A thousand
internet city-states.
Balaji says every network state founds itself on a One Commandment, a single moral inversion that defines its way of life. So what would today's most distinctive public figures build, if they built one?
This is a thought experiment. None of these people have endorsed anything. Each entry projects what a member state might look like if its named founder ran the constitutional convention. Some you would want to live in. Some you definitely would not. That is the point of a federation.
The first batch is a starting list. Send us yours via contact or open a PR on GitHub.
Every imagined state, on the globe.
Spin it. Filter by lane. Each pin is a polity that does not exist yet, sitting on the exact patch of Earth where it would most likely materialize. The empty space is the invitation.
A thousand is eight lanes of 125.
A flat list of a thousand is noise. Eight archetypes with roughly 125 states each is a map. Every entry belongs to exactly one lane, which is how the catalog stays navigable as it fills in.
States organized around not dying. Health as civic infrastructure.
States where citizenship means shipping. Founders, engineers, makers.
States organized around money: treasuries, markets, compounding.
States built on art, comedy, music, and story. The soft power lane.
States that are experiments in how to decide things together.
States pushing into unclaimed space: orbit, ocean, desert, code.
States organized around how a day feels. Calm, discipline, belonging.
States built on thinking well: research, discourse, deep work.
Don't Die
“Death is optional.”
Citizens commit to measurable longevity. Sleep at the same hour, eat the same protocol meal, train the same forty minutes. Through osmosis, all become the healthiest version of themselves.
Flow State
“Live the life of your life.”
Flow is already operating. Branded residential communities in Miami, Nashville, Atlanta, and Saudi Arabia. Shared spaces, shared rituals, shared meals, shared kids. Andreessen wrote a $350M check on the thesis. The kibbutz reborn as a glass-walled apartment building. This isn't speculation, it's a near-state waiting for a federation.
The Compounders
“Compound everything. Calmly.”
Citizens hold equity, write daily, lift weekly, meditate twice. No status games, no urgent meetings, no quarterly anything. The clock runs in decades.
Zuzopolis
“Public goods are sacred.”
An open-source civilization. All work funded by retroactive grants. All laws compiled to source. All disputes resolved on chain.
Type II
“Become a multiplanetary species.”
Hard engineering. First principles. Eighty hour weeks for the first decade. The polity ships on a launch cadence and aims to hit Mars by year ten.
Accelerationia
“It is time to build.”
Permitless construction. AI-assisted everything. Citizens ship a startup or a building or a child every year. Decline is illegal here.
The Fortress
“Build moats. Mistrust competition.”
Citizens hold monopoly stakes in their own niches. Privacy is absolute. Defensibility is a civic virtue. The only growth that matters is power-law.
The Worldcoin Republic
“Every human has a basic income and a verifiable face.”
Citizens hold a Worldcoin orb scan and a daily UBI in stablecoin. Compute is a public utility. The economy floats on AI dividends.
Founders Republic
“Every citizen is a founder of something.”
Citizens run their own micro-business or ship their own software. Shopify and similar tools are the public infrastructure. Schools teach business, code, and Stoicism. Latin and Linux equally weighted.
Progress
“Science was once faster.”
Funding shifted from grants to prizes. Median PhD age cut by five years. Citizens publish weekly, lab notebooks open, results reproducible by Tuesday.
Onchain
“All economic activity is publicly verifiable.”
Salaries paid in stablecoin. Property held as NFT. Disputes resolved on-chain. Tax filings auto-compile from the wallet.
Marginalia
“Find the talent. Then bet on it.”
A polity organized as a perpetual talent search. Emergent Ventures grants on demand. Reading lists in every cafe. Complacency is taxed.
Authentica
“Sit with the question for three hours.”
Long conversations. Slow takes. Two of the three meals eaten in pairs. Citizens read the works of their guests before disagreeing.
Comedy Republic
“Nothing is too sacred for a joke.”
Open mics every block. BBQ is a civic right. Citizens lift, hunt, and steam. Free speech is the only law.
Generosity
“Give before you accumulate.”
Wealth flows out as fast as it flows in. Every citizen films at least one act of public good per week. The treasury is a perpetual giving pledge.
Stay Hard
“Don't quit. Ever.”
Citizens run before sunrise. Cold plunge daily. Calluses on the mind. The polity hosts the world's hardest mile and citizens line up to suffer it.
Protocol
“Light, cold, sleep, in that order.”
Mornings begin with thirty minutes of sun. Cold plunge before lunch. Caffeine after ten, never before. Sleep tracked, optimized, defended.
Lifestyle Design
“Geographic arbitrage is a moral right.”
Citizens earn in dollars, spend in pesos, work four hours, and read the rest. The polity moves with the seasons.
The Hacker Republic
“Make something people want.”
Citizenship requires shipping. Funding by demo day. Essays are how laws are debated. The polity runs on Lisp.
Discipline
“Discipline equals freedom.”
Citizens up at 4:30. Workout logged. Decisions documented. Extreme ownership at every level. The polity rises before the sun every day of its existence.
Peak State
“Your state is your responsibility.”
Daily priming. Cold plunge at dawn. Citizens write their gratitude before checking the news. The polity holds a fire walk every quarter.
Network Effect
“Your network is your net worth.”
Citizens have a public graph. Weekly intros are mandatory. The polity scales by who you know who you know. Connection compounds.
The Nomad Republic
“Geography is not a job description.”
Distributed citizens with VAT-free passports. The polity has no capital. Every city is a node, every node is a coworking space, every coworking space has fast wifi.
Deep Work
“Attention is the only resource.”
No social media in the public square. Citizens block half their calendar for focus. Email checked twice a day. The polity rewards depth over breadth.
Principles
“Radical transparency, idea meritocracy.”
Every meeting recorded. Every decision logged. The best idea wins regardless of seniority. Disagreements are escalated until resolved.
1% Better
“Identity is a votebank of habits.”
Citizens stack one habit on another. Streaks visible publicly. The polity counts compound interest on behavior, not capital.
The Portal
“The mainstream is the lagging indicator.”
Citizens are heterodox by default. Disagreement is the cost of admission. The polity hosts the longest Q&A in human history.
Waking
“Meditation without metaphysics.”
Citizens meditate at sunrise. Conversations are slow. The polity runs on rationality without dogma.
Monk Mode
“Ancient wisdom for a modern life.”
Mornings begin in silence. Citizens journal. The polity hosts retreats every season and exports calm to its diaspora.
Forever Young
“Aging is a disease.”
Citizens enroll in trials by default. The polity funds reversal therapies through a sovereign-wealth-style fund. Eight categories of damage, each with its own ministry.
Tidy
“Keep only what sparks joy.”
Citizens own less. Possessions audited annually. Public space radiates calm. The polity exports order at scale.
The Stoa
“Obstacles are the way.”
Citizens read Marcus Aurelius before checking email. Death is contemplated weekly. Anger is metabolized in journals. The polity holds the long view.
Erotic Intelligence
“Intimacy requires distance.”
Citizens have time for desire. Couples therapy is preventive, not corrective. The polity values curiosity over comfort.
Foundry
“Civilization needs builders, including in defense.”
Hard tech, factories, foundries. Citizens work on supply-chain resilience, drones, and the next shipyard. The polity manufactures.
Latticework
“Use the multiple mental models.”
Citizens are required to be literate in twenty disciplines. Decisions are stress-tested against five frameworks. The polity holds compounding sacred.
Order
“Clean your room first.”
Citizens take responsibility before claiming rights. Every speech is preceded by ten weeks of preparation. The polity values competence and tradition.
Nomad Cup
“Ship in public.”
Each citizen has a Stripe MRR ticker on their public profile. Hackathons are tax-deductible. The polity runs on bootstrapped SaaS.
Gelephu Mindfulness City
“Happiness is the purpose of capitalism.”
Bhutan is the only carbon-negative country on Earth, and the only one that measures itself in Gross National Happiness instead of GDP. Gelephu Mindfulness City pours that philosophy into concrete: a Special Administrative Region on the Assam border where the King chartered his own body of law — Singapore statutes and common law, Abu Dhabi's financial rulebook — so wellness founders, green-energy engineers, and digital-asset builders can operate under first-world rule of law inside the Himalayas. Eleven neighborhoods flow like rice paddies along thirty-five rivers, each civic landmark mapped to one of the nine domains of happiness.
Who would you found a state with?
Suggest a founder. Suggest a One Commandment. Suggest a citizenry. We will add it to the catalog. The federation grows by what its citizens imagine.