Charter Cities: an industry takes off 2 years ago, I discovered a new industry: special governance cities (almost interchangeable for "charter cities", "free cities", and to some extent "special economic zones"). Free Cities Conference. Prague. Projects at their infancy. 20th century mentality. 2 years after it I am amazed. The rising bar in relatively connected conferences such as The Network State Conference in Singapore and last week in Prague at the Free Cities conference propagates a clear signal: a solid industry is emerging. Packed room. Absolute attention. Qualified audience. And resilient builders actually executing projects that will be remembered as the next Singapore, Shenzhen or Dubai. Latin America has been a strong theme this year; it seems to be an el dorado for free cities. I had the opportunity to update the industry on @tftcxyz ' progress, at the convergence of charter cities, digital governance and AI infrastructure. Network societies have become a permanent theme at the conference. With @balajis during by last intervention to introduce the network state concept. With Vikram Bharati this year, and @DraperNationHQ 's vision on network societies. It's been lovely to see again our investors, business partners and friends @marioralves , Stanislas Zaytsev , @MarkLutter, Vít Jedlicka and Joseph McKinney . Thank you @titusgebel for hosting one more year this qualified event. Thank you Peter Young for the impeccable organization, as usual. We keep building.

Let's meet in Florianópolis next week for ETH Floripa. I'll be next week, on Nov 11th and 12th in ETH Floripa, a 2-day builder retreat between ETHLatAm & DevConnect, for a side chat at 2:30pm (on the 12th) with @OceaneXchange , @VHSorBetancourt and @peerbase_ on network societies. Join us if you're interested in our work building digital economic zones with Tools for the Commons. Thank you to the @blockful_io team for the organization and invitation.

Thrilled to join reState and re-imagine the future of governance Last month, I have joined the board of reState, a Swiss-based non-profit foundation reimagining the future of governance and stewarding new civilizational realities. reState focuses on: ▶️ Experimental governance: prototyping, building and testing new forms of governance, through 3 flagship projects: - SuperSymmetry institute: an ecosystem of seasoned policy professionals bringing their expertise to rebalance asymmetries between Global South and Global North - showcased this year in Gaborone | Botswana and São Paulo | Brazil. - Virtual State institute: an independent platform for advancing research and development in next-generation digital governance. - Future of governance toolkit: a dynamic library of participatory governance models from around the world - online, offline, and hybrid. ▶️ Emergence realities: exploring and enabling the next-level conditions for collective and planetary evolution; - With the new realities design lab as its flagship. ▶️ Regenerative leadership: replacing the old leadership paradigms powered by fear and separation with empathic leadership founded on embodied relational intelligence; - With the conscious leadership alliance as its flagship. reState's board is formed of: ▶️ Anastasia Kalinina, co-founder & CEO of reState; ▶️ Rudolf Hilti, President of reState's Board, Chair & Founder of The System Change Foundation; ▶️ Alexander Alegria-Seif, President of Ithaka Holding; ▶️ Carlos Álvarez Pereira, Secretary General of @ClubOfRome ; ▶️ Daniela Barat, co-founder of CARE Driving Ethics in Business. reState also counts with the support of governance change-makers, including: ▶️ @mbauwens , member of the @P2PCooperative ; ▶️ Nisaa Jetha, wealth manager and member of the @wef ; ▶️ Peta Milan, principal at Henmil Group Family Office and executive officer at Transcendent Media Capital; ▶️ Oluseun Oningbinde, leader in civics technologies; ▶️ Deborah Tien, leading the future of governance toolkit project; ▶️ Val Elefante, researcher on the future of governance; ▶️ Robin Tharakan, researcher on the future of governance; ▶️ Gerasimos Kouvaras, PhD, conscious leadership specialist; ▶️ Lucas Storck, motion designed & video editor; ▶️ Ilona Kardanova Sebin, art director. reState is a crucial initiative and organization in the context of advancing @tftcxyz , acting as its advocacy and not-for-profit twin, as a think and do-tank partner. Thank you Anastasia for this privileged invitation. Let's build (further) the future of governance and civilizational realities. More information on the below link: restate.global/

Discover and join our secret! According to Peter Thiel, in the startup context, a "secret" refers to a truth about how the world works (or could work) that very few people agree on and that enables to build a business nobody else is building. ▶️ A secret is not an obvious truth - if everyone already knows it, it isn't a secret. ▶️ It is not impossible to know. ▶️ It is something important: discovering a secret can lead you to build a business that creates vertical progress ("going from 0 to 1"), rather than just incremental improvements. ▶️ "What valuable company is nobody building?" - the secret lies in that answer. ▶️ Successful startups often have a secret at their core and then build a monopoly around it. In short, a "secret" is a non-obvious, discoverable truth about how the world could change or be changed - which gives a unique opportunity nobody else is pursuing. What's the secret of @tftcxyz ? 💡 Countries are not for-granted, immutable entities. They are service-providers and operating systems that essentially deliver 3 core services: ✅ Story-telling, generally built around a nation, a god, religion, or/and a cult of personality. ✅ Governance, managing duties and rights for the community. In the welfare state context, governance providers are essentially insurance underwriters. ✅ Land management: managing and defending the pieces of lands connected to the story-telling and insurance underwriter. 💡 Each of these services may be provided IN A COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT. ✅ Other legacy governments could compete to provide them in other countries, beyond their ZIP-code. ✅ New, start up countries could also compete to provide them across multiple ZIP-codes. In other words, governance (e.g. "creating and managing countries") could absolutely be an open market-place, ZIP-code agnostic. Think about an embassy. What is it? It is the projection of a country in another country; a governance blend or concession. Now imagine a DIGITAL EMBASSY, that any person could join as a resident or citizen, irrespective of where they live, hereby consensually opting in the story<>insurance<>land combo'. Sadly, the way we interact with governance and countries today is (at best) through votes. We (at best) vote for representatives. And we eventually vote with our feet: e.g. physically leaving countries when voting for representatives was not enough to build consensus. It does not have to be like this. We could be treated as customers. With governments competing for us. With a real opt out mechanism. WITHOUT VOTING FOR BUREAUCRATS. WITHOUT VOTING WITH OUR FEET. Just opting in & out through an internet connection. Discover this paradigm. Opt-in DAZ - the Digital Access Zone. And start residing, operating business, access public services, and soon travelling, or even living in the next generation of jurisdictions, ready for AI, digital societies, nature, consensual communities, and soon absolute mobility. daz.toolsforthecommons.com

Meet our ecosystem - Denis Minev I've been working in Amazon ecosystems since 2019; initially through credit activities with a55, from @impacthub. The honeymoon with Amazon entrepreneurial ecosystems, combining policies, networks, economic development, sustainability and nature continues with @tftcxyz . As @Cop30noBrasil in Belém approaches, we are doubling down in the region, with powerful frameworks where biodiversity, resilience assets and economic prosperity converge. We are honored to count with the support of impactful change makers from the region to conduct this mission. Among them: Denis Minev. Denis combines : - Top academic education, from @Wharton and @Stanford ; - Impressive entrepreneurship and business track record, as CEO of @BemolOnline , a leading retail and financial services company operating in Western Amazon. - Public policies, with a past experience within Governo do Estado do Amazonas. I share Denis' aspiration to make the Amazon a prosperous region, across the spectrums of biodiversity obviously, but starting with THE PEOPLE of the Amazon. Biodiversity is to be preserved in the region; and shall be converted into prosperity because of and not despite economic development and a thriving environment for Amazonian people. I love to support entrepreneurs from the region and provide policies, platforms and capital to make them thrive. A lot more to come in the region, I look forward to evolve our projects with our partners and friends Phelippe Daou Neto, @Pablolobo77 , and Mariano López Hermida.

The Internet is the metaverse district for the X and Y generations The physical city is the metaverse district for the Z generation

What’s happening in Rio was inevitable. The federal government has been paralyzed or unwilling to confront the PCC and Comando Vermelho. In May, the U.S. offered Brazil a partnership to classify these groups as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). That status unlocks the full weight of U.S. counterterrorism tools — intelligence-sharing, financial tracing, asset freezes, and sanctions — the same framework used to dismantle ISIS’s global network and cut off its funding streams. @LulaOficial’s government refused. The excuse was “sovereignty,” the same word they use to defend censorship, mass corruption, and inaction while ordinary Brazilians live increasingly under the rule of organized crime. Now those same factions are flying drones over Rio and shooting at police with military weapons. And instead of standing with law enforcement, the federal government has decided to investigate the police and public officials that had the courage to confront them. The Brazilian federal government has to decide what kind of sovereignty it wants, one that protects its people, or one that protects its criminals. 🔗 whitehouse.gov/presidential-…

Côte d'Ivoire switched on its prosperity engine On the back of Alassane Ouattara's new mandate, Côte d'Ivoire shall continue its fast, ascending trajectory. The country has been growing at a steady, compounded 7% yearly rate for the last few years. The population is young (average age is 18 years old) and dynamic. Abidjan has a few iconic projects, such as Tower F, the upcoming taller tower in Africa. Special economic zones shall drive economic growth too, through peoject such as: - VITIB, a hub for information and biotechnologies ; - Cocody Bay, that shall retrofitted; legally (re)wrapped and (re)purposed to become major business and life hub. Excited to accelerate that trend with @tftcxyz , Bénédicte Fumey, Jean-Marie Akepo, Ismaël Nzouetom and Zoumana Soumahoro.

Les États investissent dans l'IA pour garantir leur autonomie stratégique. repensez la technologie. repensez l’investissement. [rethink everything*.]® *Savoir tout repenser.

A call for marketplace builders The network state movement needs to raise the bar both in terms of quality and quantity of builders. We (as an industry - but it also applies to @tftcxyz ) do have people capable of designing financial systems, of passing laws, and even of executing the brick-and-mortars component of physical cities. But we lack talent capable of fixing the cold start problem and with the network effect expertise that are critical to build a market place. A city is essentially a physical market place. So my sense is that the day great marketplace builders will jump into the network state space, the industry will grow exponentially. Please get in touch if you have been building successful physical and/or digital marketplaces, and are attracted by the possibility to harness the power of trade to build desirable sovereign physical spaces and societies.

A country is a story on a ZIP code. A government is an ID issuer and rulebook manager. A welfare state is an insurance company. So whoever: ▶️ Tells an appealing story and ties it to land (spaces, cities or embassies); ▶️ Issues IDs to the story buyers ("community members") - that are diplomatically recognized; ▶️ Manages diplomatically-recognized land for the community; ▶️ Manages the story rulebook for the community and ▶️ Runs an insurance program for the community. Becomes de facto and de jure a full stack country. QED | @tftcxyz

I keep hearing "what you're trying to build is hard [too hard (?!)]" Compared to what? A digital bank? A social network? A dating app? A basic B2B SaaS management? A bakery? Fine. These are indeed fairly simple products to build and ship. In fact, I in the emerging technologies and civilizational design industry, I (almost) feel like @tftcxyz is an underdog / amateur project. As @balajis says: "Elon wants to go to Mars, Bryan Johnson wants to live forever, Sam Altman wants to build a machine super intelligence, and I just want to start a new country."

Understanding Ngozi Ngozi is the co-founder and CEO of DevSphere, a Lagos-based software development firm. He is 34, born and raised in Lagos | Nigeria. DevSphere has 12 full-time employees, a mix of local Nigerian businesses and international clients from the US, UK and EU. 70% of DevSphere's revenue come from foreign contracts paid in EUR/USD. A few tech-savvy overseas clients pay in stablecoins, giving the company hybrid income USD, NGN & crypto. DevSphere get project-based monthly retainer, with c. NGN50-100M annual revenue. DevShere uses the Digital Access Zone ("DAZ") developed by @tftcxyz to avoid eroding hard-earned revenue during for company and FX management. DevSphere relies on Excel and @QuickBooks for local invoicing, coupled with Oze and Ivoice.ng. Ngozi has a USD bank account for international payments, coupled with @Payoneer solution. He manually reconciles multiple accounts and currencies, a time-consuming process prone to error. If you are in a similar situation to Ngozi, sign in the most competitive jurisdiction in the world for digital workers and entrepreneurs: daz.toolsforthecommons.com