A crypto event about cyber state, what did technology leaders such as Balaji, Vitalik and Naval say?

Original author: Nancy, PANews

In the past week, Singapore has been filled with a lively crypto atmosphere, with project owners, VCs, exchanges, developers, media, KOLs and other crypto core forces gathering 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 with people, but is rarely mentioned in China. The 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 bestseller The Network State, which challenges the traditional state in the field of governance and proposes that in the future online communities can crowdfund territories around the world 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 CTO, and has invested in well-known crypto projects such as Ethereum, Solana, NEAR and Chainlink.

From the Concept of Networked Nation to the Practice of Pop-up City

We can start new companies in garages like Google, we can create new communities of 3 billion people in dormitories like Facebook, and we can launch new currencies from white papers like Bitcoin. So, can we build a new country, Network State? If Bitcoin is a decentralized currency, then Network State is a decentralized country. Balaji pointed out that communities were initially formed on the Internet around a set of common interests or values, and then became physical countries with their own laws after acquiring land. These countries will coexist with existing nation-states and eventually replace them, even reaching the scale of traditional countries. 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 hypotheses, and parallel institutions are established in these communities to support and serve these innovations.

There were also a number of related “pop-up city” projects at the conference, including Cabin, a network city consisting of modern villages with branches in the United States, Portugal and other places; Culdesac, a community designed for remote work in Arizona; Edge City, a “social incubator” dedicated to creating new ideas, technologies, culture and organizations, and Zuzalu, an experiment by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.

In addition to the discussion on the Network State, the nearly 12-hour conference also warmed up for the official launch 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 Balajis book The Network State and aims to provide new educational opportunities for Dark Talent around the world and break the limitations of the traditional system. Since the application was opened, it has received thousands of applications from over 100 countries.

Currently, The Network School has officially opened on September 23, focusing on learning, exercising, earning money, and having fun. According to Balajis previous post, in the daily life of the Network School, students will complete daily problems in small classrooms, involving programming and social media posting, and will receive proof of learning NFTs after completion. Students can also participate in the competition for a daily cryptocurrency award worth $1,000 for open source projects, AI content creation, and micro-tasks.

Network School student @twone.eth also revealed in a tweet that compared to the previous Popup City, where the majority of students were crypto practitioners, Network School’s student backgrounds are very diverse. You can meet friends from all kinds of backgrounds around the world: Americans working in K 12 education, Dutch people working in traditional banks, people who have lived in the Colombian jungle for many years, and people who have spent five years in Shanghai dedicated to nature sports...

@twone.eth also revealed that Balaji said Network School aims to become a permanent technology base, which is more suitable for technological innovation compared to the limitations of San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Network School is working hard to reduce 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 close community. The daily operation of the community includes facilities such as fitness, workspaces, and cafes, and plans to strengthen interaction between 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?

Around the theme of Everything related to entrepreneurial society, participants of Network State Conference 2024 include more than 30 big names, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Coinbase co-founder Brian Armstrong, Solana founder Raj Gokal, historian Niall Ferguson and AngelList founder Naval Ravikant. Compared with last year, this years event has added discussions on parallel institutions, parallel health and digital nomads.

Vitalik: Pop-up cities need to solve governance and membership issues

In his speech, Vitalik introduced Zuzalu, an experiment that has brought together 200 members from the Ethereum community, crypto executives, biotech entrepreneurs, and scientific researchers in Montenegro to solve collective problems such as human longevity in two months. Participants enjoyed activities such as healthy eating, cold showers, and yoga. They were satisfied with the experience, and the element of interpersonal interaction was crucial, but the experiment did not clearly indicate the next direction for Zuzalu. He believes that pop-up cities are a new medium, and fruitful relationships need to be established between network countries because the tribalism seen on social media today is zero-sum and ineffective. Pop-up cities have product-market fit, but governance and membership issues still need to be addressed.

Naval Ravikant: AI is more about intellectual repetitive labor, personal curiosity and self-improvement are the keys to progress

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, and his book Navals Guide is also a bestseller in the business field. In a fireside conversation with Balaji, Naval talked about personal growth and said that almost all of his great achievements came from his obsession with following his natural knowledge. If you can be obsessed with something and go deep into details that others cant reach to satisfy your curiosity, such as obsession with cyber countries, artificial intelligence, or cryptocurrency, this becomes the basis of all so-called self-improvement. Personal curiosity and self-improvement are the key to meaningful progress. He also revealed that one of the important things in life is that material needs must be met. In this material world, there needs to be some physical leverage, which means you have to create what society needs. Wealth is not money, but 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, which is good at automating existing work. The real breakthrough will come from tackling unresolved problems and generating novel ideas. Improving computing power alone cannot give birth to artificial intelligence that can really solve problems. It is absurd to make artificial intelligence safe in some way. This is a logical contradiction.

In addition, Naval also revealed that there are three things on his personal list that cannot be bought with money, 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 network nation

Solana co-founder Raj Gokal said that a year ago, Solanas interns mentioned that they were building a parallel financial system 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 decentralized protocols, involving land, governance, payments, energy, and communications, etc. These decentralized stories are forming a network state on Solana. For example, if you want to crowdfund as a network state to buy land and gain diplomatic recognition, products that can provide similar decentralized physical infrastructure networks are particularly attractive. Helium, a decentralized hotspot network on Solana, can provide infrastructure for land through the power of crypto incentives; tools such as MetaDAO are prediction markets for resource allocation, which can apply the power of financial markets to governance and voting, which is seen by the younger generation as the most interesting way to interact with the world. Solana hopes that the future network state can be more intuitive, fast, interesting, and easy to use, attracting people to actively participate, not just because they believe in this mission, which is also one of Solanas core principles.

Brian Armstrong: Builders need a sanctuary that supports freedom and innovation

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in his speech that the transformation of technology companies to technology communities is happening, and people can begin to change the hierarchical structure of their tribes and gain a greater sense of purpose. Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have deconstructed currency from the state, and we see that the next level to be unbound by the state is identity. The current traditional form of identity seems a bit outdated to some extent, and cryptographic proofs will be a good solution.

Brian Armstrong also said that the trust in Western institutions is showing signs of decline, and people are faced with the choice of internal reform or opting out. Creating a global special zone will be an alternative. Despite the difficulties, there is still a chance to build the next Singapore or Hong Kong, forming an archipelago that can be sheltered to ensure that global builders have a place to live freely when speech or currency is attacked. He believes that the most ideal network country is a technological optimist or an efficient network 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 network nation

Pieter Levels is a Dutch entrepreneur, programmer and digital nomad who earns $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 1 billion digital nomads by 2035. During the fireside chat, Levels shared one of the first online countries he built ten years ago, Nomads.com, which now has tens of thousands of globally mobile members and attracts tens of millions of digital nomads every year, with major entities in Bali, Thailand, Mexico and Miami.

At the same time, Levels also shared several interesting data about digital nomads, including that currently one-third of the worlds working population works remotely or in a hybrid mode, and about 10-20% of people move like digital nomads, a number of about 100 million to 200 million, and it is expected that 1 billion people will work remotely in 2024. Among them, most digital nomads are not financially constrained backpackers, with an average annual salary of about $125,000, and 90% have a college degree. They are very attractive talents for countries (or network countries); at the same time, most male digital nomads are engaged in software development (34%), and most female digital nomads are engaged in marketing (16%); 66% of digital nomads are single, and 72% of female digital nomads are progressives; in addition, most digital nomads do not wander around, but stay in a place for several months. The reason for the transfer is the lack of visas for long-term stay, which is a problem that countries and network countries can solve (provide 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, with a sense of closeness based on relationships and interests that is more important than physical location or distance. At the same time, unlike physical states that require guns and armies to protect them, cyber states and digital assets are protected through encryption technology - impenetrable borders and encryption as the ultimate firewall. The power of the cyber state lies in its media, currency, and agility,” Levels added.