In the past week, Singapore has been filled with a lively and noisy crypto atmosphere, and core crypto forces such as project parties, VCs, exchanges, developers, media and KOLs have gathered here. Among them, Token 2049 and Solana Breakpoint are undoubtedly the most discussed crypto events in the market, and related essays tell the participants’ experiences and industry observations.
In contrast, the annual Network State Conference is also packed but rarely mentioned domestically. Network State Conference was initiated by Balaji Srinivasan, a well-known angel investor in Silicon Valley. He is the author of the Wall Street Journal best-selling book "The Network State". This book puts forward the perspective of challenging the traditional state in the governance industry and proposes that in the future, online communities can play a global role. Crowdfund territories and transform into sovereign entities. At the same time, Balaji is also a loyal believer in Bitcoin. He has served as a16z general partner and Coinbase chief technology officer, and has invested in well-known encryption projects such as Ethereum, Solana, NEAR and Chainlink.
From network nation conception to pop-up city practice
Source: PANews
"We can start a new company in a garage like Google, we can create a new community of 3 billion people in a dormitory like Facebook, or we can launch a new currency from a white paper like Bitcoin. So, can we build a new country Network State? If "Bitcoin is a decentralized currency, so Network State is a decentralized country." Balaji pointed out that communities initially formed around a series of common interests or values on the Internet, and then acquired land and became an entity "state" with its own laws. . These states will coexist alongside and eventually replace existing nation-states, even reaching the scale of traditional states. And by establishing parallel societies in small physical communities, innovative concepts such as encryption can also be incorporated to verify the feasibility of new world assumptions. Parallel institutions are established in these communities to support and serve these innovations.
There are also many related "pop-up city" projects at this conference, including Cabin, an online city composed of modern villages, which has branches in the United States, Portugal and other places; Culdesac, located in Arizona, is specially designed for A community designed for remote work; Edge City is committed to creating a "social incubator" for new ideas, technology, culture and organizations, as well as Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin's experiment Zuzalu, etc.
In addition to discussing the Internet nation, this nearly 12-hour conference also served as a "warm-up" for the official debut of The Network School, an innovative university founded by Balaji on an island near Singapore. This three-month pop-up urban experiment was inspired by Balaji's book "The Network State" and aims to provide new educational opportunities for global "Dark Talent" and break the limitations of the traditional system. Since the application was opened, more than 100 applications have been received. Thousands of applications from state.
Currently, The Network School has officially started on September 23, focusing on learning (Learn), exercising (Burn), making money (Earn) and entertainment (Fun). According to Balaji’s previous post, in the daily life of Network School, students will complete daily problems in small classrooms, involving program writing and social media publishing. After completion, they will receive “certificate of learning” NFT. Students can also compete for daily “cryptocurrency prizes” worth $1,000 for open source projects, AI content creation, and microtasks.
Network School student @twone.eth also recently revealed in a post that compared to the past situation where crypto practitioners accounted for the majority in Popup City, Network School students have very diverse backgrounds and can see people from all kinds of backgrounds around the world. Friends: There are Americans who work in K12 education, Dutch people who work in traditional banks, people who have lived in the jungles of Colombia for many years, and people who also stayed in Shanghai for five years and devoted themselves to nature sports...
@twone.eth also revealed that Balaji said Network School’s goal is to become a “permanent” technology base, which is more suitable for technological innovation compared with the limitations of San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Network School strives to lower the cost of living so that entrepreneurs can live and work at a lower cost, with the goal of attracting high-quality talent and forming a tight-knit community. The daily operations of the community include facilities such as fitness, work space, and cafe, and plans to strengthen interaction among community members through regular lectures and activities. In addition, Network School plans to set up nodes in multiple places around the world, allowing people to move freely and participate in community activities in different locations. The community will achieve transparency and openness through blockchain technology, and all activities will be recorded on the blockchain.
From pop-up cities to digital nomads, what do tech leaders think?
Focusing on the speech theme of "Everything related to the entrepreneurial society", Network State Conference 2024 participants included Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Coinbase co-founder Brian Armstrong, Solana founder Raj Gokal, historian Niall Ferguson and AngelList Founder Naval Ravikant and more than 30 big names participated. Compared with last year, this year’s event included discussions on “parallel institutions”, “parallel health” and “digital nomads”.
Vitalik: Pop-up cities need to address governance and membership issues
Source: PANews
In his speech, Vitalik introduced Zuzalu, an experiment that in two months has brought together 200 members from the Ethereum community, crypto executives, biotech entrepreneurs and scientific researchers to Montenegro to solve the problem of human longevity. and other collective issues. Participants enjoyed activities such as healthy eating, cold baths, and yoga, and they were satisfied with the experience, and the human interaction element was crucial, but the experiment did not clearly indicate where Zuzalu would go next. He believes that "pop-up cities are a new medium and there needs to be a productive relationship between online nations because the tribalism seen on social media today is 'zero-sum and ineffective'. There is a market for pop-up cities Adaptability, but issues of governance and membership still need to be addressed.”
Naval Ravikant: AI is more of a repetitive work of intelligence, and personal curiosity and self-improvement are the keys to progress.
Source: PANews
Naval Ravikant is the founder of AngelList, a well-known equity crowdfunding platform with a valuation of US$4.1 billion. He has invested in well-known companies such as Uber, Twitter, and Yammer. He is also a staunch supporter of Bitcoin. His book "The Naval Book" is also a business Industry bestseller. In a fireside chat with Balaji, Naval spoke about his personal growth and said that almost all of his great achievements stemmed from an obsession with following your own natural knowledge. If you can become obsessed with something and delve into other Satisfying one's curiosity in details that are beyond human reach, such as obsessions with the Internet nation, artificial intelligence, or cryptocurrency, has become the basis of all so-called "self-improvement." Personal curiosity and self-improvement are keys to meaningful progress. And he also revealed that one of the important things in life is that material needs must be met. In this material world, there need to be some physical levers, which means you must create what society needs. Wealth is not money, it is the ability to transform one thing into another. It can be monetized knowledge, unlimited creativity... Huge wealth is just a value frozen in time.
Among them, Naval gave his own views on the development of artificial intelligence, "Artificial intelligence is natural language computing and is good at automating existing tasks. Real breakthroughs will come from solving unsolved problems and generating novel ideas, just by improving computing power." It’s a logical contradiction to not be able to spawn artificial intelligence that actually solves problems, and to somehow make artificial intelligence safe.
Additionally, Naval revealed that there are three things on his personal list that money cannot buy, namely a healthy body, a peaceful mind and a house full of love. And Naval also recommended two books: "The Beginning of Infinity" and "The Fabric of Reality".
Raj Gokal: Solana promotes the construction and development of the Internet nation
Source: PANews
Solana co-founder Raj Gokal said that a year ago Solana’s intern mentioned that a parallel financial system was being built based on Solana, which could complete all operations in the traditional financial system through decentralized protocols. Today, Solana has become one of the blockchains with the largest decentralized transaction volume, with millions of users and tens of billions of dollars in funds flowing on the decentralized protocol, involving land, governance, payments, energy, communications, etc. The decentralized story is forming an online nation on Solana. For example, if you want to crowdfund land and gain diplomatic recognition as an online nation, a product that provides a similar network of decentralized physical infrastructure would be particularly attractive. Decentralized hotspots on Solana The network Helium can provide infrastructure for the land through the power of crypto incentives; tools like MetaDAO are prediction markets for resource allocation, which can apply the power of financial markets to governance and voting, which are seen by the younger generation as interacting with the world. The funniest way. Solana hopes that the future network nation will be more intuitive, faster, fun, and easy to use, attracting people to actively participate, not just because they believe in the mission, which is also one of Solana's core principles.
Brian Armstrong: Builders need a sanctuary that supports freedom and innovation
Source: PANews
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in his speech that the transformation of technology companies into technology communities is happening, and people can start to change the hierarchical structure of the tribes they belong to and gain a greater sense of purpose. Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have deconstructed money from the state. We see that the next level to be untied by the state is identity. The current traditional form of identity seems a bit outdated to some extent. Proofs based on cryptography will be a big step. Good solution.
Brian Armstrong also said that the current trust in Western institutions is showing signs of decline, and people are faced with the choice of internal reform or opting out, and the creation of a global special zone will be an alternative. Despite the difficulties, there is an opportunity to build the next Singapore or Hong Kong, forming an archipelago of refuge to ensure that global builders have a place to live freely when their speech or currency is under attack. He believes that the most ideal Internet country is a technological optimist or an efficient Internet country.
Pieter Levels: There are 100 million to 200 million digital nomads in the world, and the Internet and cryptocurrency will become the driving force of the Internet nation
Source: PANews
Pieter Levels is a Dutch entrepreneur, programmer, and digital nomad who makes $2.7 million a year from 4 successful products: PlayMyInbox, GoFuckingDoIt, Tubelytics, and Nomads.com. Nine years ago, Pieter Levels predicted that there would be one billion digital nomads by 2035. During the fireside chat session, Levels shared that Nomads.com, one of the first online countries he built ten years ago, now has tens of thousands of globally mobile members and attracts tens of millions of digital nomads to visit every year. Its main physical distribution In places like Bali, Thailand, Mexico and Miami.
At the same time, Levels also shared several sets of interesting data about digital nomads, including that currently 1/3 of the world’s working population works remotely or in a hybrid mode, and about 10-20% of people move like digital nomads. This number is about 1 to 200 million, and it is expected that 1 billion people will work remotely in 2024. Among them, most digital nomads are not backpackers with financial constraints. The average annual salary is about US$125,000, and 90% have college degrees. They are extremely attractive talents to countries (or online countries); at the same time, most of them are men. Digital nomads work in software development (34%), while the majority of female digital nomads work in marketing (16%); 66% of digital nomads are single, and 72% of female digital nomads are progressives; in addition, most digital nomads are The homeless are not wandering around, but staying in one place for several months. The reason for moving is the lack of visa to stay for a long time. This is a problem that countries and network countries can solve (providing visas).
"While we can easily imagine a map of the physical world, it is much more difficult to imagine a digital map, and the Internet allows us to build close relationships with people far away. Proximity based on relationships and interests is more important than physical location or distance. Important. At the same time, unlike the physical state which needs guns and military protection, the cyber state and digital assets are protected through encryption technology - impenetrable borders and encryption as the ultimate firewall. The strength of the cyber state lies in its media, currency and agility. Sex," Levels added.
[Disclaimer] There are risks in the market, so investment needs to be cautious. This article does not constitute investment advice, and users should consider whether any opinions, views or conclusions contained in this article are appropriate for their particular circumstances. Invest accordingly and do so at your own risk.
This article is reprinted with permission from: "PANews"
Original author: Nancy, PANews
