balajis

@balajis.eth

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The network state / real estate interface is the fiat-to-crypto bridge, but for communities.

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NETWORK STATE NEWS I've thought about starting Network State News on Farcaster. We'd start with $1000 in prizes each day for content broadly related to startup societies and network states. For example, "generate a 60 second vertical video review of the top 10 startup societies", where the grand prize winner gets $500 and five runner ups get $100 each. But we'd also issue prizes for open source code, for book reviews, for politics and history, and for breaking news. It'd be social-native, because content would come fundamentally as public casts on an open social protocol rather than posts on a closed website. It'd be AI-native, because everyone would use AI tools like Claude, Midjourney, Runway, and Suno to compose every post. And of course it'd be crypto-native, because every post would be digitally signed, all payments would be in crypto, and everyone here would know how to cite blockchain evidence. Most of all, it'd be an experiment in decentralized global citizen journalism. Should we do it?

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A new $1000 bounty to play with AI and prove a point!

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$1000 BOUNTY: AIDEN > BIDEN I want someone to make an open source demo where AI Biden takes in the exact same questions Biden got, and produces better answers. Make the output come in the form of AI video in his voice. Show that technology can already do a better job of reading a teleprompter, which is Biden’s only job. Show that code running on your computer gives more coherent answers than the commander-in-chief. Show that AI can indeed take the jobs of NPCs, starting with the presidency. Show that the network is becoming stronger than the state. @bountybot @bountycaster

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Murtaza wrote about how cryptocurrency solved a problem that wasn’t theoretical for him: how to send money home. (I almost feel we take that for granted now in the community, as stablecoins work so well, but it’s still a huge win over the legacy system.)

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George Washington was a patriot to a country that didn’t yet exist.

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HARD CLOUDS We didn’t have hard state borders in the premodern era. Maps weren’t advanced, passports weren’t issued, travel was infrequent. Dividing the land up into disjoint nation states was very much a new idea. I think we are currently in a similarly fuzzy era of network borders. Maps of the cloud aren’t advanced, digital passports are inchoate, transit between networks is still largely frictionless. But China and crypto are changing that. That is: the Great Firewall and the Bitcoin Blockchain take network borders *seriously.* In totally different ways, Xi and Satoshi treat Internet defense as central to their community’s continued existence. So they built hard clouds. Meanwhile, the legacy nation state was built *before* the cloud. And ideas developed back then don’t necessarily work today in the same way. Eg: if hostile foreigners have free speech on your trusted network, if they can send any bits they want, they may script your drones or take your coins. So cloud borders will harden.

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I am now moderating the network-states Farcaster channel with the help of some colleagues. We will be using the @ns username to do things like pay out prizes, communicate with folks here, and handle moderation tasks. More soon!

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Interest payments are up 15X. Debt issuance passed COVID levels. Emergency bank loans are past 2008. Saudi Arabia just ended the petrodollar. And true debt is now estimated at $175T.

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The progression of permissions is: 1) Discord 2) DAOs 3) Doors 4) Drones That is: private keys start by controlling messaging, then money, then movement, and finally machines. Thanks to NFT locks we’re at phase 3. Will someone do an NFT drone to get us to phase 4? I can put up a bounty if this hasn’t been done.

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Popups are starting to work for bootstrapping new societies. Zuzalu, Vitalia, and Edge Esmeralda went well. Which others are you attending?

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A state formed over four hundred years.

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Government as an admin dashboard.

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What startup societies should we have speak at this year's Network State Conference? I have my own list, but am interested in your picks.

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We built tech media: Elon Twitter Farcaster All In Pirate Wires Power Law Turpentine My First Million Not Boring Hereticon Network State That’s books, podcasts, newsletters, conferences, and social media platforms. The next step is to build tech movements.

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Western governments have obviously been obsolesced by the Internet. The question is what comes next.

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Fun little poster for a talk in 7 hours or so. Oakland, June 29 at 7pm. https://lu.ma/technodemocracy

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Cloud formations are taking physical shape.

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If you're in the SF Bay Area, I'm screening new content. I’ll be remote, but there will be live Q&A. Free tickets are available. And there will be an afterparty. https://lu.ma/technodemocracy

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Naval will be making a rare in-person appearance at Network State 2024. We'll be kicking off the conference, doing a fireside chat and taking questions. So, do come to Singapore on Sept 22! http://thenetworkstate.com/conference

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