OTNS: The Rise of Coordi-Nations (Phase 2 has begun)
Last month Primavera and I spent about two weeks at Zuzalu in Montenegro with a team of people from Blockchaingov and elsewhere to concretely define our network state alternative of Coordi-Nations. We had five days of all day intensive workshops and three days of public presentations where we shared our findings to the attendees of Zuzalu. Right at the end of our experience at Zuzalu we recorded this episode to share what we came up with and our experience. Besides this episode, we hav...
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Alright. Hello everyone. You're listening to the Blockchain Socialist Podcast. And this time it's just me and Primavera to give an update on the latest that has, gone on, with coordinations and in our process of overthrowing the network state. We have recently been spending some time in Zuzalu, which is an event that's been going on in Montenegro, in Lustica Bay, for the past couple of months. And we have, I guess, just finished, like, a bunch of private workshops and presentations to showcase our ideas and our concepts and framework for what coordination's finally kind of are. And so in case you guys don't know, Zuzalo is essentially, this kind of two month social experiments that was largely funded by, Ethereum and Vitalik, where they invited, different types of, people interested in very specific topics. They had things on, biotech, longevity, zero knowledge proofs. They had people who were interested in network states themselves and charter cities. But essentially, they gave sort of certain periods of amount of time, in order to present and showcase and share with people the different ideas that they've been exploring themselves. Yeah, go deep into, the things that are kind of I guess all these things are kind of like web three adjacent or tend to be things that people who are in crypto kind of are interested in. But don't want to comment too much on that. Mostly just want to come talk about kind of what we were here for and we were here for the last track, of Zuzalu which was called Coordinations and Digital Tribes. We came because, essentially, I think, Vitalik invited Primavera in order to sort of jam on this idea that we've been talking about over the podcast with coordinations as an alternative concept and, framework from the network state. And so, yeah, I think, basically, if I understand right, Primavera, you were able to invite 10 other people, myself included, to specifically go deep on this topic and do workshops?
Yeah. Basically, there was a workshop or a conference, I guess, on network state. And, and then Vitalik asked me if I wanted to come to that conference, which Right. Was not available. But then I suggested, well, maybe we can actually organize a different type of workshop, which is not on network state, but rather on coordination. And somehow it escalated into being a two weeks things, which turned out to be exactly the amount of time that we needed. And, yeah, the idea was we have we have an underlying idea, and, we want to elaborate it. And then who do we need in order to elaborate this idea? And, yeah, basically, I tried brainstorming, like, who is it that I know in the world, that needs to be part of this work and, whose contribution is invaluable to the elaboration of this concept. And, surprisingly, pretty much everyone that came to mind actually said yes to this very strange invitation of coming for two weeks in, this strange location of Zuzalu and, and work, nonstop pretty much on, elaborating the concept of coordinations.
Yeah. It was definitely, it was work nonstop for, I think, about, was it five ish days? We had full day workshops from the morning until, say, early evening. But what oftentimes ended up happening is we would continue having, like workshop conversations, outside of the actual workshop itself. So it was constant.
You know, it's a good workshop when people continue to talk about exactly the same thing all the time. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, party. Everywhere we are, we just keep talking about coordinations.
Yeah. I had, I mean, really countless amounts of conversations about, network states and coordinations. And, with a lot of people I mean, not just in the workshops, but also people who are not in the workshops. So the the workshops themselves were private, although, I mean, people were allowed to kind of we didn't really police it that that harshly. But people were able to come in and out, as they could. But I think we did a really good job of having maybe a core core amount of people of, I guess, like 30, I would say, more or less.
I think the core the core people are more like 15. You're 15. And then, the the larger group, I think, is about 30.
Yeah. So it was like a really big collective effort, and it was really nice because we only I mean, I guess, the minimum was going to be 10 or, I mean, I guess, 10 plus you, the people who were, actually invited to do this workshop. But it ended up being that there were a a few people who were, really interested in the idea, even though I think neither of us or anyone here really knew them before. But they joined in the workshops and were able to contribute quite a bit,
which is really nice. Yeah. And the idea was really that, we bring we bring to Zuzelu people that have been thinking in those terms outside of the crypto world or some some also inside. And then we we we aggregate to our group the resident of Zuzulu, which have been thinking or have been living, the experience of Zuzulu and which I've also been thinking about those topics and trying to see, like, how this, intersection, what kind of what kind of point does this yield?
Right. Yeah. And so it was, like, a really nice collective effort. With a lot of people contributing, I think it's, like, really difficult to, you know, go through the framework that we've built out around coordinations and say that, like, you know, any specific person was sort of, like, the main, creator of particular things, but it was all kind of, like, a result of many brains coming together and jamming and, debating and discussing, you know, perhaps with drinks involved as well, on some of these ideas.
Yeah. And I think the the best way to describe, I think, what we try to create is, we try to create a sinus around the notion of coordinations, where we bring people together so that we actually have a scene of people that out of this interaction and discussions and deliberations, then some genius idea emerge, which does not belong to any single actor but belongs to the scene as such. Right. A a collective genius. Exactly.
Yeah. So that was we spent, I guess, five days, and then we had maybe, like, one day break. And then we had three days of public presentations where we went through, just sharing with the rest of the residents of Zuzalu what sort of came out of the workshop, and went pretty well, I think. We were able to talk a lot with the Zuzalu organizers themselves. I think probably, convinced them not to try to make a network state specifically, but we'll see. I didn't think they ever wanted to make
the Balaji's type of network states.
Yeah. I think one of the things that was really interesting throughout my time here actually was, to be honest, a lot of people, were interested in an alternative to network states. I guess I was I did have the fear in the beginning that people we would just be surrounded by kind of Bellagio fanboys who were like, I don't know, going to, tell us that we were wrong and Bellagio was right and that, network states are the coolest thing in the world and what are we doing? But it wasn't like that at all. I think what was really nice about the experience is that everyone was, at the very least, pretty open minded.
And so I came across Yeah. And I think that actually the interesting I think one of the interesting feedback was that that work group on network state actually, disincentivized people and actually, like, they were not resonating. And in fact, they were really happy that we came and we provide an alternative recipe for network state because, I would say that the the majority of the population at Zuzulu actually turns out to resonate much more with this alternative recipe of coordination network states than with Balaji's vision that was presented at the specific network state workshop.
Yeah. I talked to not insignificant amounts of people who said that they became really turned off towards network states after attending the network state presentations, which I found kind of funny. I think just coming into contact with the type of people who would be the ones to try and push for network states and, like I think what was really interesting is that they paired it together with charter cities, which I feel like was a part of I think they kind of just gave the game away in that, essentially, a large part of what Balaji describes is something like a charter city, a deregulated zone, a place where, you know, you pay less taxes and there's less, medical regulations or things like this.
Yeah. And I think, like, one one thing that we have, I guess, deliberated a lot as well coming here in Zuzalo was also what is it that we are talking about, and, are we talking about an alternative type of network state? Are we talking about something completely different? And I think what we realize is also because a lot of people are now acquainted I mean, actually, a lot of people. Not many people, but the people that are acquainted with the concept of network state, they they are not necessarily acquainted with Balaji's concept or Balaji's recipe of network state. And, and we realized that actually it's really important to, position ourself also within the framework of the network state in order to be able to, inform the people that resonate with that concept that there is a multiplicity of recipes. And, it is it is a problem if people assume that when you talk about network state, you can only talk about the way in which it was presented by Balaji. And and therefore, we also have some kind of, motivation and responsibility to provide those alternative recipes that can still be understood to fall within the larger scope of a network state, but which have very different, values and objectives than, what Balazs describes.
Yeah. I mean, I feel like it's, I get the impression for me it's, it's a co optation, but it's kind of like, almost like a temporary co optation. But, I mean, yeah, it's it's to me, like, yeah. I think I I perhaps see it a little bit differently, and I I I think that maybe I wouldn't be surprised if Balaji,
I don't know, tries to use his copyright of the network state or something like that. Yeah. There is no copyright to the natural state, and No. Definitely, it's not Balaji that has this copyright if there is one. And I wouldn't even call it a coopetition. I think we're actually just using a term, which is, you know, public domain term. And, if people do understand the concept of network state to be an overarching concept in which many things can fit. There's no coopetition. We're not coopting anything. We're just locating ourselves in a place where most people would agree that what we're describing is one typology of network states. I feel like we never had this conversation. No. I know. But it's good to have it now. That was an awkward time to have
it. But, yeah, it's still something that I'm not,
that I don't love. There is still a lot of debate and, controversy about whether or not coordinations are a type of network state or not. And I don't think we have an answer yet.
I mean, at the very least, I think we can agree with the coordination concept. So maybe let's start with that. Should we give the definition in one sentence? So just like the network state kinda has the network state definition in one sentence, we have our own. So the definition goes like this. Coordinations are voluntary, interwoven networks of communities with aligned values and a shared identity. They mutualize resources to redistribute them within the network and to engage in collective action through participatory governance and interdependency between nodes. So yeah. What do do you have anything to add on that on that definition? I think this is a very nice and succinct definition that pretty much clarify what we're talking about. And so, yeah, I think this definition, what is interesting about it is that it's it's more explicit about, governance and about the use of resources within a group or collective identity. And, yeah, I think maybe we can talk a bit about,
in case it's not kind of explaining, I guess, like, the the path to coming up with this concept. Maybe just let me add something maybe. I think that one thing that is important in this definition is to also notice that when we're talking about a coordination, we are talking about a a network of communities as opposed to just a community. And I think it relates a little bit to, like, when does when does a network state become a network state is when there is more than one noncontiguous territory that belongs to the same state, and that's what actually make it a network. And so in the same way, like, when we're talking about coordinated nations, it is not just having one community that is mutualizing resources and governing itself, but it's when you start having a network of aligned communities that choose that are noncontiguous in the in the ethereal space as opposed to on the territorial boundaries, which decides to somehow interconnect and interweave and engage into collective action while maintaining their separated identity as different nodes of the network.
Right. So maybe, actually, it would be helpful if we talked about maybe some examples of proto network states that we identified in our presentations.
Yeah. So there was a lot of discussion, mostly because many of us, have been, are part of intentional communities. And, and somehow when you're part of one intentional community, you're part of a network of intentional communities, which have the similar aligned values. So we discussed a lot about the extent to which the values intentional community that we're part of are are are more or less networked amongst each other and the extent to which they are already identifying themselves as a larger collective, the extent to which they are already mutualizing some degrees of resources or whether there is an aspiration to mutualize resources, to engage in collective action, etcetera. So, and, you know, in some way, like, Zuzelu is an intentional community itself. And therefore, like, looking at the extent to which Zuzelu can also spin off at some point into some kind of coordination if other communities are generated as a result of, of this experience here in Montenegro. Another example I think that, that was very, recurrent was Burning Man, where there is already a network of, Burning Man like events. Some of them which are endorsed officially by Burning Man, some of them that are just inspired, and yet they share the same principle, the same value, the same practices, etcetera. And there is really an interconnection between those various events. There is a lot of cross pollination. There is some degree of mutualization of resources and so forth. So those are all things that have not yet gone through the all the steps to actually qualify as a coordination as we have defined a coordination to be according to the seven step recipes. But, but that that are kind of aiming towards that direction. And, and our hope is that by actually coming up with a more, elaborated conceptual framework, then those proto coordinations can also self identify themselves as being on the path towards becoming a coordination. And then they can follow our recipes, our our guidelines in order to also understand, well, what's the next step? How what what given the current state of affairs, then what needs to be done in order to increase, the coordination potential of the of this network of communities.
Yeah. I think there were other examples like we spoke a lot about Rojava as another type of example as being a a kind of proto coordination, but, you know, was still, we kind of like took different examples like the European Union, there's Rojava, there's a couple of others, and we sort of used them as examples to delineate where why they do or do not, qualify as being a proto coordination.
Right. And and I think those two examples were specifically used because they might share some of the attributes, but they do not actually have this noncontiguency, the network aspect of, of things. And in the case of the European Union, it's actually more of a top down aggregation of existing entity as opposed to, bottom up interconnection of, different collective that have some form of affinity in terms of kinship as opposed to just being territorially bound around the same geographical area.
And so some of the, maybe we should go through some of the recurring themes and ideas that came up during this workshop that kind of led to this definition, and then we can go into the, seven step recipe. So the first kind of, I guess, tension that we were put up against, in these workshops was the concept of the nation versus the concept of the state. Do we want to go through and maybe, like, quickly kind of delineate, what the differences are generally between those two and how we've kind of used those or, like, understood those concepts in, like, informing how we think of coordination?
Yeah. Basically and this is, like, the recurring debates that we have between network state coordination, etcetera, where, network states are focused that focus specifically on the statehood, meaning, like, the more institutional infrastructure that, helps a nation to actually coordinate itself versus, when we talk about coordination, we are focusing more on the nationhood, with, of course, also in introducing some form of institutional scaffolding to support this coordination. But as opposed to the state where the nation is, subsumed into this institution of the nation state, In the case of the coordination, we're we're trying to really, identify the minimum degree of institutional scaffolding that is necessary in order to facilitate the coordination of those new types of digital, network nation. But the focus is really on the on the concept of the nationhood, and we want to support those new nation to find ways of, accentuating the the, their collective action and mutualizing resources, without falling into the into the precipice of having the institution of the state that actually takes over and then eventually become itself a reason to exist as opposed to for serving the the the the needs and the purpose of the nation.
Right. And I think we throughout the workshop, I think there was, a recurring thing of, like, that we were perhaps pushing the boundaries of the concept of the nation, that usually it has this ethnic or kind of linguistic, connotation to it. But what we're interested in is I think some people called it like nation ish or nation like type of things, that help people identify as being part of some sort of some type of collective.
Yeah. And basically, the problem being that neither nation nor state, has a clear definition. Like, many people use those terms in many different way. And we are actually guilty, to try and use them in even more of a stretched, manner because the the state, at least according to, the Montevideo convention, the state is bound to a territory. And so when we're talking if we define ourselves as a particular typology of network states and we reject the the notion of territory or we're talking about digital territories instead of physical territories, then we're clearly stretching the definition of the state. And in a similar way, the nation is usually related to some kind of ethnical, cultural and ethnical type of kinship. And we're kind of, like, extending it to this much more well, still very, very cultural, but, less related to the ethnicity and less related to the physical proximity in terms of the territory, but rather, those those relationship of kinship and those cultural affinities that emerge because of recurrent interaction online. Right. A big aspect was, like, finding,
the Internet's being a place where you can find kinship with people that you otherwise would not have ever been able to identify with. Another recurring sort of, like, tension was sort of collaboration versus competition. And so the idea of mutualism was very prominent throughout our conversations and workshops. We had Sarah Horowitz join us during those workshops to talk a lot about it. And maybe do you wanna talk about the, yeah, why why these types of tensions were things we had to discuss through? Yeah. Basically,
one of the underlying visions, I guess, that we have is that today, when we are in a more, state based, like, Balaji type of network state is, because we are focusing on these separate jurisdictions, then it's essentially this kind of horizontal competition in which I'm exiting one state in order to create my own state through the network state. And all of students have competition because then those different states are competing for, who is gonna be resident, in which country, who is gonna pay taxes to whom, etcetera. So by by by fragmenting the territory, we're increasing the competition amongst nation state and network states. Whereas when we think about coordinations, we're actually thinking about some vertical additional layers of sovereignties that do not compete and do not conflict with the sovereignty of the nation states because people are still hesitant in a particular, in a particular state. But that doesn't prevent the addition of new forms of coordinations and, new new new types of sovereignties, which exist alongside, the existing form of territorial sovereignties and also the possibility therefore to belong to many of those different type of, of coordination. And in fact, the more the merrier, because this means that there is bridges that are also being built amongst those different coordinations. And a partner's membership into one does not preclude membership into a different one.
Right. So our we don't want to the purpose is never to, to or not necessarily never, but not to the specific purpose is not to compete with states.
It's not to compete, and it's more about finding interfaces. And those interfaces can be complementary interfaces that, the coordination is actually fulfilling, or providing services to citizen that maybe the nation state is not sufficiently providing for, or simply that's not its domain. And also potentially finding interfaces of partnership where, for instance, our coordination could engage, as an international actor with some form of treaties or what whatever type of partnership in order to, for instance, provide specific input. Like, so we discussed a lot with the people that are very interested in, like, the longevity and the ability to, experiment with some type of testing that perhaps are not currently approved by the FDA and and actually being able through a network state to either create a separate jurisdiction, which is like Balaji's, recipe where I exit the state so that I can now, create my own regulations as opposed to, through a coordination. The coordination could also create a partnership with a particular state in order to have a particular regulatory zone in which specific experiment can be done because there is trust and, and there is legitimacy that comes from the, regulatory authority of the of the coordination that a particular nation state is willing to partner with. And so we don't need, in that case, to create a competing nation states just because we want to modify a particular, regulatory framework, but we actually can enter into partnership with those nation states in order to experiment with sandbox approach into whether those are, like, regulations or economic zones and things like that.
That. Hi, everyone. If you're enjoying this episode so far, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and join the crypto leftist communities on Discord or Reddit, which you can find links to in the show notes. If you're enjoying the episode of finding the content I make important, you can pitch into my efforts starting at $3 a month on patreon.com/theblockchainsocialist to help me out and join the newest patrons like my boy Boris, which really helps since making this stuff isn't free in terms of As a patron, you will get a shout out on an episode like I just did and access to bonus content like q and a episodes where you can submit and vote on questions you'd like me to answer, and I'll give my thoughts in roughly twenty minutes. Of course, I'll still be making free content like this episode to help spread the message that blockchain doesn't need to be used to further change capitalist exploitation if we put our efforts into it. So if that message resonates with you, I hope you'll consider helping out. And the, another recurring theme, of course, was, like, why crypto? Where does crypto fit in this entire thing? And I think the sort of main thing that we kind of discussed or framed it as is that coordinations need a kind of sovereign technological stack that they can't be something that is dependent on, for example, Google or for from some other, big tech company that the things that they're the tools that they're using to to do the collective action or to do the mutualization mutualizing of resources that they're doing, can't be dependent on some sort of centralized entity. So we had a lot of really interesting talks about what types of technical implementations we could do. One of the ideas that kind of sprung out through those conversations is this idea of smart treaties as a way to kind of create the collectivization between different nodes in a coordination network. But, yeah, is there anything else you want to add about that? Yeah. I think basically, like,
I think the discussion around digital nations, cloud communities, and however they are called, it's something that kind of has come up with the Internet because all of student, those new types of kinship emerge into it is like those new online communities. But I think up until the blockchain, there was no it's difficult to create a new layer of sovereignty if we actually don't have a sovereign infrastructure that can support those new sovereignties. And I think the blockchain, whether it's with, like, cryptocurrencies, whether it's about smart contracts and DAOs and etcetera, now enable those community to actually really create their own self sovereign infrastructure for coordination that is more independent, than if we had to rely on some server that is always located somewhere into a particular territory and therefore is subject to, the the potential,
violence or enforcement from a particular nation state. State. Right. It it seems to me almost like being, being independent of other institutions.
Exactly.
Yeah. So it's the I think we've used the term institutional scaffolding as kind of like the way to, describe the technological stack that would allow for this new type of institution to to bring itself forth. Yep. So, yeah. So I think that brings us to the seven step recipe that we've created in which we go through kind of like the, step by step on how to actually become a coordination. And I think this is just to say that I don't think we, like, ever sort of identified any particular single organization that is that we would describe as fully a coordination, but we've laid out kind of, like, the steps of things like the proto proto coordination that we've identified on, like, the things that they could do in order to fall under the bucket of a coordination.
Yeah. And, again, this is like this is a recipe, and this is one recipe ideally amongst many. The idea is not to have a prescriptive approach of saying this is how you should build your coordination or your network state, but it's more about, making sure that people that do want to experiment with network state like things, have multiple recipes to choose for. And, ideally, there will be more than two, but right now, at least we provide one alternative. And so the seven step recipe for building your own coordination, is number one, find your community of kinship. So finding or building a community where the people have a very strong sense of alignment, value alignment, affinity ideally, but especially kinship. So it's really this tribal feeling of we are part of the same tribe and we are rooting for one another and we want to support one another. And this, I would say, a lot of communities already exist which have very strong kinship. Step number two is identify author related or resonating communities which share the same sense of kinship. So once you have your first node, then it's about identifying or building additional nodes which, which have their own identity of a separate community, but which resonate because they have similar societal vision, they have similar, similar value system, etcetera. And therefore kinship exists also amongst those different nodes. Step three is to try and identify how we can help or encourage, solidarity amongst those communities. So supporting each other because maybe one community has more resources of a particular time. They have they might have like a surplus of funds. Another community maybe has a surplus of spaces or locations, and then yet another community has a surplus of time. And then identifying what the other communities need that each community has in extra and then creating those kind of bilateral or multilateral system of mutual support and exchange of those resources. Then step number four is when as those type of interaction gets tightened, at some point we might start realising that those communities which are supporting each other are actually creating a bigger whole. They're actually you can identify a new conceptual entity, which is this kind of umbrella or overarching entity that is, encompassing all of those individual communities. And then naming that is is a very important step because all of sudden naming is actually speaking it into existence. And now we can refer to this overarching entity as one single entity, which is made up made up all those individual nodes. And then step number five is that once we have this collective entity, now it also become possible not just to exchange resources amongst the different nodes, but to also pool resources together, to mutualise the resources within this overarching entity, which can then now hold and manages resources in common. And then, of course, this comes with a preliminary governance structure about how are those resources to be managed, how they can be redistributed within the network. And then step six is an additional governance step, which is all of student this collective entity, which has a name and which has a set of resources that it is managing collectively. It also means that now this collective entity can act on its own behalf. And so this means that all of student, the the individual nodes can organize into this larger overarching entity, which is capable of collective action. And, of course, this require even further, elaboration of a proper governance structure. And then step number seven, which is the most challenging and the most interesting is, recognizing that there is a point in which there might be additional value to be had in creating even more interdependence amongst those different individual nodes, by interweaving them together. Meaning that all of a sudden, you you choose to become more interdependent with your siblings' communities in order to actually increase the sustainability of the system and in order to limit the risk of free riding. Because once you stop putting things in commons, then there is always the the risk of the tragedy and the of the commons with, like, people that might choose to free hide and yet benefit from the collectivity. But by by actually inviting all those individual nodes to interweave with one another by exchanging not just external resources, but by exchanging their own DNA, by sharing their blood, if you like, and, of course, sharing block depends on what each community is made of, then all of Sudan we create an actual interwoven ecosystem of interdependence. And that means that everyone actually now has even more of an incentive of making sure that the collective can sustain itself. And, and free riding becomes not a strategy anymore because if you free ride while while you're being so intertwined with all those actor actor, you're actually also harming yourself.
Yeah. So that's the recipe. I think what's going to be interesting is like, I think it's going to take time for people to kind of read through it again and, like, dig deeper into the things that I think that we're trying to say and convey. The most difficult part, I think, is this last one of of interweaving. Could we, like do you have any because this was a question that came up a lot, but do you have any, like, example or, idea of what interweaving could look like? Does it have to be something that is, like, on chain, for example? Does it have to be something that is specifically financial
or something like that? Clearly not. And, of course, if those communities are on chain communities, then it is easier to interweave through the same DNA of this community, meaning exchanging, I don't know, if those communities are all governed by some kind of DAO, then you can interweave by exchanging, governance token or DAO tokens, which is very different from exchanging financial resources. It's not about the financial resources per se. It's not about feeding funds to each other. It's about making a exchange of shares. Right? And so I give you some of my blood. You're giving some of my blood. It's not I'm not giving you, like, Bitcoins. I'm giving you part of my equity. And therefore, all of a sudden, you have an interest in my my my initiative, my community to succeed because then you you you have some of my equity, you have some of my governance. And so you can you can control some of what I do, but you also benefit from the from the success of what I do. And so there is a very important distinction when, like, step number three, which is exchanging resources, or step number five, which is pooling resources together. Here, we're really talking about external resources, like things that are not inherently connected with the community itself. Whereas step number seven is really when you're sharing the blood. And of course, it doesn't need to be on chain if the community is not operating in an on chain manner. So for instance, in the case of intentional communities, it's more likely to be spaces, sharing spaces, creating a mechanism in which if I if I have a space in one community, I also have a space in another community. People, because intentional community are made mostly of people. So cross pollinating by actually exchanging, people from one community to the other. In the case of DAO, yeah, it can be, like, some some governance, tokens and things like that. So it's really like it's some kind of case by case basis in which we need to look at the community. We need to understand what is the community made of, what are the DNA, the constitutive factor of this community, and that's what gets to be exchanged.
Right. So it's a very context specific action to take that I think for some like, in conversations they're having with people, it was a little bit difficult to wrap their heads around. But But I think it's something that makes it more, malleable to many different types of organizations and institutions that can come about that are not just, like, about recreating the state
like in the state. Yeah. Absolutely. It's not at all about recreating the state. It's about creating a system of coordination. Like, I think it's kind of, like, very, narrow to believe that the only way in which a nation can organize itself is through a state, unless we define the state to be the means by which nation do coordinate. Right? So it's like, is it like it's an ontological game here. We have this thing that we understand to be the institution of the state, which is a very bureaucratic institution, etcetera. But then there can be so many different institutional scaffoldings that come into being, and, and we're exploring those. We're trying to figure out how given the different nature of those new typologies of nations, which are network nations or digital nation, then what are now the new tools as well at our disposal that that can better be attuned to the needs and to the desires of those digital nations as opposed to the way in which existing nation states have been built so far, which were responding to a very different needs and responsibility because of the territoriality
of it. So, yeah, it's very different than the framework that is proposed by Balaji when it comes to the network states. We're not about creating a startup society or anything like that. We're not very, we're not using the framework of tech VC that Balaji tends to use in his book, but we're more focused on neutralizing resources, thinking of them as commons, and thinking about how to expand the area in which we can play when it comes to things that are outside of both the market and the state. Yeah. And I think if if we if we need to discuss, like, the
general vision or hyperstition of this, I will say that one thing that coordination can bring about is really to try and, demonstrate that, competition does not necessarily have to be the dominant strategy. And, and yet we live in a world in which we are somehow bound to compete with one another in order to ensure some kind of survival. And with the coordination, I think the idea is really to try and show that. And that's where I think the the recipe and then the the last point of the recipe, the interweaving, is very interesting because the reason that we compete with one another is because we are constantly fragmenting out and separating ourselves. That's, of course, if you're if you're separating from someone, then it's easier to compete with that person. And and in fact, the problem is that we are forgetting the most basics most basic truth, which is we are interdependent. And whether we like it or not, we need to recognize and acknowledge the interdependence. And and with the coordination, we actually might not only acknowledge it but also sublime it and realize that interdependence is also what, leads to greater collaboration. And all of Sudan, if we manage to have sufficient degrees of, powerful collaborations, then it might eventually become difficult to compete with those collaborative endeavors. And all of a sudden then maybe the the dominant strategy might actually become to collaborate with the collaboration rather to try and compete with the collaboration. And, of course, this is this requires an initial bootstrapping phase in which we we understand and we demonstrate that, collaboration actually expand capacities. And, of course, it comes at a cost, which is the cost of interdependence, but this is also a benefit. And and I think as long as we perceive interdependence as a drawback, then it will be much harder to actually engage into those collaborative effort. And when we realize that interdependence is not not not at the drawback, but it's a it's a given. And and it's a given that can be actually leveraged in order to promote collaborative dynamics, then I think we have a very interesting, tipping point that could actually modify the dominant strategy at least in some, in some domains.
Right. So the hope is perhaps making a, a flywheel effect of people realizing the the benefits of collaboration over competition.
Exactly. Yeah.
So is there anything else before we get to the next steps?
Yeah. I think maybe just, talking about, like, how does this thing, distinguish itself from Balaji's recipe for nitroxide. And I think, like, discussing the Balaji is really much into this exit based. And, you know, it's like, it doesn't really matter how you govern yourself because if you don't like it, you can exit. But all of sudden, this exit generates new governance challenges in between network states. Whereas in the coordination model, because it is about interdependency as opposed to exit based, of course, this creates interesting governance challenges that need to be tackled. But those governance challenges are tackled inside, and they're also tackled with people that have specifically chosen to interweave with one another and therefore specifically chosen to figure it out. Right? Because they know that there is a benefit. And so in some way, those are both of them have a similar degree of governance challenges, but I will I will I will argue that the the interdependence governance is actually probably easier to tackle than an ecosystem in which everyone has exit because they didn't agree with one another, and all of a sudden they need to figure out the governance structure
between these agreements. Well, I would say it probably would produce much more innovation in governance structures, in in, like, ways of living, and the things that I think a lot of people would to kind of project onto network states. Because you're forced to come together, I think there's more of a, you know, a creative explosion between people to create new forms of of interrelation.
Right. Exactly. And I think the the beauty of the coordination and of those new layers of, sovereignty is also that all of a sudden we can experiment with those new governance structure which are very difficult to experiment into an existing institutional framework of a nation state because there's lots of stakes, and it's very hard to experiment with something that we don't really know if it's gonna work and it might break. Whereas because coordination are still emergent and still small stakes at least, there can be a lot of home for new experimentation of new typologies of governance, which are more into this common based and mutualized approach. And, of course, I think we welcome as many alternative recipes as possible. And if anyone, has any additional idea for a new typology of coordination, a new type of network state. I think that will be that will that's part of the experimentation. We want the cookbook to have as many recipes as possible.
Yeah. And so I think if you're listening and you find this idea very interesting and you would like to keep up with the kind of latest, that's going on in this space, then I would definitely recommend to join the coordination online communities. I'm just going to put some links in the show notes so that you can get, so you can click on the invitations. We're not exactly yet sure how many or which exact platforms we're gonna start off with, but we'll probably, figure it out and put a couple in pretty soon. So by the time that this interview or this episode comes out, then there should be some online communities that you can join and and become a part and and learn more and more detail about sort of the things that we're talking about here. And if you are interested in any way to
coordinate and collaborate, you can also just reach out.
Via?
Email. Twitter. Just reach out, like, personally.
Okay. Yeah. Reach out however way you can, and we can get you plugged into the group. Alright. I think that's about it.