Liberland: Building the Freest Nation on Blockchain, Vít Jedlička, President of Liberland | ETHSofia

Transcript

[Music] So it's great pleasure to be here in Bulgaria. Um we don't have that strong base in Bulgaria like for example in Romania for some strange reason. So I think it's good to come here from time to time. In Romania I think we have like 7 and a half thousand people that applied for citizenship in Bulgaria. it's more like 700 for some strange reason. Um, but I think it's a good opportunity actually to find people also to restart us our representative office. Uh, because I think really Bulgaria is one of the few countries where we don't have like a stronghold for for some strange reason.

And uh let me just play you a short video from a little bit from Liberland so you understand how the country look like. We are not a metaverse project. We are not just web 3 platform. We're actually building a real country in Balkans. That's a kind of um that's a fun [Music] supposed to go with the button [Music] up here for some reason. I don't know why. Doesn't matter. Hav for example is one of our supporters. The guy has become a president of Argentina. He

actually run his campaign on the promise that he is a general from Liberland coming to fix Argentina. I think that's very good result for liberal land diplomacy. Uh that one of our supporters actually become the president of Argentina recently and he's doing some major reforms. uh Ron Paul another very famous person in the liberty movement has helped us tremendously uh with his activities uh and with his support uh and for example Vitalian also likes our project I was actually just came down here from Turkey uh from one of the zuzaloo that he is organizing uh and yes liberal is growing systematically we're here for 10 years already we are not a

summer holiday uh project we have more than 800 100,000 people that applied for citizenship. The most crazy was the first year when we actually received 200,000 applications uh in the first two months. That was an enormous amount of interest from all over the world uh for citizenship and now we're close to 1300 citizens. We require people to actually come and contribute to the country in some more significant way. Even though Liberland is still the cheapest citizenship in the world, I think the value that we're providing is already huge. Um, we actually systematically help people to also manage their taxes.

We help them to get the best driving licenses and other stuff so they can actually survive or navigate in this very difficult world where some in some countries you're forced to pay 50 60% of taxes just to just to live there. So, Liberland is doing our best to to build a nation uh all around the world and we have now more than 90 representative offices as well uh including a beautiful representative office in Washington DC or in Brussels. Liberland is 7 square kilometers. It's between Croatia and Serbia. We found it.

Everybody asked me how did you find it? We Googled for it. We were looking for no man's land. uh we found a nice Wikipedia article which described how that particular piece of land is unclaimed for more than 20 years by neither Croatia nor Serbia. We we found it very easy initially to access it and we started immediately building something there but in uh in 14 days after we entered Liberland and declared it and then there were thousands of people coming in Croatia started blocking the access to the territory completely. It lasted 8 years since we could get back and now for 2 years Liberland is completely open for business. If you have an EU passport, you're very welcome uh to come and live in Liberland or work there. Open your

business. It's really uh adventurous time from that perspective. Even though our relations with Croatia are still bit difficult, I will explain you why. But uh things are much better than what they used to be. We're expanding our activities all around the region. Uh so if you're coming to Liberland, you actually are invited first to visit the ark village. Uh that is our base for settlement of Liberland. We have another smaller base in Croatia as well. The two key points uh that you you should visit before before coming to Liberland or doing some business. And in Liberland now there is a bar which is open 24/7. Uh so you can never come there when there will be no

no operation. We are building tree houses as well as now floating platforms uh to survive there and uh or to actually flourish there. It's kind of fun. It's it's a beautiful 9 100 m long sandy beach uh that people are living on now. Um we are combining the best elements of the constitutions that we could find previously in history. So there is a bit of an element of Swiss democracy. uh there is a bit of a monarchic element from Likenstein. We do have a meritocratic elements of Singapore. So Liberal is actually based on a corporation but that corporation is in check by republic uh democracy as well as a small monarchical element there. It

was established in uh April 20ou uh 2015 13th of April. That was actually birthday of Thomas Jefferson. We wanted to invoke the spirit of American revolution. We wanted to uh build a new really free country for people and it was of course around the time when bitcoin was picking up. So from very first day uh we started to use bitcoin as our main currency uh for all the transactions in the society. What is also quite nice is that we have a zahadit architects in support of liberal land from very beginning. They created not just the vision on the paper but they also turned it into metaverse. So you can run around Liberland if you go to Metrtopia. It's a beautiful engine

that they have designed. Uh nice design uh quite futuristic. I hope we will be able to start laying out this main infrastructure in in line with those visions uh as soon as possible. We opened the borders on August 6, 2023. Uh was a major day for us where the first time Liberlanders stopped being arrested while coming to Liberland just for visiting it. We were always arrested for illegally exiting Croatia. And basically at some point it just became completely impossible for Croatia to arrest everybody just for visiting Liberland. So uh so they just kind of gave up and opened the borders and uh

the borders are unofficially but they're open and they work like borders. So if you come to Liberland basically they check your documents on your way in and your way out you're technically also leaving Shenhen at that point. Uh so it's kind of nice but of course by the way has anybody uh ever considered starting their own country? Nobody. No. Um well if you decide to do so you actually need to follow some criteria for statehood and it's also very interesting it doesn't require other countries to recognize you right so the country exist independently from the recognition by other countries but uh the main criteria is permanent population yes labor labor lenders are

permanently living there's a very well- definfined territory actually we even gave half meter to Croatia and Serbia not to have any border dispute with uh you have to have a government and Liberland has a government which is I would say the most uh advanced form of government fully utilizing web 3 as we could find the best best technology for it. Now also EVM compatible uh the capacity to enter into inter other into relations with other countries. Yes, we are working hard. We did open diplomatic relations with more than 15 countries so far and we are getting more every every month almost. So Liberal is run by Congress these days even though like still

technically on the paper it is the presidential system in which president decides everything kind of from beginning but in reality everything that all the major decisions are going through congress and right now I'm just signing uh them. uh if you want to have more political power in Liberaland uh you just pay more taxes. You don't have to pay taxes in Liberland. But if you want to have more say in our ecosystem, you just contribute more to Liberal. It doesn't have to be in monetary ways. You can contribute with any other way like for example opening the office in Bulgaria or helping us with diplomatic relations or or even opening a business in Liberal which is very important.

Right now we need to get the economy inside of Liberal and up and running. Those are the guys that we have. Uh maybe some of you heard about Justin Sun. He applied for the citizenship one year ago and it was just before the first elections. He is actually the wealthiest prime minister ever elected on planet earth which is kind of interesting you know that we launched the pol new political system and we immediately got wealthiest prime minister ever. We've got Evan Lutra. He's both of these guys. I will meet them next week in Singapore. Major event there, the token 2049 as well as uh the network state conference. And Navidid Sabarian will be also there. Our finance

minister Kennaly will also be there. Another famous guy from the Ethereum ecosystem that is now serving on Congress. Tik Basi, very skilled diplomat. Dorian Stern, one of our tech leads. uh and Michael Tachnik is our minister of justice but also very skilled lawyer as well as blockchain expert very difficult combination to find so as I mentioned taxes are completely voluntary we we truly believe it's uh important to come up with society based on those principles as a next evolutionary step for humans I think it's going to be also very popular for AI but you know I don't think AI if it starts operating autonomously wants to

pay taxes to anybody body. Uh so that will be another important element as it is really coming in and bringing and becoming more and more part of the society that we are living in. Um also of course the the regulatory burdens in Liberal are minimal. We're trying to make the laws in line with some international standards but as minimal as possible not to intrude into people's business. And of course if you have voluntary taxes you cannot really have a big administration not too many developers like we are kind of starting to have because of course you some you run out of the money. Uh so it's also good way to reduce the state apparatus to have

only voluntary contributions. Uh and we've got two tokens that are running. They're like the blood of the ecosystem. Uh one of them is liberal and merit. uh those were distributed to all the contributors in the history of creation of Liberland. You need to have 5,000 of Liberland merits staked in order to claim full political citizenship with all the powers. It also gives you the right to homestead piece of land in Liberland. You can vote into Congress. You can be elected into Congress. You can vote on every single referenda because we have direct meritocracy. So the Congress is proposing the laws but then all married holders are actually voting on on the fact if if they want it or not.

It can be also unstaked which is kind of cool. You can get a welfare in Liberland or you can ask for your tax sites back u and uh and you can unstake 10% a year which it makes it having a full monetary value this political power and there are only 70 million merits and they represent the 7 million square meters. So 10 merits are actually representing one square meter in Liberland. And uh what is very important and I think actually blockchain uh the nation state governance is the ultimate use case of blockchain technology. I think the best use case that you can find because you can reduce enormously bureaucracy unleash enormous amount of prosperity. you know, why

should you wait for a month for somebody to change your land title on some crazy in some crazy office and wait for another 10 stems from somebody else when all of these things can be turned into smart contracts. uh so I believe there is a huge potential for for really improving systematically improving the way that the states are running uh on chain and that's what liberal wants to be leader in and wants to be a good example for other countries and this is not theoretical actually it's all working if you jump into blockchain.org org we made a nice front end to the whole blockchain ecosystem.

It includes even decentralized exchanges. It already is bridge to all the major ecosystems. Uh we we are just about to launch on Binance share as well. And what is as I mentioned already very very cool is that we are becoming EVM compatible. So we're inviting all the developers from the Ethereum ecosystem uh to also deploy their projects on Liberland blockchain. Um election uh companies and assets everything basically is available there.

What I want to mention also that our elections employ some quite smart uh algorithms for elections. For example in Liberland your vote never goes to waste. It is always utilized in the best possible way. uh because the algorithm automatically decides uh if for example somebody wouldn't get into Congress it will automatically redistribute your votes to the person that you also prefer and will get into Congress. Another cool feature which I think is quite problematic in the countries we're living in that the elections are not always not always you cannot basically vote for the people you like because you're afraid that you will lose your you will lose your vote.

And another nice feature and uh you're welcome to install it and try it is the mobile app that we are using for security in Liberland but we also using it for open tenders. It's literally uberization of the economical activity in Liberland including taking care of the security. So it's a nice geoloccated job app uh where you can ask for any kind of help from anybody. It automatically gets distributed to the community around you. If you're a citizen, you can even send out a a global notification uh to all citizens or people using the app. Uh so it's a great way to promote, for example, your business. Uh we had quite a few already nice business connections made via the

app, but also the state uses it to transparently run auctions on anything that it does. So if Liberland needs to I don't know build a wall or buy another boat u or you know some some private individual needs to build a clinic you always start easy auction open it up for everybody that is part of our ecosystem and then liberal dollar is the currency of the system you pay the the transaction fees in it you stake it for security that staking is not that you can only unstake 10% you unstake the whole amount in 21 days. Uh the current uh interest rate when you uh stake it right now is 15% a year. It's a good way

to also put money somewhere and make it let it make more money. Um a billion dollar is trading on all major decentralized exchanges uh as well as for example on MAC and I think five six more exchanges. What is really nice is that the exchanges are not just onboarding liberal dollar but they're also on boarding uh uh Liberland as a country. So last two exchanges where liberal dollar was listed are U B Finance and Vcon economy and both recognize Liberland passport as a valid document for KYC. Uh so along with few banks uh now liberal lenders can actually operate in the in the space of

centralized exchanges uh with their document. We do have a lot of uh work to do still in European Parliament. That's why uh we do organize yearly events with the US congressmen and senators as well as with European Parliament members. We're lobbying very hard in US uh to get things rolling. This we're also we already made quite a few official state visits. This was to El Salvador with the minister of economy. Uh as as um was already mentioned I received some awards at the UN for our humanitarian activities that are part of our u effort to get the country recognized. Uh what

is here also pretty wild that Liberland is really taking part of the space race. Uh it started with somebody putting Liberal flag on the first commercial probe that went to moon and successfully landed in February. Uh but now it followed up with us sending physical flag back to the moon and physical flag to asteroid. Um and basically if people become citizens their name is written on the flag so it's kind of funded that uh we have this astronaut program already. uh but uh we have become very popular with uh with all of these startups because the legal framework that Lebanon is putting together for commercial space exploration is substantially better than

what the other countries have and really it's then up to the corporations which jurisdiction are they operating under in the space and less Liberland is a a great jurisdiction to not just run a piece of land between Croatia and Serbia but it's it's providing I think very good framework for running even um governance on moon for example. Our prime minister Justin Sun is also first prime minister to fly to space. He just came back uh one month ago. That was a big mission that he was on and we're quite lucky with the Republicans being more in power now in United States because we've been working closely with Republican party on uh liberal

recognition. And the gentleman in the first picture just recently became the USA ambassador to United Nations and we've been discussing with him multiple times the creation of Liberal and what it takes. But of course United States is nice to talk to when you were building a new country but even more important are the partners of our neighbors with Zara Milano which I had the pleasure to meet already as well. I would I would say he's quite nice guy, very positive in an aspect, many aspects. But we still have a lot of work to do with the Croatian mainstream politicians uh which are actually in opposition with the

president himself in Croatia. Uh but the good news is that again like we do have the communication lines open on the highest level and of course for us to be more digestible for both Croatia and Serbia uh we need to build a goodwill in the whole region and we also need to build the infrastructure for access to Liberland. So we have announced a $30 million development plan for the region that we want to deploy over the next two years to really build nice ports, nice commercial centers around Liberland and start building some infrastructure when it comes to access roads. So we not only have couple dirt roads in Liberland. Uh Ark Village is one of the main projects that we're currently developing. Uh the

second phase will also include longevity center and spa. uh and it will include a modern village with these houses with nice couple of lakes. We are also as part of that project restoring some historical buildings uh that were built by Hubsburgs back in the days. Uh so those are the plans to to build really nice spa area do couple thermal uh projects so people that are visiting Liberland can also stop by on the way to Liberland in some nice resort. And this is right next to it in Apatin. We're planning to build a commercial center uh that will be directly built to support the harbor that we're expecting to be the main pathway to Liberland from from Serbia.

Uh and in Liberland itself, the construction has been difficult because of the creation intrusions. But we have managed to already build quite a few things. Uh and one of them of course or one of the few are the tree houses. People are living in tree houses. We have the beach bar open there. We started renovation of the historical building in the center, but we managed we we didn't manage to overcome the obstacles by Croatia, unfortunately. But the plan is to uh build a nice medical clinic right in the center that people can enjoy. And people are already coming and enjoying Liberland. They're getting married. Uh that was a very nice wedding last year by Anan Christia from Norway.

Uh and uh I have a pleasure to invite you to come to uh longevity conference which is the next big event in Liberland. Quite a few people are coming. Uh it will be actually the main event will be on 3rd of November if you want to put it into your calendars. You can check out the website. And Liberulco is another main event. Uh it will be I think this next year it will be the biggest gathering of libertarians in Europe. opener gathering. So, it's a good opportunity to to join us as well as the anniversary. Anniversary will be the main I would say the most important event so far on on 13th of April again next year because we are going to vote

on Liberland constitution. So, by the way, this Liverpool co is becoming a shareholding company inside of Liberland for the next season because it was quite profitable and I think it's a good opportunity to turn it into a business. So um yeah what is it disappeared? Okay there was supposed to be QR code but it's not there for some reason. Maybe if I refresh it, there is my contact, but you can easily contact me on Telegram. Uh, VIT_J is probably the easiest way to contact me or can find me on LinkedIn or or Facebook. Uh, quite easy. Uh, and you know, I'm here to collect the people

that like the idea of not paying too high taxes or actually turning the world into freer with voluntary tax system and people that also would like to do a little bit in uh reducing the amount of bureaucracy that we are living in in general. So, thank you very much and I'm happy to answer any questions. [Applause] Heat. Heat.

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