone can now start a startup society, with minimal resources, including you. The point of having all these prominent folks at the conference is just to establish that there is now social, political, and financial support for you to materialize your ideal community7 in the physical world.
And there’s also now a process: begin with a popup, and get your online friends in the same place at the same time for an extended duration. If that goes well, the next step is to crowdfund a permanent startup community. And from there, the sky’s the limit, because you’re bootstrapping from the cloud.
Ultimately, the goal of the network state movement is to help create 1000+ friendly internet communities around the world that anyone can choose from, from vegan villages to Catholic cities to biotech boroughs. To allow you to find or found your ideal society in the physical world. We think of this as the third kind of thing: after internet companies and internet currencies, we finally have internet communities.
The next startup is a popup.
The original was: “The old world is dying but the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.” Also: yes, Gramsci was a commie, but they do sometimes have good lines. Given that communists support the abolition of private property, we should all feel free to repurpose their phrases as we see fit.
The other half is in this podcast I did with Peter McCormack.
As noted here, despite their enormous scale, China and the Internet are nevertheless somehow invisible. China because it’s overseas, and the Internet because it’s in the cloud.
It goes something like this: “the Internet isn’t a place, techbro! You’ve been playing too many video games. Let me explain the real world, which you seem to not understand. People still exist, land still exists!” This type of objection usually comes from someone who thinks the network state as a concept is entirely about the digital world. In reality it’s about cloud first and land last — but not land never. The whole point is to materialize the internet into the physical world. Popups really make that concrete.
And after the fall of Rome, what endured? Christianity. Similarly, if Dalio, Turchin, Elon, the Sovereign Individual, and the Fourth Turning are right, if the debt is indeed unfixable, if the West is unfortunately headed for a fall, what would endure? The Internet.
One might argue the Internet has already been taking physical form. After all, how does an internet popup differ from something like Apple stores, Meta datacenters, Google offices, or Amazon warehouses? While I’d agree those are indeed relevant precursors, the key difference is that popups are community-oriented rather than corporate-oriented.
For example: the AngelList userbase is welcome to sip coffee at their Founders Cafe, the Anthropic community was invited to get a hat at their Claude popup, and the Base developers materialize in person at Coinbase’s Basecamp. By contrast, Amazon isn’t really set up to welcome Amazon users at their warehouses, and even Apple is focused mainly on selling laptops at its stores rather than welcoming its audience to hang out with other Apple users.
There are various phrases for this. On Farcaster, they call it going from URL to IRL. On X, Noah Smith once noted that the Internet was once an escape from the real world, but now the real world is an escape from the Internet. While I do love the Internet, the underlying logic is that digital versions of anything are ubiquitous and cheap, which means the physical is now a premium product. We’re actually seeing the reverse of the “digital divide” of the 90s; the hard part isn’t getting people online, but getting communities offline.
2025-09-28 17:17:40
Network State Conference 2025 will be in Singapore on October 3. We already have 3000+ registrations, but by the time you read this there may still be a few spots left. You can attend in person for $99 or watch remotely by signing up here.
This year’s speakers include Vitalik Buterin, Bryan Johnson, Ben Horowitz, Brian Armstrong, Amjad Masad, Ranveer Allahbadia, Arthur Hayes, Nas Daily, Noah Smith, Andrew Huberman, and the governments of Singapore, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and El Salvador.
Our event is right after Token2049 and Solana APEX, where I’ll also be making guest appearances. So, if you’re in Singapore for this week’s cryptocurrency gatherings you should certainly come to the Network State Conference.1
Because the next step after cryptocurrencies is cryptocommunities.
Network states are becoming real.
We wrote our book in 2022, held our first conference in 2023, and opened our school in 2024. Now, we have a movement. From tiny startups to global organizations, many different actors are now opening up physical popups, starting startup societies, materializing internet communities, and negotiating special economic zones.
This year’s conference documents that movement. We have Vitalik Buterin on Ethereum network-state inspired popups like Zuzalu and Etherlaken. We have Brian Armstrong and Xen Baynham-Herd of Coinbase on Basecamp and the Base Network State. We have Akshay BD and Farhaj Mahan from Solana on Forma and the new Solana Economic Zones. We have Veronika Kapustina, CEO of Telegram’s new TON Strategy Co, on the path to the Telegram Network State. And we have Bryan Johnson speaking about longevity and the Don’t Die Network State.
So: Ethereum, Coinbase, Solana, Telegram, and Don’t Die — all important online movements with billions of dollars and millions of followers — are materializing their cloud communities into the physical world. And they’ll be speaking about it at the Network State Conference.
But wait, there’s more. Because the concept of the network state is also about win/win cooperation between nation states and digital networks. After all, many countries (particularly small states, and those from the ascending world) want global technologists to bring capital, talent, and economic development to their jurisdictions.
Towards that end, we have talks by representatives of the governments of El Salvador, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Singapore. Stacy Herbert will speak about El Salvador’s Bitcoin office, its AI law, and its digital nomad programs. Rashid Mohammed will talk about Expo City, a startup city built in Dubai, while Wai-Lum Kwok will discuss Abu Dhabi Global Markets (ADGM)’s pro-crypto regulation. And Jacqueline Poh, chief of Singapore’s $40B JTC development arm, will speak about building the physical infrastructure and innovation parks that enable Singapore’s rapid economic growth.
And there’s still more.
Billion dollar funds. We have heads of billion dollar funds, including Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz, Olaf Carlson-Wee of Polychain, Avlok Kohli of AngelList, and Haseeb Qureshi of Dragonfly.
Billion dollar companies. We have fireside chats with founders of multi-billion dollar companies, including Amjad Masad of Replit, Arthur Hayes of Bitmex, and Yat Siu of Animoca.
Billion dollar coins. We have major crypto projects like Dan Romero of Farcaster, Sreeram Kannan of Eigenlayer, Circle cofounder Sean Neville, and Zcash cofounder Zooko Wilcox.
Million follower creators. We have creators with millions of followers, including Ranveer Allahbadia of Beer Biceps, Nuseir Yasin of Nas Daily, and Andrew Huberman.
Public intellectuals. We have talks from Noah Smith of Noahpinion, Thiel Fellowship and 1517 Fund cofounders Michael Gibson and Danielle Strachman, seasteading inventor and Pronomos founder Patri Friedman, Pascal Emmanuel-Gobry of PolicySphere, Murtaza Hussein of Drop Site, Parag Khanna of AlphaGeo, Avik Roy of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, and Kathleen Tyson of Multicurrency Mercantilism.
And startup societies. And, of course, we have founders of startup societies2 like Farhaj Mayan of Forma, Niklas Anzinger of Infinita, Timour Kosters of Edge City, Aaron Renn of American Reformer, Alexander Grinspan of Fractal Boston, Maya Parbhoe of Bitcoin Sranan, Paul McNiel of Wagon Box, Adam Miller of MIDAO, Bradford Cross of Alpha City, Olly Kovalieva of Oz City, Vit Jedlicka of Liberland, Lonis Hamaili of Prospera, Jean Hansen of Ipe City, and James of Arc’s ârc.com.
I could say more…but need I say more?3
The point is that many of the most successful founders, creators, and investors in the world are now interested in the idea of bringing online communities into the physical world. Moreover, writers, policymakers, and intellectuals from around the world (and across the ideological spectrum!) are aligning around the concept of fusing networks with states, with ideas ranging from pro-tech regulations to special innovation zones. And all this capital and talent going towards the area means that you too4 can join a startup society that suits you — or found one yourself.
Because that’s the next step. We’ve started internet companies, we’ve started internet currencies, and now we’re starting internet communities.5 Come to the Network State Conference to be there at the start.
These startup societies are global. They’re both inside America (Indiana, Boston, Wyoming, NYC, etc) and outside it (in Brazil, Honduras, Kazakhstan, Thailand, Suriname, the Marshall Islands, and more).
To fit in all our distinguished speakers, our event runs all day from 9am to 8pm in Singapore at the Marina Bay Sands on October 3. We have just one stage, with minimal logos, and brief talks. It’s more like an academic conference than a traditional tech conference, as the focus is very much on ideas.
As we’ve discussed at our previous conferences, and in our book, and also at our school, the point of starting new societies is moral innovation rather than technology or finance per se. By building new societies with defined social smart contracts where everyone has explicitly consented to governance — and anyone can opt out — we can defend capitalism, democracy, internationalism, self-determination, and liberal values in an increasingly illiberal world. We can’t fit all that into one post, however, so come to the conference to learn more!
2025-08-03 16:38:31
Here are ten thoughts on AI that I personally find economically useful. Let’s go.
First: there is no AGI, there are many AGIs. That is: we empirically observe polytheistic AI (many strong models) rather than monotheistic AI (a single all-powerful model). We have many models from many factions that have all converged on similar capabilities, rather than a huge lead between the best model and the rest. So we should expect a balance of power between various human/AI fusions rather than a single dominant AGI that will turn us all into paperclips/pillars of salt.
Next, AI moves all costs to prompting and verifying. Basically, today’s AI only does tasks middle-to-middle, not end-to-end. So all the business expenditure migrates towards the edges of prompting and verifying, even as AI speeds up the middle.
AI is amplified intelligence, not artificial intelligence. Today’s AI is not truly agentic because it’s not truly independent of you. The current crop of agents can’t set complex goals, or properly verify outputs. You have to spend a lot of effort on prompting, verifying, and system integrating. That just means the smarter you are, the smarter the AI is. It’s really amplified intelligence, more than agentic intelligence.
AI doesn’t take your job, it lets you do any job. Because it allows you to be a passable UX designer, a decent SFX animator, and so on. But it doesn’t necessarily mean you can do that job well, as a specialist is often needed for polish.
AI doesn’t take your job, it takes the job of the previous AI. For example: Midjourney took Stable Diffusion’s job, and GPT-4 took GPT-3’s job. Once you have a slot in your workflow for AI image generation, AI code generation, or the like, you just allocate that spend to the latest model. Hence, AI takes the job of the previous AI.
AI is better for visuals than verbals. That is, AI is better for the frontend than the backend, and better for images/video than for text. The reason is that user interfaces and images can easily be verified by human eye, whereas huge walls of AI-generated text or code are expensive for humans to verify. See discussion with Andrej Karpathy here and here.
Killer AI is already here, and it’s called drones. And every country is pursuing it. So it’s not the image generators and chatbots one needs to worry about.
AI is probabilistic while crypto is deterministic. So crypto can constrain AI. For example, AI can break captchas, but it can’t fake onchain balances. And it can solve some equations, but not cryptographic equations. Thus, crypto is roughly what AI can’t do. See also these talks (1, 2) on how AI makes everything fake, but crypto makes it real again.
AI is empirically decentralizing rather than centralizing. Right now, AI is arguably having a decentralizing effect, because there are (a) so many AI companies and (b) there is so much more a small team can do with the right tooling, and (c) because so many high quality open source models are coming.
The optimal amount of AI is not 100%. After all: 0% AI is slow, but 100% AI is slop. So the optimal amount of AI is actually between 0-100%. Yes, the exact figure varies by situation, but just the idea that 0% and 100% are both suboptimal is useful. It's the Laffer Curve, but for AI:
Finally, here’s an a16z podcast with Martin Casado and Erik Torenberg where we go through all these ideas in depth!
Putting it all together, fundamentally, this is a model of constrained AI rather than omnipotent AI.
AI is economically constrained, because every API call is expensive and because there are so many competing models.
AI is mathematically constrained, because it (provably) can’t solve chaotic, turbulent, or cryptographic equations.
AI is practically constrained, because it has to be prompted and verified, and because it does things middle-to-middle rather than end-to-end.
AI is physically constrained, because it currently requires humans to sense context and type that in via prompts, rather than gathering all that for itself.
To be clear, it’s possible that these limitations are overcome in the future. It’s possible someone could unify the probabilistic System 1 thinking of AIs with the deterministic/logical System 2 thinking that computers have historically been very good at. But that’s an open research problem.
Some of these ideas previously appeared on X and YouTube. See comments here, here, and here. And the talks here, here, and here.
2025-07-28 09:24:26
All property becomes cryptography.
Let me explain why.
First, right now, trillions of dollars worth of digital gold is secured onchain. Bitcoin is now valued everywhere there is an internet connection. And no matter what political faction you're in, everyone agrees on the raw fact of who owns what amount of BTC.
Next, right now, the full legalization of stablecoins means that every other asset goes onchain. Because if there is a legal status for onchain currency, of course there's a legal path for onchain stocks, onchain bonds, and every other type of financial asset.
So, that's a lot right there. But there's actually a next step. As you can see from the video below, this door can also be secured with an onchain smart lock. That means the door to your house can be secured by crypto. So can the door to your car.
From Hideyoshi Moriya: My home also can be unlocked with Ethereum, by verifying a NFT (ENS) ownership. In this example, the system verifies if I have an ownership of piyo.eth @ensdomains.
Indeed, any door can be secured in this way. The door to a plane, to a train, to a boat, to a building. Any door can be secured onchain.
But this is really more than the keys to your car door. It's really the keys to your car itself. The digital signature starts the engine. And that means any piece of capital equipment, from cranes to drones can be similarly secured.
That includes the humanoid robots, the sidewalk robots, the self-driving cars, and just about anything that's controlled electronically. Which is almost everything.
There are exceptions. The food on your plate, the shirt on your back, those can't and won't be secured onchain. But that's actually a negligible fraction of value in the world.
For everything else, for 99%+ of what's valuable, for every financial asset and every capital asset, we will secure it onchain.
And the reason we'll have to do that is that the blockchain is the only truly secure backend. The Pentagon gets repeatedly hacked, as do many web2 services, but scaled public blockchains do not.
So: even the control plane for the drones goes onchain. The blockchain is the basis by which we can build a code-based order on the Internet, a new kind of global economic union that allows anyone with an internet connection to access world-class monetary policy and contractual equality.
All property becomes cryptography.
This post originally appeared on X. See comments here.
2025-04-19 00:35:39
Global meritocracy is finally here.
We’re launching a new fellowship for founders and creators, open to anyone from any country. You can apply online in ten minutes. If accepted, you will receive $100k in funding for a new or existing venture. Our main requirement is that you relocate to the Network School campus near Singapore with other fellows for one year to lock in.
If that already sounds amazing, go to ns.com/apply. Then read on for details on who should (and should not!) apply, what the process is like, and why we’re launching this.
You should apply if you’re a global tech founder, AI-first creator, or community builder.
Our ideal founder recognizes that the Internet is rising, that Asia is rising, and that technology has now fully decentralized1 out of Silicon Valley. We welcome applicants from any country, so long as you have English language fluency. As for the specific area2, what you’re working on matters less than how intensely you’re working on it. Some of our founders will be early in their careers (like recent high school grads or newly minted PhDs), while others will have more experience (like open source developers, research scientists, early stage startup alumni, or engineering professors). But we’re flexible, so long as you’re technical.
Our AI-first creator category is newer and deserves a bit more explanation. In short, we believe 20th century media is over. And we think every niche filled by the formerly mainstream media — Hollywood, newspapers, magazines, broadcast television, and the like — is up for grabs as never before, with production shifting from traditional venues to the global Internet. So, we’re looking for filmmakers, artists, and storytellers who want to make tasteful3 use of AI to hyperdeflate production costs and write new stories for the 21st century. We’re open to “traditional” creators too4, but we think the economic leverage from AI will be substantial5, so we want creators who think about AI as an integral part6 of their workflow.
Our community builder category is likewise new and also merits explanation. Briefly, we think the third kind of “thing” after tech companies and cryptocurrencies will be startup societies. That means intentional communities, pop-up cities, and network states, where digital tribes assemble offline in person. I’ve written about this at length in The Network State, but see this video and dashboard to see why we we think startup societies will be a megatrend.
OK, so that’s the type of person we’re looking for professionally — a founder or creator. But what are you like personally?
You’re Internet First, in that you broadly believe in the open web, decentralization, cryptocurrency, and encryption.
You’re classically liberal, centrist, or otherwise politically pragmatic7 — rather than ultranationalist or socialist.
You’d be in tech even if markets crashed for a decade, so long as you had time to study, learn, and explore.
You’re excited to relocate to our solarpunk campus near Singapore for a year to level up among others of like mind.
And you’re likely what we call dark talent — undiscovered greatness from the middle of nowhere8, whether that’s India or Indiana, Eastern Europe or the Middle East — who just needs a shot to prove yourself. And this is your shot.
So: you should apply9 for the Network School Fellowship if you’re looking for a sunny, green, and calm environment to build your dream amidst a community of builders. We’ve created a peaceful place with minimal distraction where funding, coffee, food, gym, office space, laundry, cleaning, and all the rest is provided so you can focus on work.
Now, let’s focus on the application.
Because we’re open to the whole world, we expect many to apply. So, we have a simple multi-stage process for obtaining a Network School Fellowship.
Form. First, fill out the form at ns.com/apply. We’ll review to see if you have either potential (as demonstrated by test scores and academic accomplishment) or results (as demonstrated by tech portfolio or startup traction). We’ll also administer a short screening test and ask for references.
Zoom. For those we deem competitive in the first round, we’ll do a structured video interview where we get to know you and ask a number of interactive questions. We seek people with high integrity and high agency, a combination that’s hard to assess through forms alone.
Room. Finally, we ask candidates who make it to the third round to fly out10 to our Network School campus near Singapore11 for an in-person, proctored, pencil and paper objective examination similar to the IIT JEE, the GaoKao, or the SAT. This offline component allows us to AI-proof the online talent search, thereby confirming your skills. During your trip you’ll also meet other Network Schoolers, see the facilities, and determine if you’re ready to build.
Boom. Then, if you’re accepted, you’ll relocate to Network School for one year to build. We’ll either fund12 your existing company or set up a new one. Existing companies will be backed in their current jurisdictions, while new companies will be incorporated by default in Singapore.13
So that’s the idea: a global startup draft, like the NBA draft, where we source talent from around the world and colocate it in person. We’re starting with 100 global founders in our first batch, and plan to scale up over time if things go well.
But why are we doing this?
We believe the old path for finding global tech talent — which went through Stanford14, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, California, and ultimately America — is ending. So we’re going to need a new path, based on pure global meritocracy. And we think the Network School Fellowship could be a starting point for this new path.
To motivate this, let’s talk about (a) what the path for tech talent used to look like, (b) why it’s now broken, and (c) how we plan to replace it.
Let’s break this up into the American and global paths.
The American path once started with a smart young kid in the middle of (say) Indiana like Scott McNealy. He’d take the SAT, get a great score, attend a top engineering school at a reasonable price, come to Stanford for his graduate degree, found a Silicon Valley tech company, scale it up, and eventually go public.
The global path once started with a smart young kid in the middle of (say) India like Vinod Khosla. He’d take the IIT-JEE, get a great score, attend a top engineering school at a reasonable price, come to Stanford for his graduate degree, found a Silicon Valley tech company, scale it up, go public, and eventually become a US citizen.15
Now, if you know anything about those two men, you’d know that they cofounded a little multibillion dollar company called Sun Microsystems. That is: they came from very different places, but thanks to the magic of global meritocracy, thanks to international capitalism, they could build something great together that pushed tech forward and benefited the world.
Yet their story is much less possible in today’s US. I won’t rehash every headline, but today’s Scott McNealy might well be blocked from matriculating by DEI, and today’s Vinod Khosla might well be blocked from immigrating on an H-1B. And that’s really just the start of it. Every single piece of the old path for tech talent is now either fully broken or under assault. To review:
Stanford. With anti-merit admissions, unaffordable tuition, student visa denials, grade inflation, ideological zealotry, AI fakery, lack of reproducibility, and budget cuts, US academia (including Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, etc) is in steep decline.
Silicon Valley. Still great people here, but the proverbial garage startup may need $250k just for compliance. High cost, high regulation, and high ideological conformity now means fewer crazy ideas — and much more consensus (and hence fundable, but perhaps not exceptional) work.
San Francisco. Even more extraordinary cost, rampant crime, out-of-control filth, anti-tech laws, and ideological anti-tech sentiment that’s escalated all the way to ritual destruction of self-driving cars and violent attacks on founders.16
California. A bankrupt state that can’t control fires, stop theft, or build public infrastructure — but that will still raise taxes and impose anti-tech regulations.17
America. Now institutionally hostile to skilled immigration, foreign investors, student visas, exports, imports, free trade, and foreigners in general, with unpredictable corporate law.
In short: the combination of surging anti-capitalism and anti-internationalism means it’s going to be much harder for global tech talent to come to Silicon Valley to build international tech companies. That path is now closing.
Fortunately, we still have the Internet.
Remember, there’s no silicon being mined out of the hills of Silicon Valley. There’s no natural resource keeping tech there. So in theory, given that you just need a laptop to build things on the Internet, we should be able to materialize the global tech community anywhere. But in practice, someone needs to actually do that.
And constructive proofs are always more satisfying than existence proofs. So, rather than simply assert that a better path exists, we must build it. And from a practical standpoint, we must also recognize that we can’t replace the old path for global tech talent in one fell swoop. After all, literally millions traveled that path, and will continue to do so for some time, even if it’s breaking. So we’ll have to start small, with perhaps just one hundred builders, to prove a new path for tech talent.
And thus the Network School Fellowship.
In a sense, our fellowship just does the “obvious” thing. It starts with the observation that tech has already decentralized out of Silicon Valley, and it gives a new coordinating point for global tech talent to assemble.
We put the first node of the Network School in the new Singapore-Johor Special Economic Zone because (a) thousands of millionaires have moved to Singapore, (b) >50% of the Earth’s population is within a short plane flight, (c) ~50% of GDP is now within Asia, (d) crypto has already decentralized to Asia, (e) AI is in the middle of similarly decentralizing, and (f) the zone has plenty of visas for global talent and a stated goal of recruiting 20,000 skilled workers.
In other words: we have capital here to fund tech companies, visas for tech talent, and the will to build. And with that will, we’ve already built our initial facilities and seeded the community. Which means we have everything set up for you.
And all we need is you. So, apply for the Network School Fellowship at ns.com.
For example, you should be aware of not just Tesla but BYD, not just SpaceX but ISRO, not just ChatGPT but Mistral, not just Anduril drones but also Bayraktars. That is: you should know about the best of Silicon Valley, but also the best of the world.
We have a list of areas we’re interested in at ns.com/fellowship. But in brief, applicants will usually be in software, hardware, crypto, AI, robotics, genomics, or really any other tech-enabled vertical.
What is tasteful use of AI? It’s not slop. It’s not text in ChatGPT voice, or humans with twelve fingers. It’s using AI to create something cool. This is a good example. Arguably this is as well. And much of the work from accounts like this, this, and this. For example, one of the best near-term targets for AI will be disrupting Hollywood by telling new stories they can’t or won’t.
In general, we think the workflow of an AI-first creator is highly technical and similar to a programmer, so in a sense you can think of this as a subclass of tech founder.
As one example: a traditional creator often builds an audience on the basis of their looks or charisma, which is fine. But an AI creator is more like a screenwriter, who can cast any actor or actress in any role at any time. This makes them far more flexible, and capable of generating many different kinds of content.
As another example, a creator like Mr. Beast spends millions on video production. Could some of that eventually get turned into AI, with tools like Runway ML? I’d be surprised if the Beast team isn’t looking at it. Of course, any given AI tool today won’t necessarily hit the bar to replace any given live shoot, but they keep improving. And we want pragmatic creators who’ll make smart decisions on when to shoot live and when to do it on the computer. Pragmatism means you don’t generate AI slop (at one extreme), but you also aren’t irrationally anti-AI (at another extreme).
For example, AI is already extremely useful for cleaning up raw audio transcripts, generating timestamps, and tasks of this nature. It usually requires polish, but it saves time.
As a first cut: if you like Lee Kuan Yew and Singapore, and believe in results over ideology, then we will probably get along.
Of course, if you come from “somewhere”, like New York or Tokyo or London or the like, feel free to apply. Dark talent is about your current position, not so much your current location.
Just as important is who should not apply. You should not apply for the fellowship if you’re seeking something purely recreational. Of course, we do have fun, but our events calendar is more like a research university, fitness bootcamp, or tech conference than a tropical resort. That is: the typical event is organized around learning technology, burning calories, and/or earning revenue — around self-improvement of some kind. So, if your idea of fun is working with robot dogs, running a 5K, hearing guest lectures from founders like Vitalik and Bryan Johnson, and meeting people of like mind — you’ll definitely have fun. And Singapore is right next door, so you can hit a global city whenever you want. But the focus is not Bali, but technology. Meaning: not eat/pray/love, but truth/health/wealth.
We may reimburse travel for applicants with true financial need. Just indicate this when you apply.
You can fly in via Singapore’s Changi Airport (SIN) or one of Malaysia’s airports like KUL or JHB.
A certain kind of extremely finance-focused guy will immediately ask “OMG on what terms!?!”
(a) The short answer is that this depends on the stage of your startup. If we're the first investor, we'll propose a competitive seed valuation. If you have existing investors, we can discuss.
(b) But the longer answer is that I have hundreds of startup investments and don't necessarily think a formula is useful. Network Schoolers already come from 90+ countries, and Network School Fellows will be at widely varying stages in life. Some will be 18 year olds from the formerly “third world” and some will be 48 year olds who’re founding their third startup. Startups are by their nature heterogenous, and the template of “Delaware C Corp operating in Silicon Valley, California with X check at Y valuation in Z round” is already broken in several ways, not least because Delaware, California, and Silicon Valley are broken. Moreover, international founders and web3 add all kinds of new complexity as Sam Lessin has also observed. Apply with your startup and we can figure it out.
(c) The still longer answer is: prices are just fundamentally lower in Asia than America, which makes comparison across time and space difficult. I have plenty of friends in Silicon Valley, but that place is expensive. By contrast, you can live for a year at Network School with room and board and gym and everything for just $1500 per month. A $100k check then gives 5+ years of personal runway, more than enough time to build. That makes the Silicon Valley garage startup viable once again…by going 10000 miles away from Silicon Valley.
(d) In particular, a $100k startup check on pure potential is absolutely life changing for the dark talent. For all those billions who could never go to Silicon Valley, not least because it’s increasingly impossible to get a visa to get there. This idea of helping under-appreciated talent rise is something I've written and spoken about for 10+ years. Anyway…I am now in a position to devote capital towards global equality of opportunity — and that is a big part of what Network School is about. We are for makers from the Midwest and the Middle East, for Chinese liberals and Latin American libertarians, for Southeast Asia’s rising technologists and Europe’s remaining capitalists, for talent overlooked everywhere from Indiana to India. If that resonates with you, and you want to be part of the pro-tech startup society we’re building, apply.
Unless there’s regulatory justification for another locale.
I don’t mean literally Stanford alone. I mean Stanford in the sense of American STEM-focused universities like Stanford, MIT, Harvard, and the like that graduate tech talent. Though of course Stanford by itself was a large part of that.
For decades, many talented immigrants essentially applied to college, company, and country as one package at age 21. For the US, they applied to do their graduate degree on an F-1 or J-1 visa, they then worked at a company on an H-1B or O-1 visa, and then they got membership in the country via permanent residency and ultimately citizenship.
Some people I like say SF crime is on the mend, but I’m skeptical. In any case, it’s in a jurisdiction where extreme anti-tech, anti-immigrant, and anti-free-trade sentiment is indisputably rising.
Some of these measures, like the anti-sharing economy and anti-AI bills were narrowly defeated in California, but only after hundreds of millions had to be wasted on politics. The point is that many California legislators dislike tech and want it to leave. Which means we need to find a new location. Think of it as Silicon Valley’s Ultimate Exit.
2025-02-02 23:17:34
The curriculum for Network School v2 revolves around the broad area of building startup societies. Sample topics covered include:
Early American history and the settling of the Wild West
The fall and rise of modern China, India, Russia, and Eastern Europe
The creation of modern Singapore and Dubai
Biographies of political figures from Deng Xiaoping to Robert Moses
The decline of Argentina and South Africa
The case-control studies of East/West Germany, North/South Korea, and Taiwan/PRC
Edge cases like San Marino, Northern Cyprus, Transnistria
The technology-fueled ascendance of El Salvador and Bhutan
National turnarounds like the Meiji Restoration and Boluan Fanzheng
The unification of France, Italy, Germany, India, America, and China
Ancient history from Gobekli Tepe to the collapse of Rome
The history of tech companies on the English and Chinese Internet
The general theme is building, collapse, and rebirth — but at the scale of cities and countries, not just companies. This is the next step for technology, because heads of network like Elon, Satya, and Zuck are now on par with heads of state like Trump, Modi, and Xi.
Here’s a draft reading list.
Macrohistory: Foundation, The Lessons of History, Unqualified Reservations, A Short History of Nearly Everything, The Selfish Gene, Albion's Seed, War and Peace and War, Stalin's War, Energy and Civilization, Who We Are and How We Got Here, The Ancient City, The Fourth Turning, The Grey Lady Winked
New Countries: Imagined Communities, Invisible Countries, The Origins of Political Order, How to Hide an Empire, The House of Government
Political Case Studies: A New Idea of India, China's Political Model, Seeing Like a State, Tomorrow the World, From Third World to First, When Money Dies, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union
Regulation: Where is My Flying Car?, Three Felonies a Day, Reputation and Power, The Power Broker
Rebuilding: The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom, How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Principles for a Changing World Order
Self-Improvement: Atomic Habits, Tools For Titans, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Tech: Zero To One, Hard Thing about Hard Things, High Growth Handbook, AI Superpowers
Crypto: The Bitcoin Standard, Broken Money, The Sovereign Individual, The Truth Machine, Daemon
Startup Societies: Communistic Societies of the United States, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, The Network State
So, the general idea is to begin with macrohistorical context, zoom in to the details of how societies rise and fall, and then move to the specifics of how you’d (a) first build up yourself and then (b) build up your new society.
We’ll also have in-person and remote speakers of the quality we’ve had at the Network State Conference 2023 and 2024, and at Network School itself. Our past speakers include world-famous founders and investors like:
So: the topics, the reading, and the speakers give a common vocabulary for Network Schoolers on why we should build new societies and how others have done so in the past. With that foundation, we will add more content over time.
