Two years after he made CoinDesk’s Most Influential list for early warnings about the coronavirus, angel investor Balaji Srinivasan is back for, at a minimum, writing a buzzy book – and, potentially, conceiving a new digital asset class.

In July, the ex-Coinbase chief technology officer and former Andreessen Horowitz partner published “The Network State: How to Start a New Country,” a crystallization of ideas he’s been kicking around for almost a decade. The book audaciously claims that like-minded people scattered across the globe can form new societies first by building communities on the internet and eventually coalescing in real life – though not necessarily in a single place.

Read more: Presenting CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2022

“A key concept is to go cloud first, land last – but not land never – by starting with an online community and then materializing it into the physical world,” Srinivasan writes.

Cryptocurrencies, borderless by nature, would power the economies of these countries-to-be. Once prospective citizens know and trust each other – early on, those already in close proximity could hold in-person meetups – they could crowdfund the acquisition or construction of apartments, houses or towns in which to live together. These discontiguous outposts would be stitched together into a “network archipelago” using “mixed reality,” a combination of virtual reality, augmented reality (e.g., glasses that superimpose text or graphics over what’s in front of your nose) and face-to-face interactions. Digital IDs would confer citizenship and a census would be taken (how else?) on-chain. Ultimately, a network state would seek diplomatic recognition from the analog-world governments Srinivasan depicts as sclerotic.

Some readers may be thinking, “What is this man smoking?” But there are at least two projects, Praxis Society and Afropolitan, trying to make this apparent sci-fi dream into a reality. (Srinivasan is an investor in both.)

READ MORE