As a resident at Zuzalu, a two-month pop-up city in Montenegro, I helped run the Coordi-Nations workshop, which brought together researchers and builders to explore how networked communities can become more sovereign.
Smart treaties
During the workshop, I designed a technical primitive that could give these communities a way to form alliances, pool resources, and make credible commitments to one another while remaining autonomous.
Each party crowdfunds a pledge from its members into a joint contract: a bond of badges or reputation that can be slashed into a common pool if the treaty is broken, and a shared treasury from which contributors can rage quit with their share of the unspent funds. Treaties can admit new parties and merge with other treaties, allowing alliances to grow without putting anyone at the center.
We built a prototype which won the Zuzalu hackathon, presenting it as a solution for the community to continue coordinating across independent "Zu-forks."
A year later, the RAND Corporation arrived at a similar primitive from the other direction: treaties between nation-states, underwritten by CBDC reserves.
Network nations
Smart treaties were part of a broader line of work I pursued at Zuzalu around what a postcapitalist network nation might look like and what institutions it would need.