The Network State
The Network State: How To Start a New Country is a non-fiction book written by entrepreneur and essayist Balaji Srinivasan. Published on 10 July 2022 by 1729, the work advocates the creation of network states, aspirant states that would first form as a stateless community of individuals around the world, then eventually declare sovereignty. According to Srinivasan: "we build the embryonic state as an open-source project, we organize our internal economy around remote work, we cultivate in-person levels of civility, we simulate architecture in VR; and we create art and literature that reflects our values." Srinivasan also advocates the use of a cryptoeconomy, upon which the economy of a network state would be based.
Srinivasan argues that network states are not micronations as their combined population would be too great for a macronation to ignore. Nevertheless, the network state ultimately shares several similarities with the theories of micropatriologist Cesidio Tallini, as well as several online micronations, but the ultimate end goal of the network state differs. At least one micronation, the Kingdom of Blazdonia, has identified itself as a network state.
There are several definitions mentioned in the book. In one informal sentence:
A network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.
A more complex definition that extends that concept and preemptively covers many edge cases:
A network state is a social network with a moral innovation, a sense of national consciousness, a recognized founder, a capacity for collective action, an in-person level of civility, an integrated cryptocurrency, a consensual government limited by a social smart contract, an archipelago of crowdfunded physical territories, a virtual capital, and an on-chain census that proves a large enough population, income, and real-estate footprint to attain a measure of diplomatic recognition.