Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has found two issues- governance and membership issues in Zuzalu’s “popup city” or “network states” experiment.
At his Network State Conference 2024 address, in Singapore, Vitalik Buterin explained his theory behind “network states”. It is a movement where online communities come together to form physical groups and seek political autonomy.
Speaking on his Zuzalu experiment, Vitalik shared that the goal of the experiment was to have 200 people from the Ethereum community- including crypto executives, biotech entrepreneurs, and scientific researchers into Montenegro from March to May 2023, and let the community work together to solve challenges like human longevity.
Buterin said, “Bring these people together for 60 days, try to be a city, and then see what happens.” But expounding the workings of the experiment, he added, that popup cities have “product market fit” but “we have to solve governance and membership more.”
Even so, the community liked the experience with routines including healthy eating, cold plunges, yoga, and governance issues remained to be solved as it was “unclear what immediate next step Zuzalu implied.”
The pop-up cities could develop their own rules and guidelines that serve their citizens and could reject over-scrutiny that stifles progress (as seen in the West). But, it was not clear from the experiment how to proceed with implementing them, Vitalik explained.