Anastasiya Belyaeva & Luis Cuende: Nation3 – Creating a Sovereign Cloud Nation #469

Transcript

welcome to Epic Center the show which talks about the Technologies projects and people driving decentralization and blockchain Revolution I'm Brian Crane and today I'm speaking with Luis guender and Anastasia Belia Eva who are the co-founders of nation three Nation 3 is kind of taking up a topic that's been you know discussed more and more this idea of new countries how do we create uh new legal systems new countries new States uh of course biology has gotten a lot of attention with his description of this as Network State and you know Nation 3 is actually trying to do it and they're moving ahead with something like this so really excited to speak with them and you know dive in what is that going to look like so just before that uh

we've heard from our sponsors or tally ho so Tallyho is redefining the wallet as a public good you can think of it like a community-owned alternative to metamask it has a much smoother user experience compared to many other wallets as an expressive UI and you can easily see all your compounds as a one and swap between assets within the wallet at a much lower price they also have a great Ledger integration and have ens and UNS domain name support and recently added the first side chain with polygon and so polygon support is now automatic and easy to use without having to do any kind of manual step-by-step thing and uh yeah you can also enter the metaverse with this you know with this web3 wallet that's fully Community owned

so they became the first sponsor for ether JS this JavaScript library through git coin Aqueduct so go to tele.cash slash download to check it out and one more thing so we are hiring at the moment so we're looking for a community manager for epicenter to help us grow our audience and you know kind of produce a show at a even higher quality level so if you pass it about crypto and creating great content uh get in touch there's going to be a link to the application in the show notes so you can just uh reach out there and yeah with that let's get into it uh it's it's so great to have you both on I've kind of like I guess known you both

for a long time but let's start with some introductions maybe Lewis can you uh just share a little bit about you know who you are and your journey into the land of crypto sure yeah uh Lotto is here Brian and um so you're going to I got into crypto um after the Super Prime crisis um got it started and kind of like hit Spain where I'm from and so I discovered Bitcoin um in the beginning I thought it was a scam but then like the kind of like the whole crisis and how things shape around Banks um you know change my view around it and are you sure that's like this amazing tool software tool for human Liberation so I kind of like got into it um with hope that I would you know uh one day remove the need for

banks in the first place and all the power they have um and then I found a couple companies in the in the space and then eventually in 2016 uh I I thought kind of like the next step after Bitcoin and after which is permissionless money after ethereum which is kind of like um this is smart contract person that enables to build so many organizations the next step is to actually build those organizations and so I started Aragon um and Aragon took Dallas from basically zero dollars in aun to the first billion and it still Powers some heavily it's like core Finance or early today on ethereum and and yeah and then I mean after that it was kind of like Bitcoin ethereum then Aragon for for the house and then the next steps is like uh you know what is the best application for

those that can possibly exist and that is well that is your place in the national state um and so that's why uh that's why I'm working on this country now cool and then what about you and Anastasia great to be here Brian thank you so much for for having us so I actually come into the crypto World from the VC side I was in a couple of different funds like open ocean and Firestarter before I co-founded fabric together with my my colleague Richard and Max and it was one of the earliest funds in Europe investing in in the web 3 Universe back before it was even it had a name like that um but for me I I come from Crimea and I've kind of personally seen a lot of things that are broken with nation

states and a lot of unfairness and and how that affects people um at the level of um of ordinary citizens and so for me the The Innovation and the the tax tag that crypto brings has always been um directed towards that like the core goal and the main um driver is that we need to be able to recreate and and we envision the way that nation states work so that ultimately we can make lives better and in higher quality for for people so that's that's something that has been driving me personally and and focusing on Nation three made it kind of a little bit more formal in that sense cool then let's let's uh start with the

nation three what's Nation three and what's the what's the problem that Nation three is trying to solve yeah so Nation three it's uh it's a server in nation estate on the cloud um and so we're trying to build this we're trying to build um basically the state that has a jurisdiction that is its own jurisdiction uh its own system of law which is kind of a requirement to have jurisdiction um and then we're also build in a court system um because a court is required to enforce uh the law right and to create this such uh jurisdiction and so if you think about it um you have for a smart contracts you have ethereum which is this kind of like jurisdiction for code and that covers a bunch of use cases um and then if I emerge and we kind of like managed to get away from the

financial traditional Financial system but then when you think about the legal system uh there is no such thing that enables us to like decouple from existing traditional institutions that are corrupt it's low inefficient and all of that and so um when nation three we're kind of like creating that like internet native jurisdiction and system of law where you can you can come in and you can uh create an agreement with someone else um and you can transact without the need of like having this like Fair entity that is like a traditionalism state with all the problems they they carry um and and the way to do that the way to create such system of law uh and jurization is to actually start an issue State on the cloud and so the DS2 first kind of like create this internal

economy um gather the citizen base uh and create a strong system of flow and then of course after that like you know uh down the road it's very interesting to explore um getting land and like establishing kind of like a special economic areas in different parts in the world and then eventually you know uh down the road you can basically start experimenting with nation states at the speed of experiment with software um and then finally reimagining what these institutions that have been there for like hundreds or thousands of years and they are so absolute can do for us instead of what we can do for them which is kind of like how it is today one thing that sort of like stands out to me when you say this uh you know you

say like a new legal system uh you know that's like in the cloud but of course if you think of the existing legal system then it seems like a huge amount of the power it has is through the enforcement of you know this police that's like shows up at your door with a gun and like arrest you or like puts you in jail or like they have all these kind of like means of enforcing power and of course we've already had in a way types of like contract in crypto right through smart contracts which just tend to be you know enforced automatically by mostly having some collateral put up and then it gets maybe allocated in some way depending on some events

uh so I'm curious like what does such a legal system look like is is can you have a legal system without the kind of police enforcement you definitely can um the difference is what you can enforce and you cannot right like in in the system we're creating you can um you can enforce this lashing of some balances right so when people enter an agreement they set the maximum amount of like um basically collateral or stake they can lose if they misbehave and then the court can like rule to change those balances and basically like you know um like remove some of the collateral from someone who misbehaved you cannot

send someone to jail you don't have like physical authority over them but you have Financial authority over them and what we are realizing is that most of the time Financial Authority is fine um obviously this wouldn't work for for big crimes um and and I don't think like a cloud Nation could like rule over certain things that are physical of course but you can rule over everything that is internet based um and you know if you look at the GDP of the Internet it's like the largest GDP in the world by a large extent so we think that this is a very good step in rebuilding the the fabric of hours Society and I think also just to jump into this like you highlighted right and that you know the traditional nation states they've been uh militarized and kind of based on this idea of physical violence

for a very long time and and those pillars of of nation states have existed for for thousands of years and the reason they exist that way is because back in the day when we operated as tribes we really needed these kind of Notions of patriotism and War and and sacrifice and all of that stuff to survive and the the governments haven't really changed their structures since then it's it's kind of like this whole Machiavellian thing of you know the princess or the the political parties that own the the power they want to make sure that people are dependent on them for protection right because they control the police they control the military and and people in theory rely on that type of law enforcement for for protection and so people are willing to

give up their rights their freedoms in order to be protected and this whole narrative that that you need this um this protection is just so flawed like we don't really need this in today's age we could completely rebuild the structures from being um driven by this militarized narrative towards something that's economic right as Lewis mentioned you don't need to be able to send people to jail to prevent them from committing crimes you can slash them economically and frankly same applies on a state level um we're today at a brink of a nuclear disaster in the world and that shouldn't really be happening right like if we are we are much more advanced species than that like how primitive is it that

there's a maniac somewhere in the bunker with a nuclear button that can just press it anytime whenever he feels um tired of the of the war it's just insane right in instead of it we could have states that are operated uh based on Smart contracts and economic incentives where if something goes wrong and if one state is trying to prevent another from behaving maliciously you can perhaps deploy a smart contract that erases the treasury of that state and so you have like some kind of um Mutual deterrence based on those economic powers and not on physically destroying the planet that we're living in and the lives of people and all of that it's just insane to me to think that in 21st century that is what we have maybe that's a good a good sort of segue into going a little bit more deta detail

in you know what are the difference between Nation three or maybe other types of cloud Nations that people are going to create and traditional Nations the way we know them today like what are the most important dimensions on which they differ so I would say one of the core um starting points to differentiate them is the pillars on which the nation state is built so as mentioned the traditional Nation States they're typically operated on um on principles of War sacrifice Pride uh and nationalism that is defined by territories where if you're born in a certain territory you are presumed to have a cultural belonging to that nation

and you're expected to defend it with your life uh you know these completely weird things that that people um are supposed to experience while on that level Nation three is is arguing that you can have the sense of belonging and the sense of Community Based on principles that you choose for example on on certain shared values on things that you want to see in your community whether it's nomadic living or whether it's maybe eco-friendly stuff it can be values that you choose and that you identify yourself with with that you can build a community around it doesn't have to be um based on territory that you were born in and then the passport that you happen to

hold so that's one thing the other major thing is ability to exit is very different I think as you're building um these digital Nations and um Network status Balaji has coined um the the term for them the ability to exit is super important so you can actually enter and exit communities and and therefore the underlying Services based on what you need in the moment what um stage in life you are in for example maybe when you're younger you wanna be part of a nomad community and so you identify more with the nation state that is focused on that on nomadic living and the services that are powering that kind of economy but then maybe as you turn uh older and you're starting to have a

family maybe you're focusing on more family friendly stuff and setting down somewhere and you suddenly care about eco-friendly living and and kids kindergartens or whatever right and so you can you can enter and exit as you will without the restraints and the the difficulties that current nation states try to enforce like in some countries you literally almost cannot lose your citizenship uh even if you want to do in some others to get it you have to prove your loyalty for years and years by paying taxes and and not leaving the country for more than x amount of days a year and all that kind of stuff um but most importantly it's the way the services are provided today I think most nation states have a monopoly over

pretty much everything they do and they they provide their services in a way where um They Don't Really respect the free market right they they provide services where um they kind of treat their citizens not as users but as someone who owes them something and they're kind of like all right we're gonna give you the basics just so you can stay here and survive and pay taxes but you're not really our customer and you don't really have much say over um improving the services or or what's going to happen or who's gonna perhaps build a competing service or anything like that and I think that's the biggest flaw which nation three is trying to fix right what we're trying to create is a very thin layer of

um state-funded Services if you will such as a nation 3 Court which is kind of the most important piece of the infrastructure to power the entire economy because you need to secure it with a system of law and then the idea is that you give away for the open market to then create services and compete with each other that people can benefit from and so that openness and that idea of competition healthy competition and uh and truly respecting the free market I think is going to be a pretty Paramount difference yeah I think that's definitely one of the Striking things sort of about a lot of countries today maybe not all of them I think there's like some differences to the degree of which but this kind of way of of treating their citizens basically

as like uh you know cash generating assets right and then and then of course you have I think for example the US is interesting in that regard right basically like taxing people regardless of who they are right even if they're not in the U.S not using the U.S infrastructure or this concept of an exit tax also right if you give up the citizenship well then you have to basically buy your way out of it and I think that's like yeah USS that but that's been not that uncommon Germany has something like that and I I would actually think that it's probably if if if there's more power shifting away to you know crypto to the internet and and they kind of they're going to be even

more aggressive right than trying to exert like the most they can from whoever they can sort of control yeah I mean that is why right now it's kind of like the best time to get started um because in like five ten years down the road uh they're gonna be two kinds of States so where there are the ones that are super unfriendly to this trend and kind of like try to pose and uh you know taxes are going to be through the roof I mean taxes are really high uh in other societies and then you have Boomers that are retiring in the west um and this like inverted like the population pyramid and all of that coupled with like all of the you know Exodus of talent that is going to other friendlier countries and also use the Exodus of assets towards the internet economy they have two options they can

either be friendly to this trend or they can increase taxes um and if they do that then the economy is gonna it's a bit of a spiral like everyone who wants to produce and do something valuable is going to exit the country um and so they're gonna be I think more and more encounters are very friendly to like establish in a special economic zones for example um and even welcoming Cloud Nations into their land right to kind of like make them prosperous again and so I think it's definitely the right timing um five ten years from now I would be surprised if there is no uh national state for example in southern Europe that is from the brink of a bailout so you mentioned like Services a bit right so one thing that we talked about a little bit was this idea of like a

court system what else do you think are like the core services that Nation 3 wants to provide um so one thing we've been exploring lately is is Ubi it's something that's been I guess around and spoken spoken about for for some time but no one really has done it successfully and and I think it's something super critical to ensure that every human being can have a a quality of life that they deserve without really having any dependency on on anything but the way you do it doesn't have to be parasitic or it doesn't have to be such that encourages people to do not do anything there's um certain checks and balances that you can Implement to make

sure that it at the end of the day it actually fuels the economy rather than stagnating it so we're researching and exploring this concept of Ubi and kind of coupled with the nation to record there might be some ways where it could be implemented in such way where it's more of a teacher man how to fish rather than um just give a manifest for a day kind of thing um lose some stealing words from your mouth it was actually something that you came up with as a concept so you can so credit to you there but um I really love that phrase and it's just you know the idea that if um you distribute Ubi not necessarily in the form of just money that can be spent but rather in the case

of nation three and its Court in the form of um kind of power that they have to enter agreements right effectively in the form of collateral that they're free to use to enter into mutual agreements and therefore participate in the economy that becomes very interesting because now you're enabling people who would have otherwise been left out of the economy to participate in the economy and that just fuels the growth further and and that makes them makes them active that makes them capable of making more money etc etc it's just one of the ways to do it um otherwise of course could be Distributing just you know pure stable coins or whatever so we're exploring different ways but Ubi could be I think a very interesting um probably good that we could use um otherwise like some stuff that is

interesting is for example Insurance circles for incomparability so you know enabling people that are Nation 3 citizens to form these circles and protect each other from having uh less income in one month than in another month where it's effectively like mutuals right and they can take out money from that common pocket if they if they need to this is interesting as well so some of these Services what we're thinking of as um public goods and something that needs to be provided at our at a nation three level but then a large amount of services will likely uh try to fund and encourage other people to build in in

the open market and just you know compete with each other and try to provide whatever is best um and whatever people choose to use I guess the the Ubi thing for me kind of like brings up in like an inter like a very interesting question here I mean one one of the things that uh you know was mentioned in stick I saw about Nation three is this okay it's a zero tax Nation now of course there are some countries like I think very very few countries that don't have taxes I guess the UAE like Dubai and stuff is the one that comes to mind I'm not sure if there are

others that are basically no typing maybe there are some others uh but there are very few and in general countries the nation states have relied on taxation right and I guess there's many different types of translation you know taxation of corporate entities corporate taxes things like you know income tax things like uh kind of vat you know where you're basically consumption tax and then there's like you know I'm sure like a hundred other smaller taxes that uh you know they come up with all the time so I'm curious why no taxes do you do you think I mean first of all yeah why no taxes do you

think this is like uh just the beginning and maybe at a later point if there's like physical land taxes that do make sense uh and how where do the revenues come from for a nation three yes it's a good question so we came at this with a very kind of like clean mind um like I had previously lived in in Switzerland um and they have very few taxes the ones that for example they have the wealth tax uh and it's quite quite low um and for example like you know of all the taxes if you think about where Nation the state does um like the large extent it does protect private property and allow this like free market to to thrive and so the more assets you have you could argue that the more

security you need for your assets and so therefore there's an argument for wealth tax in a late mid tax um and as a as a resident in Switzerland I was kind of like okay cool um so it's not that I radically oppose any kind of tax but then when looking at the problem um well again I just realized that we don't need them um if you start with a blank slate and using cryptoconomics and so nation3 has its own token which is Nation um and it's kind of like a community currency and then um people are going to take Nation to become citizens um and then and then it's when they have rights um and and they can participate in the system and govern it and we kind of thought that you know the

the national Trudeau owns a big chunk of the nation Supply um since the beginning and so if there is demand for becoming a citizen and then even within that like kind of like internal economy there are other services that also require Nations to be locked then over time there is increasing demand uh and there is you know apparently the same Supply um and so and so that will basically allow it out to finance itself uh through this value accrual and then further pay for building more services and enhancing the common goods which would then again um Can generate more demand for human citizen generate more demand for each in the services like the like interacting the jurisdiction and using the court and so in that Circle just start very

quickly realizing that it's actually positive for the for the nation state because they can Finance itself but also for the citizens because when they are locking Nation it's not that they are losing it it's not they are sending it to anyone they are locking it for x amount of time right and so at the end of the day it's still there there their wealth that they have uh usually have it in this token that is locked so you are you are not like quote-unquote stealing anyone um and you're also not like making the economy slower because National states are usually quite bad allocators um like asset allocators so usually the more they take from the economy to like handle themselves the worst and so you want to not leave you know citizens to to kind of like have their wealth and

allocate it privately as they as they will and to kind of like start the economy and so what I'm trying to say here is the citization 3 today you have to lock your your nation um and then if everything goes was well and you do kind of like work um governance work and and interact and jurisdiction and think so well you actually do well as well um you have you can even earn money uh kind of like by being a citizen obviously depending a bunch of factors but uh what I'm trying to say here is it's kind of like the opposite to what you have to do today being a citizen implies that you are you're paying someone um here implies that you are kind of like owning something uh and you're owning something that allows you to govern it um and then if you do things well and

you go burn it as well then it even pays you back um and in principle does work still there are no setting a stone but in principle we don't see them for taxes now okay but like right now for example how much uh what kind of is the monetary value of the nation tokens that one has to lock up to become a citizen so right now uh in dollar terms it's around 1.4k dollars uh it used to be obviously way higher in in the in the Bull Run um and so we kind of think that in the beginning you know we want people that are obviously long term aligned so it's important for for them donation to have it locked but obviously you know over time

um we will hope to introduce kind of like newer tensor passports in which people can earn their way um to become citizens and not only have like a financial or need a financial stake in the beginning because that's just like the the economics here seem to be like I'm trying to see how that adds up no because it's not it's not I mean I guess it's sort of let's say now somebody right locks up 1.4 thousand dollars worth of nation tokens and becomes a citizen and then they can you know enjoy all these public goods that Nation 3 produces like forever I I get at this maybe it

has like some positive impact on the nation price because that okay they first have to buy 1.4k of the tokens and it increases a bit the treasury value but it it doesn't seem like you'd be able to produce a sort of income stream from this that would be you know sufficient to produce you know to to do things in a kind of in a more on a more substantial scale does that make sense all right so just to I guess clarify a little that it wouldn't be Finance simply through the uh the citizenship right so you can think of citizenship as a membership right so membership is what gives you

access to certain Services it isn't uh the entire thing so once you become a citizen and indeed you're required to to buy the tokens and then lock them up which takes them out of circulation and already adds a little bit towards the the value of cruel but now for example the the core service really the most important sort of thin layer that Nation 3 is building the course um in the the heart of the court is the is the stake that you need to put up in order to be able to participate in agreements right so here if you think of it we are our hypothesis is that um the court will be the economic engine for nation three in the sense that um you know just like Singapore for example based itself on becoming the hub

for economic activity by providing services that are high quality low cost and and very secure same way Nation three is aiming to become a hub for economic activity for internet users for crypto users where uh what you can do is you can get Nation you can look it up in agreements so let's say if you wanna um get a um an audit for whatever you're building right and I'm an auditor and we want to enter into a contract with each other right now there's no such way to do so in in web 3 in a secure way unless you use a physical jurisdiction somewhere what you can do with nation three is you can put collateral currently that is uh planned to be in in nation three so in

the nation three token and you put up that collateral you look it up again for the duration of the um of the contract and you're then able to to enter into the agreement and and if no contract is disputed then you get it back if it's disputed then um then you can get slashed so what what we mean by that is that the more economic activity happens within Nation three the more tokens will be locked in the contracts and and that's another push for for Value accrual and as we create more services like the courts um the idea is that you're able to capitalize the um the economy and capitalize the state by providing high quality services that require a

financial stake for participation and and then that stake by being locked capitalizes the treasury further it's a hypothesis it may well be that as we start testing it out something needs to be tweaked obviously we're super early and we're very open to tweaking it as we go but you know at least at the scale that we are exploring right now it does seem to work but let's see it's indeed optimistic yeah yeah I mean like right now the uh most of the supply uh National supplies actually locked and then also like dresser is around 25 to 30 million dollars that's really loud so so far it's particular point in time yeah since we're working as I was saying um but yeah that's super time I mean

Gotta Give a place for mind so this core system then basically also enables people to do kind of transactions that are Yeah you mentioned this auditing thing right where basically there is a degree of trust right it's more similar to the kind of traditional contracts right people create about oh I'm going to provide the service to you and then some Services provided and it's not like totally you know a smart contract can't verify easily if the service has been provided or not so I'm curious here is this something in the example before right let's say we have one party that's the auditor and

you know I want to buy some service from the auditor would we then both need to be a nation three citizen to be able to use Nation three courts or is that kind of something that you know maybe just one would need to be or or maybe neither and we just have to lock up Nations to use the court system I'm glad you actually asked that it's a it's a super interesting question that we just last week had a an Agora on Agora is a new theme of uh kind of internal sort of borderline philosophic discussion topics that we're doing um to kind of like debate and discuss what makes sense as we move forward and and it's interesting so we're exploring a few routes here because on one hand

um there's no reason why you couldn't have a distinction between let's say Nation three citizens and something like residence or or tourists or whatever people who are able to use the particular service without having to subscribe for the whole thing right so there's no reason why you wouldn't be able to to do that so we are exploring a way where indeed to make it super smooth super easy um and people can use just Accord for example without having to be Nation 3 citizens and and they just need to look up whatever nation is needed for for the use of the accordion for the scale of their particular agreement if the agreement is very small then obviously the the stake would be corresponding so it's it's an option and it's something

that our our citizens are discussing now um but I think it would potentially make sense to to make it simpler and kind of remove the hurdle of needing to become a um a citizen for it and then as we go forward we'll see it it depends on you know which service is it it depends on um on a lot of things but again you can compare it probably with fairly successful countries like Singapore you don't necessarily need to be a citizen of Singapore uh to be able to use some of the services that it provides and headquarters in your company there or doing business with the backing of Singapore you can do that by just you know establishing your entity

there right and so in the long term I think what nation 3 could do is is be something like that for the internet users where let's say you're a member of another doll let's say you're a bank list or a member and and you're working on a new project and and you want to build your guild around it and you need some um you know way of Distributing the salaries to that Guild and someone needs to operate that or whatever and and you can just you know use the nation three court services in order to be able to execute whatever it is that you're doing which I think would be pretty powerful and so far from discussing it with other dials and other projects it's something that uh feels in super high demand because it just doesn't exist as of yet

so you mentioned before you know this idea of nation three as you know something that's connected through you know the sense of belonging or you know based on like shared values and goals something like that right where whereas traditional Nations you have you know maybe the you know where you're born and and this deep cultural connection and language and and and maybe genetics and Heritage like a lot of other things I connected now I'm just wondering like if you're if it's basically possible you know like for anyone to like buy Nation 3 citizenship how does that go sort of against this idea of creating

you know having a foundation on on shared values because like how do you know if people share those values if they're just buying citizenship or buying or like locking some some monetary asset to get it yeah definitely so it's really good concern I think being very early here helps a lot like you think about people that bought Bitcoin uh very early or or if they were very idiotically aligned like I remember the student community in 2015 and it was even super different to what it is now um and so right now we're kind of like relying on that like people that are into Network States today are quite a niche and so they are all quite

like you know libertarian um some have had like personal experiences like bad personal experiences with national States some are just like completely Southern and fed up of the micro environment that we have today and so I think relying on that so far makes sense um of course over time maybe there's something that needs to be done uh some sort of like interview process or nothing like that but also one thing that we want to ensure is we want to ensure that you know um pseudonymous or Anonymous people can also join because we have um a few contributors that are they're Anonymous and we think that if you're starting to know this from scratch and to be like a you know privacy needs to be something deeply respected and so yeah we'll never get that but so far so good

and and I think it's just worth mentioning you know indeed for for right now it's still so Niche that everyone who is becoming a citizen clearly believes in the same values they believe in the solo Punk future that we're all trying to build in and they all subscribe to it and it's great but as we go forward I also Imagine um smaller sub-communities being built right and and creating the kind of micronations maybe um and and maybe using the The Wider area of services that Nation three as a whole provides uh let's say if you're building a like a physical Community somewhere uh a city and perhaps you have or maybe even smaller than a city maybe you're building kind of like a condominium of sorts or a um you know a space with you know 20

houses and you're building your communities there and that's where you might want to have some interview process where you want to ensure that people are super aligned and subscribing to the same values but that might be done at a more granular level uh further down the line so we'll see how things progress so let's talk a bit about governance right so I mean democracy is something that has I think become more questioned right in the last years you know you've seen like people like Trump get elected or bolsonaro or like lots of people that you know seem kind of uh you know not so sane or are you maybe unethical people or they're lying a lot

and still they get elected right and and so I think that has definitely on the mind a little bit the sort of conviction that you know democracy is like a well-functioning way for large groups of humans to coordinate and make decisions so I'm curious how you see that in nation three how are people gonna how are decisions happening today and how do you see that evolve as Nation 3 potentially you know scales and gets to like significant numbers of people it's a very important Point like if you think about providing a system of learning jurisdiction the very uh the very basic thing you need to get right is your own governance because your own governance and then change loss and then

I can basically like you know if things are not well well done it can destroy such jurisdiction and so the government system it's really important the checks and balances it's a governance system are even more important um because it takes imbalances and through their overtime if there are turbulent times in which um you know some people leverage um the weakness of the of the times for example you know trampoline elections was leveraging service and certain weaknesses that the U.S was suffering both culturally and economically and so forth and so when those things happen um you have to have some governance process that is strong enough and with checks and balances to make sure that you can course correct and kind of even improve the system from there

um and so for us governance is something that we're taking very seriously um obviously from my experience at Aragon I learned a lot about how to govern those and we kind of like rebuilt this governance process from scratch in which uh certainly the whole proposal process like what's the Coronas proportional um what does it entail we also built some tools to make sure that all governance proposals adhere to a specification that actually is written in code so like you have term of subjectivity from the governance process and it's possible and improve understability um mostly because I've also seen in doubts that there's so much reactivity and so many people work in one working

talking more than working really like use writing and writing writing but like not really doing things and so we're trying to stay away from that and kind of like encourage Builders uh in circuit governance process that is simple and is predictable and attracts people that want to actually get things done and not just talk how to get things done um or later on in bureaucracy and so moving time like this building all of that governance process and today how it works I mean you know not so basically you have citizens citizens can can make governance reposals um and then it goes through multiple stages kind of like until the process is frozen and then after it's frozen you can go to snapshot vote um and then citizens vote right now it's uh it's uh token weighted so it's only

citizens like on both they have the nft but then Stockton weighted to their uh to their National stake that they have locked and here you know let's see how it goes over time um it's kind of like a good enough compromise between one person one vote and and your stock and weighted um because right now nfts are a non-trans travel and so only externally owned accounts can can have them so we kind of have a good sense that each passport corresponds to at least a person um and so we can't really have that system now because it is true democracy how do you know each passport corresponds to a person well I said we kind of have like an understanding like we're not sure but

like uh we are sure that there's no smart contract that owns uh because you know we're using the V token system um so we have V nation that needs to be locked uh in order to to get a passport and so smart contracts cannot own it so at least from that perspective we kind of have like a good sense that it's people who are owning them and not like smart contracts or institutions or pools or whatever and then they are non-transferable so it's not like people can like buy them and then speculate with them um so so far that's been working uh but it's gonna be quite a challenge um because it is clear that one person one boat is not working very well at the micro scale so we might need to move away from that only maybe it's like I would check some take some take a

balance kind of like maybe you can have a a system in which you have both Financial interests at heart and kind of like token weighted but then also that one person will vote um that needs to ratify it like it is still kind of like a a thing that we are working on and seen that we're mostly focusing on the governance process itself like how do decisions get made how do you track them um and then what do you need to do in order to improve the system itself and the checks and balances around it what are your biggest learnings from Aragon that have kind of shaped the way you're approaching this I know one of them and probably the first one actually is that those are super chaotic and dysfunctional today and I realized that like you know once

once we start the Argon um we saw very clearly that there was no not a lot of like a strong demand for those in 2016 2017 2018 but then 2019 and kind of like up until now it's been it's been growing um in the last year has been massive for those but they are so chaotic and so this organized and most of them are not really decentralized um they are not literally organized either and learn let alone autonomous and so on one of the learnings has been all right focused on getting things done a lot of those out there just end up being sort of like workered unions in which people slowly depleted treasury without really going to work so like really focusing on keeping the governance process not bureaucratic

um but actually kind of like focus on Builders and attracting Builders has been a very important learning and then within that there's of course making proposals very objective and actionable and also be active in creating a process that encourages that uh to remove kind of like side effects because we have we had a lot of this at Aragon we kind of like started our own governance process for the Dragonite workout and then people made proposals and then they were once they passed there were a bunch of side effects uh because it was a blob of text um and proposal shouldn't really be that this should be almost like code like all right what does it actually do on chain and so so yeah that's been a really big learning um and and then another big learning has been that like governance tooling today is so

um kind of like fragmented that you have to be okay with it you have to be okay with the fact that you're gonna use like many many tools and governance is not only the place in which you vote it's the place in which you start discussing and then obviously how you enacted on chain but there's like a wide range of tools cool well maybe let's talk about the question of land so when when will it make sense or when do you think it will be the time for nation 3 to like acquire land and how could you see that what would this look like so one of the big issues we're seeing with some of the attempts at building a

network state or a cloud Nation out there is that they try to get land or into the land space a little bit too early and we're trying to avoid that because the minute you enter into the uh the land territory you're starting to encounter shop in many issues from a legal regulatory perspective you start clashing with the parent State directly and and all of that so you need to be really ready for that stage before you enter it so the way we're trying to approach it is you know step one build a functioning legal system right and and the system of law um that that governs it super important um to have the governance system right so that people can um make decisions in an informed way in

a super clear way not get stuck in democracy everything that Lewis mentioned um now with both of these things build a strong economy right and build a strong treasury that one literally cannot stress how important it is to have that before you enter into the land space because if you're starting to challenge the traditional State system without having a critical mass of both funding and people you're screwed right and so for us having these two as the I guess numeric signal is is super important so you know as soon as we feel like we have the treasury that is competitive with an average EU nation state for example um as soon as we have the the population

that is also sizable enough that you know once you enter people on the international scale or the states on the international scale they um they kind of have to take you seriously they don't really have another choice right like if you have large population a large Treasury and you have a functioning legal system and functioning process the very least they have to do is to deal with you as an opponent right and so that's something that we are getting ourselves ready for um but then our position is not to actually challenge um any state had on but try to find the ones that are willing to partner and willing to provide the space and the land for especially economic zones and for cloud Nations just because they are understanding that they need to survive

right and and there's already a few of them in Europe even that we have spoken to that have you know incredible natural resources beautiful amazing spaces and they're just realizing that they're kind of at the brink of dying out if they don't do anything about it and so they're starting to kind of get comfortable with the idea that they might need to partner with these more technically Advanced communities and and um and Cloud Nations and so our hope is that more and more of these will emerge and we're going to make sure that we have our food in the door and we're ready to by having these conversations to to you know effectively base ourselves in one of these special economic zones where we have a blank slate for Taxation and for a bunch of

other things um and of course we will make sure that on the legal front um you know Nation tree is compliant with the international law in the sense of the most basic things like you know criminal activity and everything like that is is obviously pretty important to give people um Peace of Mind and also one one thing that we're focusing on kind of like the system of law it's uh when you talk to a traditional jurisdiction about creating a special economic area having like a lot of flexibility around run loss it is very important that you have proven yourself before right so um if you're a cloud Nation um like we are focusing on that like very core layer of uh jurisdiction and

creating a system of law it's so important because then you prove yourself as you know as a community that is able to run itself in a legal way and then transitioning that into into mid space you know makes sense it's way easier and way better than just getting a community that has no experience whatsoever and doing so so in in biology's book he he talked there about this idea of having he called his archipelago basically like sort of you know amalgamation or like many different like pieces of land across the world do you have an opinion on that do you think it will make more sense to have you know kind of one especially economic zone somewhere where you build

something up or do you think this idea of like just basically buying a bunch of land in like different places uh does that make sense to you and definitely having multiple special economic areas that are widespread across the globe makes a lot of sense um decentralization right you know they can they can destroy a node but they cannot destroy them all at the same time so it's not like the same principle applied to nation state it would make worse um way harder and less profitable and I guess what we mean by establishing in the first place in some special economic zones is just starting small and experimenting in in one piece of

land first before you start building out that archipelago of um of territories across the world so I think you used the the word Sovereign Sovereign before what's what does sovereign mean in your eyes like how would you define it well it's it's fully independent right it doesn't depend on on any other entity that can like control it or be above it uh and so the original Nation three it's it's Sovereign Nation is because no other nation has authority to to shut it down um like the donation through Dialysis in ethereum and and there is no National states do not have jurisdiction per se

over ethereum um although the US says that there are ethereal knows in the US therefore ethereum usage in the US um we don't believe that that's the case um and so if you run on the internet um as you're kind of like jurisdiction um for code then as a doubt you can be your own Sovereign entity and based on that we believe that Nation through the super nation state and do you think like recognition from existing nation states uh is that important or what role does that play in my opinion and maybe it's not the more the most widespread opinion but in my opinion it shouldn't really matter

um if you are if you are trying the incumbents to to recognize you you are playing the wrong game like the what we're building here is something new right it's something that some of them might like some of them might not but um at large it will replace them and so it is very hard to you know it's kind of like saying that as an automobile maker you need recognition from the horse carriage industry to to sell cars right like these don't use focus on making a car that works fast and people will use it right if you are trying to do the same here and uh maybe one thing we could also talk about is a little bit on I mean we talked a lot about you know the concept the way of organizing it the

way of structuring it and of course those are in essence really the core questions here but I'm curious also about the technology like what does the nation 3 Tech stack look like yeah so right now we have a couple a couple apps um like the what is Nation three like in itself um today we have the the service for for governance which is the Sims can engage we have the also the past participants and then we have the course that we're working on and there has been a ferris um governance proposal for uh for a Ubi system so the second languages that we're building now um there's of course kind of like a larger stack that needs to be built and that we're not gonna

um build Alone um and I guess you can talk a bit more about the kind of like stack you want yeah definitely we actually have something that maybe your listeners can can take a look at it's um it's a tech tree that we built which is kind of our vision of the of the nation 3 stack um as it needs to be built out over time to achieve the the fully functioning super prosperous solar panel state that we want in the in the end of the day and our vision for it and actually how the whole idea of a Nation 3 started in the first place is that you do that by investing in the in the capable teams that help build it out and and kind of creating a nation through BC effectively so it's sort of how the idea of a Nation 3 as a as a cloud nation was

born in the first place first we we thought that hey this clearly needs to exist um so why don't we start a VC fund to to back teams and um and projects that are building the infrastructure pieces and the the tech stack to enable that to happen and and that we realized that um there isn't a better way to do so than kind of dog fooding these products for something you're building yourself right and so it makes sense that building a community around it and trying to build an attempt at creating a nation-state um makes makes sense and then as you do that and you realize what infrastructure pieces are missing what pieces of the tax stack are unneeded then you can establish a VC fund which we're still intending to do if the community decides

that it's a worthwhile activity and and you know same as the kind of app store model instead of having to do everything all of the apps all of the services yourself you you you allow for people to create them in the open market but you you back them basically you select the the ones that you believe in the most and you select the the most capable teams and you try to advance It Forward I think it's way better than doing grant system I personally don't believe in in that much just because I think people um use much less um kind of like selection and less care when they pick teams to give grants to then when it's a VC model because you're much more invested into it and and it works better

um so so that's something that we are we're exploring and and hopefully you know engaging a wider Community into building these things will will bring this future much faster so so yeah I would encourage all the listeners to check out the the tech trees on the website and if there's anything that they want to build from that please definitely reach out cool maybe so what's what you see as the the road map like how if if things if everything goes well what do the next you know five years look like for nation three yeah so I mean right now we're focused on the on the jurisdiction right so building the very core components of jurisdiction

um and having something that works will happen very very fast like we're we're targeting even next month to release the third version of the court and start testing it out but then you have to obviously build trust on it so that's both like attracting Capital to kind of the interacting economy um and then also just selecting great yaches that can be part of this chord um and then kind of like writing a constitution for nation three and you know getting since ratified and then gradually introduce some law that is needed for vertex function and then there's of course kind of like once you have that you you can uh start acquiring more citizens and creating a critical mass and maybe providing some other services like like Ubi um and then in that process you're going

to strengthen your governance system even more and and then at some point uh like one one thing that is of course really important is kind of like back in other place and other kind of like um startups and networks that are working on diseases so kind of like launching some kind of Visa fund if Community proves or some kind of like Venture arm in general seems very important and then and then you can focus kind of like on on the synergistic relationship between one and the other you can find things that are great to create a better kind of like jurisdiction in a better place for trade on the internet and then as trade emerges and you'll be less stronger treasury you can then even fund more tools more common goods more teams

working on on key stuff and then some point is when you start kind of like having leverage to negotiate a specific economic area and then and then you do that and then you start literally landing on land and can bring in all the learnings and all of these like you know solar panel State you have built from a blank slate into land and then there are a bunch of other challenges that arise right uh when it comes to land and a bunch of other things into fund and we need of course some kind of Open Source modular architecture um and you need like you know better education systems and so forth and right now we can only focus on the very very very meta we also um created our own kind of like superset of markdown for legal agreements that we

think is going to like make League agreements way better and more understandable and introduces kind of like open source Concepts like dependency tracking or Imports to Legal definitions so that you can import a legal definition done by other practitioner or you can use reuse agreements like open source packages and so we're focusing on this very meta layer that then you can build a bunch of stuff on top and hopefully in five years you can start actually leveraging this system but on land and and actually building things that are way more efficient like 100x more efficient better and with better checks and balances where people can actually live cool well thanks so much it's very exciting I think this is like a super important area and this is going to be

uh yeah an area where I'm sure we're gonna see a lot of activity and it's needed right I think it's very clear right that nation states they are kind of not really cutting it and and so I'm super excited that you're both working on something new and something different and I hope I hope you'll be able to take it forward I mean when one thing here I think I think like North Carolina is definitely um it definitely touches a point but I think it's it's even way more than that like if we don't do anything right now the default the state of the world is oblivion like the defaulty state of the world is that our institutions are

completely decadent they cannot even handle stuff like climate change they cannot handle like stuff that is going to literally make our uh our whole population extinct so they can't even handle that of course don't ask them to like handle other stuff um and and you know if you think about southern Europe I'm from Spain and the same Portugal and the same in like half of the you know quote-unquote first world in in Western Europe like things just don't work like they just don't work period um but it's not even about like user experience or having a smooth experience no it's a weird like at the brink of destroying the planet and burning it um and we are at the brink of a nuclear war so like how we have gotten ourselves to this is completely mind-blowing and right now there is another answer than

to work on renewing these corrupt institutions like literally if we don't do anything we are default dead and we want to be default alive so um if you want you know to to see the humankind Prosper this is the only rational thing you can really do question is Brian are you moving to the nation 3 territories once we have them have we convinced you I mean I'm I may I'll definitely consider it will make sure that it's going to be warm and nice yeah yeah yeah that would be great yeah exactly well this has been super fun thank you so much for amazing questions and and glad to have you as an incoming Citizen and once we have the territories and

everything um yeah as Louis said I think it's super important to focus on this now and we don't really have another choice so that's um that's that small task ahead of us absolutely no thanks so much for coming on I'm looking forward to following it and and of course if people want to check it out right so it's a I mean we're going to put a bunch of links in the show note but it's also nation3.org and then I guess it can become a citizen right which is a pretty uh pretty affordable at this point so uh what's what's the status right now like how many citizens do you have and what does the community look like and we have 178 um as of today and the community is

really cool they're very cool philosophical discussions uh there's a lot of building going on like open source contributors we are the second largest Dao on the work when it comes to bounties uh and kind of like people use contributing so so yeah it's quite quite nice and cool fantastic well thanks so much Louise and Anastasia for coming on it was a pleasure to have you thank you and thanks so much for listening for tuning in if you want to support the show make sure to leave us an iTunes review helps new people find the show and yeah then we look forward to seeing you again next week