a16z supports: Crypto geeks’ ambition to build a nation through crowdfunding

By Gabriel Gatehouse

Compiled by: BitpushNews Shawn

Do you look ahead to the upcoming U.S. presidential election and think about the political turmoil ahead and feel like democracy might be in trouble? A group of tech entrepreneurs backed by big money from Silicon Valley feel the same way.

Imagine if you could choose your nationality like you choose your gym membership. This is Balaji Srinivasan’s vision for the future. Balaji — who, like Madonna, is a famous name — is a rock star in the crypto world. The entrepreneur and venture capitalist is a firm believer that technology can do better in almost every role that governments currently perform.

Last fall, I watched Balaji present his ideas in a large conference hall outside Amsterdam. “We can build a company like Google; we can build a new company like Facebook,” he asked, as he paced the stage.Community"We can create new currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum; then, can we create new countries?" He wore a slightly loose gray suit and a loose tie, looking more like a middle manager in the company's accounting department than a rock star. But don't be fooled by his appearance, Balaji was once a partner of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a giant venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, and he has strong capital support behind him.

Silicon Valley is obsessed with disruption. Technology startups have been disrupting traditional media for years, and now they are also infiltrating other fields such as education, finance, and space travel.Xiaobai Navigation“Imagine thousands of startups that each displace different traditional institutions,” Raj told the audience. “They exist side by side with the existing system, gradually attracting users and gaining momentum until they become the new mainstream.”

If startups can replace these traditional institutions, Balaji reasoned, they can also replace the state. He called this idea the "Network State": the startup state. Here's how it works: First,Communitywill be formed on the Internet based on common interests or values, and then theseCommunityThey will acquire land and become "physical states" with their own laws. These states will coexist with existing nation-states and eventually replace them. You will choose your nationality just like you choose your Internet service provider and become a citizen of your favorite Internet country.

The idea of companies having excessive influence in national affairs is nothing new. The term “Banana Republic” comes from an American company, United Fruit, which virtually ruled Guatemala for decades starting in the 1930s. In addition to owning most of the land, it also controlled the railroads, postal services, and telegraphs. When the Guatemalan government tried to revolt, the CIA helped United Fruit stage a coup.

But the ambitions of the Network State Movement seem to be even greater. They not only want the existing government to succumb to the company and let the company do what it wants, but also want to replace the government with the company.

Some see the idea of a cyber state as a neo-colonialism that would replace elected leaders with corporate dictators who serve the interests of shareholders. But others see it as a way to counter the burdensome regulation that exists today in Western democracies. Sounds like a tech bro fantasy at first? Well, some of the prototypes of a cyber state already exist.

At the conference in Amsterdam, a group of tech entrepreneurs presented these “startup societies,” including Cabin, a modern rural network city with locations in the United States, Portugal, and Culdesac, a community in Arizona designed for remote work.

Balaji’s cyber-state concept is based on “Charter Cities” — special economic zones, similar to free ports. Several such projects are being built around the world, including in Nigeria and Zambia. At a recent Las Vegas rally, Donald Trump promised that if he is elected in November, he would open up federal land in Nevada to create new special zones with “ultra-low taxes, ultra-low regulation” to attract new industries, build affordable housing, and create jobs. Such a plan, he said, would revive “the frontier spirit and the American dream.”

While Culdesac and Cabin are more like online communities that have established a territorial base, Prspera, on the coast of Honduras, is different: It calls itself a “private city” for entrepreneurs promoting the science of longevity — offering unregulated gene therapies to slow the aging process.

Prspera, which is operated by a for-profit company registered in Delaware, was granted autonomous legislative power under special policies of the previous Honduran government. The current President, Castro Castro, wants to eliminate its privileges and has begun to strip it of some of its special treatment. Prspera has therefore filed a $10.8 billion lawsuit against the Honduran government.

A free-market crypto city

At the one-day event, Dryden Brown, a young man in a grey hoodie, took the stage to speak. He said he wanted to build a new city-state somewhere on the Mediterranean coast that would not be run by a huge national bureaucracy but byBlockchain——cryptocurrencyIts founding principles will be ideas like "vitality" and "heroic virtue." He calls it "Praxis," after the ancient Greek word for "action." He says the new country's first citizens will be able to move in by 2026.

He was a little vague on the details. Where would it move? Who would build the infrastructure? Who would manage it? Dryden Brown fiddled with a remote on stage and showed a slide showing that Praxis was backed by tens of billions of dollars in capital.

For now, however, the Praxis community exists primarily on the internet. You can apply to become a citizen on their website. But who those citizens are remains unclear. Dryden showed another slide, a meme of Pepe the frog, the sad cartoon frog that became a mascot for the alt-right during Trump’s 2016 campaign.

In the niche world of startup nation, Praxis was known for being edgy. They threw legendary parties: candlelit dinners in a vast Manhattan loft, where introverted programmers mingled with fashionable models and figures from the Dark Enlightenment — including blogger Curtis Yarvin, who advocated for a totalitarian future ruled by corporate “monarchs.” Yarvin’s ideas were sometimes described as fascistic, which he denied. Attendees of such parties had to sign nondisclosure agreements, and journalists were generally not welcome.

After his speech, I went to talk to Dryden Brown. He seemed a little defensive and distant, but he gave me his phone number. I messaged him several times to try to talk to him, but got no response.

About six months later, I saw an interesting notification on Platform X: “Praxis Magazine Launch Party. Tomorrow night. Photocopy your favorite pages.” It didn’t give a specific time or place, just a link where you could apply to attend. I applied, but didn’t hear back. So, the next morning, I texted Dryden Brown again. To my surprise, he responded immediately: “10pm, Ella Funt.”

Ella Funt, a Manhattan bar and nightclub formerly known as Club 82, was once a legendary haunt of New York’s gay scene; in the 1950s, writers and artists would drink cocktails served by women in tuxedos and watch drag shows in the basement. Now it was hosting a private party for those who wanted to build a new nation, and I was invited. But I was in Utah, 2,000 miles away. If I wanted to make it, I had to book a flight.

I was one of the first people there. The place was mostly empty, save for a few Praxis staffers placing magazines around the bar. I flipped through them: The magazines were on thick, expensive paper and contained ads for a variety of seemingly random things: perfume, 3D-printed guns, and milk. Like Pepe the frog, milk is an internet meme. In alt-right circles, the milk bottle icon represents white supremacy.

Readers were encouraged to “copy the pages and post them around your town” – a metaphor for the spread of online culture. A photocopier was brought into the bar.

A group of young men walked in, some wearing cowboy boots. They didn’t look like real outdoorsy types, though. I struck up a conversation with one of them, who introduced himself as Zach, a “crypto cowboy” from Milton Keynes (he was wearing a leather cowboy hat).

“I kind of represent the Wild West spirit of America,” he said. “I feel like we’re on the frontier.”

Many people willcryptocurrencyLinked to scams: This is highly volatile cyber currency, whose value can evaporate overnight. But in the world of "cyber states", they lovecryptocurrencyThey see it as the currency of the future — one that governments cannot control.

Next I chatted with another man who called himself Az. I asked him his last name. He smiled and said, “Mandias.” This is a reference to Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias”: Ozymandias, King of Kings. Anonymity is an important part of the cryptocurrency ethos. I felt like no one at the party told me their real name.

Mandias, who is from Bangladesh but grew up in Queens, New York, founded a tech startup. He believes that just as the printing press contributed to the collapse of feudalism in Europe 500 years ago, today's new technologies - cryptocurrency,Blockchainand artificial intelligence — will lead to the collapse of democratic nation-states.

"Obviously, democracy is great," he said, "but the best ruler is a moral dictator. Some people call that a 'philosopher king.'"

The rise of a corporate monarchy?

Az said he was excited about "standing on the brink of a coming renaissance." But before that renaissance, he predicted a "Luddite movement" against new technologies that would destroy millions of jobs and monopolize the global economy. He believes the Luddites will ultimately fail.

However, he predicts that the transition to what he calls the "next stage" in the evolution of human society - the "network state" stage - will be violent and "Darwinian."

Far from being disturbed by this prospect, Az seems excited by the idea that out of the ashes of democracy will rise new kings: corporate dictators who will rule over their online empires.

I walked to the bar and bought a drink. There, I met two people who didn’t look like they belonged in the crypto community. Ezra was the manager of another nightclub nearby, and her friend Dylan was a student. They looked like they were invited to add glamour to the party—which was basically a gathering of crypto bros and computer geeks, after all. But they also had some opinions on the whole idea of a cyber nation.

"What if you don't have enough hospital staff or school teachers?" Dylan asked. "It's not realistic to have a city without any government." Ezra thought the whole idea was dystopian. "We wanted to see what a 'real' cult gathering would be like," she said, half-jokingly.

Just then, Dryden Brown shows up, co-founder of Praxis. He steps outside for a cigarette, and I follow him. He tells me that Praxis magazine is a way to showcase the kind of new culture he hopes to bring to the fore. Praxis, Dryden says, is about "the pursuit of the frontier spirit" and "heroic virtue."

I doubted Dryden could really last long in the wild west. He seemed exhausted by it all. I wanted to ask him some tough questions about the cyberstate project: Who would be the citizens of this new world? Who would govern it? What about all those far-right memes? And—Dylan’s question—who would staff the hospitals?

But we were constantly interrupted by more visitors. Dryden Brown invited me to visit the Praxis Embassy the next day. We said our goodbyes and went inside. The party was getting more and more wild. Ezra, Dylan, and some of their model-like friends climbed onto the copy machine and were copying not pages from magazines but parts of their bodies. I took a magazine and left.

Back at my tiny Airbnb above Chinatown, I flipped through the magazine. Along with white supremacist memes and gun ads, there was a QR code. It led to a short film: a 20-minute indictment of the emptiness of modern life, an elegy for a vanished world of hierarchy and heroism.

What exactly is the implied meaning?

“You are entertained and satisfied,” the voiceover says. “You appear to be productive. But you are not great.” The voice speaks of “algorithms that make you hate yourself and your own civilization.”

In the film, an animated character points a pistol directly at the audience.

“Contemporary media claims that any ideal is fascism,” the voiceover continues. “Everything that has beliefs is fascism.”

Is this an invitation to accept the label of fascism? The movement seems nostalgic for a particular kind of Western culture—a Nietzschean world where the strongest survive and chaos and destruction breed greatness.

The next day, I went to the Praxis Embassy, a huge loft on Broadway. Sure enough, the bookshelves were filled with Nietzsche, a biography of Napoleon, and a copy of The Dictator's Handbook. I spent some time there, but Dryden Brown did not appear.

I left wondering what I had witnessed the night before: Was this a harbinger of a future in which countries like the US and UK collapse into a networked corporate society where you can choose to become a citizen of one? Or was Dryden Brown and his friends just a prank, a group of tech bros playing alt-right revolutionaries, mocking the system and having a good time?

Will Dryden Brown one day become a CEO-king ruling an alt-right empire across the Mediterranean? I doubt it. But there are some pushes for more autonomous regions, free ports and charter cities. If democracy is in trouble, the network state movement looks like it’s in the cards.

The article comes from the Internet:a16z supports: Crypto geeks’ ambition to build a nation through crowdfunding

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