What do I think about network states?

Blockchains are the Lego of crypto-finance and crypto-governance: they are a very effective tool for implementing transparent in-protocol rules to govern common resources, assets and incentives.

A corporation is not a root: if there is a dispute inside a corporation, it ultimately gets resolved by a national court system. Blockchains and network states, on the other hand, are trying to be new roots. 

We don't just want to take existing maps of social connections as given and find better ways to come to consensus within them. We also want to reform the webs of social connections themselves , and put people closer to other people that are more compatible with them to better allow different ways of life to maintain their own distinctiveness.

But we also need to go a level deeper. Blockchains and network states have the shared property that they are both trying to "create a new root". 

This does not mean require some absolute "na na no one can catch me" ideal of sovereignty that is perhaps only truly accessible to the ~5 countries that have highly self-sufficient national economies and/or nuclear weapons. 

One of the curious features of the book that a reader will notice almost immediately is that it sometimes feels like two books in one: sometimes, it's a book about the concept of network states, and at other times it's an exposition of Balaji's grand megapolitical theory.Balaji's grand megapolitical theory is pretty out-there and fun in a bunch of ... See more

And all three teams are waaay too nationalist: they view things from the perspective of their own country, and ignore or exploit everyone else. Even when the teams are internationalist in theory, their specific ways of interpreting their values make them unpalatable outside of a small part of the world.

[3] is of course a more complicated moral question: whether you view paralysis and creep toward de-facto authoritarian global government as a bigger problem or someone inventing an evil technology that dooms us all as a bigger problem. 

Individual blockchain participants are of course vulnerable to national regulation, and enclaves of network states even more so.