Decentralized Science has seen validation in the preceding month. DeSci tokens have performed consistently better than most other tokens on Ethereum. Bio.Xyz, something between an incubator and a hedge fund for DeSci, closed its second funding round, within hours of Vitalik and CZ meeting to give the movement their blessing. This article covers a series of events related to DeSci, Ethereum, and network states; seeking to share alpha while humanizing this moment in the third scientific revolution.

Photos and words by Tristan Roberts; feel free to re-use.

The Archipelago / Edge City - Chiang Mai

My journey started in the ancient city of Chiang Mai, the capital of northern Thailand. Dating back to the 1300’s, the city has has much of its walls and its moat around its square center. It hosts a substantial digital nomad population, and for the month leading up to DEVCON 7, Chiang Mai attracted decentralists and technologists of all stripes.

Following the successful 'Zuzalu' pop up city in Montenegro a year and a half ago, the community was put to a vote: where would we congregate next? The highest scoring option was Thailand. A few months later, at DevConnect, Vitalik did not give his official blessing to one leader. Consequently, an 'archipelago' of communities were planned before and after Ethereum’s largest conference, DEVCON, was to happen. The end result was a more decentralized version of preceding ‘pop up cities’ like Zuzalu or Vitalia.

The most populous of these communities was Edge Lanna; centered around the Ping River on the east side of the city. Two floods had struck the area within the last month, and the cleanup work was mostly complete by the time I arrived at the end of October. The following day, I attended Edge's weekly town hall to get a better sense of the organization. By many metrics, their unconference style organizing was successful. Edge City provided co-working space and brunch to its attendees, but left most of the schedule open for attendees to fill in on a calendar app called Social Layer or SoLa. For instance, one day was devoted to the topic of Neurotech x AI alignment, which threaded Eastern wisdom through the cerebral topics. Four days were dedicated to 'd/acc', Vitalik's particular brand of techno-optimism. Nearly every day had a plethora of fitness classes.

These social spaces, of gyms and saunas, breakfasts and dinners, allowed the crypto folks to congregate with other groups on the edges. An openness to new ideas united the attendees, and most seemed more outwardly interest in health and visions of the future more than they were trying to shill their particular project.

Edge City seems poised to both expand to new locations (such as Burma) while cultivating relationships with recurring spots (such as Esmeralda in Northern California). They were actively seeking local government contacts, and it seems like this sort of global network might be useful in the eventual softening of the nation state boundaries... but it also may end up reinforcing them.

'Funding the Commons' rented a small resort in the mountainous outskirts of town, that was owned by band of Chinese ex-patriates. The BlockRavers had their own venue and put on parties at others’. One house, ‘AuraVerse’, was explicitly focused on DeSci. While many groups of around 10-20 people formed a residency, few had regular programming.

DeSci Day - Nov 10th - Bangkok

When I heard that the illustrious Foresight Institute was hosting a DeSci day in Bangkok, I moved my schedule up to attend.

The event was held in 'True Digital Park', a recently built tower complex that includes a mall, co-working space, and communications company.

Finding the right bank of elevators was a challenge, but I eventually made it to the 6th floor, and caught sight of a small group discussion room that was filled to the brim with people that might be from Berlin.

This space saw fast paced pitches of early stage DeSci projects; getting some instant feedback and recommendations for next steps. Some, like Biohacker DAO and a number of space exploration DAOs, had already seen some crypto funding. Others were still at the idea stage, exploring harmonic incentives for human and synthetic systems, or artistic displays of underwater life that might fuel conservation efforts.

We all eventually shuffled over to the main stage, where Juan Benet and Paul Kohlhaas were the main draws. Juan is not just a whale, but a rather smart one. His talk was an intense infodump that zoomed in to exponential graphs of computational progress, that one might find in a Kurzweil book. The Singularity seems pretty near, but who will run the servers? Will the post-human revolution be brought to you by OpenAI and Apple's pearly gleaming product mommies domming you into liking the AI generated slop? Or will a squirlly band of decentralists be able to provide a viable alternative? Who knows, but clearly Juan's Protocol Labs is going to at least try to seize that power to fuel their decentralized hosting networks.

Paul's organization, Molecule, has seen serial successes in the DeSci space. Their Bio.Xyz DAO (something between a Y Combinator and a hedge fund for biomedical research DAOs) was just wrapping up their second crowd sale. Their respective orgs had likely provided the largest source of funding for the event.

Geoff from Quantum Bio DAO shared his project's mission. He and his fellow DAO members were frustrated by the inattention that mainstream science gives to the theory that quantum effects might play a role in biology. Their proposed experiment would look at how weak magnetic fields inhibit or excite growth in plants. They're currently in Bio.Xyz's second cohort and are hoping to raise enough funds to build a microscope capable of observing quantum effects.

Following the talks, a pitch competition occurred in a more direct manner than the lightning talks that had been given earlier in the day. Five presenters pitched for five minutes, and subsequently the audience voted. Your author won this contest with 'Dog Years DAO', a longevity research DAO that would start with a follistatin gene therapy for canines.

Parallel Society Congress - Nov 11th - Bangkok

There were a ton of events hosted just before DEVCON, and the Parallel Society Congress ended up being my pick. While many crypto events are centered around ‘Number go up!’, this gathering focused on the harder question of, how do we actually reshape society with these new tools?

DEVCON 7 - Bangkok, Thailand

DEVCON was a sprawling takeover of the Queen Sirikit Convention Center in Bangkok. Thousands from across the globe convened. Most projects that had a strong showing were for Ethereum's infrastructure - solving problems like scaling or privacy. For better or for worse, most 'decentralized apps' were not encouraged to attend; or at least, be in public shilling their tokens, as the threat of being labelled as promoting 'Securities!' loomed over the org.

At any rate, the bull market could be felt (free food!) and the vibes were rather immaculate. There was less press, less shilling; practically no vendor booths. A few 'community corners' did dot the landscape on the perimeter, including one for DeSci. This informal space attracted newcomers with a ton of memes and revolutionary posters.

Most of the DeSci events were offsite, however, such as a Bio Xyz dinner at a Thai restaurant that necessitated me walking through the infamous Cowboy Soi alley.

The most notable offsite was hosted by Binance Labs, an investing arm to the centralized exchange. Both the exchange's founder, CZ, and Ethereum's founder, Vitalik Buterin, made an appearance. Like a king and a pope granting their blessing to an expedition force, it felt like Decentralized Science was finally granted the legitimacy it had been seeking.

Meanwhile, Bio.Xyz's second crowd sale completed successfully, and the team hosted their third 'Bio/Acc' rave in the ’Temple’, a sprawling complex of a venue. I rushed to get there by using the local ridehailing app’s feature for riding on the back of a moped.

SINGAPORE

I took an interlude in Singapore, to meet with potential collaborators. The culture shock coming from Thailand was severe. Taxi drivers would honk at me to insist I use the crosswalk when I paused to look at my phone; quite a contrast to Bangkok’s streets where you’re expected to make room for yourself and navigate around the oncoming mopeds.

SCICON - Nov 20th - San Francisco

Soon after I arrived, I heard applause after one of the panelists suggested that "the world would be better off without [science] journals".

Discontent for the existing academic system was the uniting theme, and served as the backstory for why most people were present.

I had met the Research Hub's founder, Patrick Joyce, while he was still struggling with academia as a med school student. It felt great seeing his project go from idea to fruition; finding Coinbase’s Brian Armonstrong as a co-founder certainly helped.

ResearchHub is something like a 'pre-print' service, allowing articles to be posted on their server. People are able to add comments directly.

Their token, RSC, is used to incentives users on the platform; and could be used as a bounty for writing article summaries.

At the conference, it was announced that Research Hub would be offering peer review as a service, as well as starting their own journal.

I have been hesitant to endorse most DeSci projects hoping to start a journal, as the problem is more about legitimacy than technical solutions. That being said, ResearchHub has seen decent linear growth and may be reaching that critical threshold necessary to support a journal.

Pretty much everyone there had some sort of ‘villain backstory’ for why they gave up their academic dreams, or of how they struggle with institutions regularly.

As @ThatInvestor's thread on the the conference summarizes:

There is a cultural shift happening in Academia due to:

1. Misleading or sometimes plagiarized publications

2. Broken incentive models

3. Lack of public trust

ResearchHub is meeting the new age of academics where they are at by:

1. Redefining incentives to solve the replication crisis

2. Allowing the market to compensate academics

3. Open sourcing academia

What comes next?

Some other notes on recent developments…

Massive changes in the FDA might happen based on Trump’s HHS cabinet picks - RFK Jr. and Jim O’Neill. We might see some meaningful reform, or it might get deadlocked by the incumbents.

The development of the biotech vertical that goes around both the patent and regulatory systems seems inevitable… privacy preserving systems for reputation and identity are just starting to become viable.

Pump.fun become a launch pad for tokens… a derivative, pump.science, saw some initial success with funding early stage research. However, it did not take long for them to be attacked by people posting ‘fake’ tokens on their platform through a glitch.

LongCovidDAO is recruiting patients for a study.

PsyDao is seeking to develop alternatives to MDMA that provide a similar experience but have less MDMA alternatives

Overall things are looking good.

An excerpt from the journal of Tristan Roberts - February 15th, 2034

I met my lover at Ray Kurzweil’s funeral, just as the prediction market foretold.

The automated betting pool I had posted years earlier flurried with activity when a reputable Cast confirmed the techno-optimist’s departure from the material plane.

My theory: one of Alcor’s staff tipped an info-mongerer pseudonym, cascading algorithmic trading bots that swarmed any market relating to Kurzweil, transhumanism, and the Singularity. His body, presumably, had been fused with a cocktail of preservatives at the site of death and was already enroute to the Vault in the Texas Republic.

The likelihood to find a partner at Kurzweil’s funeral plateaued around 72% as I waited for the Caltrain. This was a higher likelihood than the market had ever shown. Yet as much as I savored the possibility of finding a new flame within the chill of death, I tried to not let my hopes soar too close to the sun. As with all love markets, it was hard to gauge how many of the bets were my friends and lovers publicly wishing me well… or secretly wishing me to move on.

I had not been close to Ray... but my social currency secured an invite to the ‘celebration of life’ service held at the megalithic Unitarian Universalist church in San Jose. The Unitarians had become the closest thing to the religion of the Singularity, or at least, the only one that did not implode under the weight of its founders’ egos.

Posting the prediction market had been mostly a joke. It contained just enough irony and sublimated horny energy that it had escaped the self-censoring of the prediction markets, which tended to delist anything that might be a liability to the income of the “super predictors”.

I scanned the entrance hall of the church and realized I was in for a morbid reunion. Many of the attendees of the original Vitalia (the network state with the mission to ‘make death optional’) were present but nobody was smiling. I tried my best to ignore the prediction market, and affect a somber mood. Interacting with the longevity crowd was always a stifling affair: any unintended slight or faux pas might lead to a century long grudge.

I first intersected with José Cordeiro. An economic refugee from Venuzuela, he had been an ardent disciple of Kurzweil for decades, proselytizing that immortality and material abundance would be an inevitable outcome of the Singularity.

I leaned in to give him my condolences, but he rebuffed me at first, shaking his head. “No, Tristan. We must not give in to weakness…” He said sternly, before starting to whimper, “Ray, he was so close… to reaching…” he trailed off, and I curtly shouted “Immortality!”, causing those nearby to turn their heads and glare.

We were lying, of course, but a discourse on why computational advances had not trickle down into meaningful societal improvements did not seem appropriate. To be fair, José looked as young, if not younger, than when I met him at a Parisian futurism conference in 2018, but as I embraced him, I caught a whiff of a death in Venice.

The longevity movement had swelled in the late 20’s, but saw a massive setback after Bryan Johnson’s johnson had exploded. An experimental treatment to increase cardiovascular fitness and nighttime erections had worked better than promised. The smart cockring’s company blamed the treatment, and vice versa. While Priapus swelled with laugther, (most) everyone else got the ick. Meanwhile, demographic studies suggested that while healthspan was increasing, median lifespan had barely budged. Kurzweil’s passing felt like the final nail in the coffin for the dream of the Immortalists.

I saw Patri Friedman across the hall. He had finally gotten The Surgery. But, judging from how his grafted cat ears were limited in their expressiveness, I inferred his Catboy Separatist Army was still in a pissing match with the Catboys de Catalunya, who had the superior surgical technique.

Aubrey de Grey was there as well, looking more like Aubrey de White, with his ashen beard and long hair. I met him, alone, at the champagne fountain. The desertification of western Europe had made champagne even more of a luxury, but it seemed wasted on this crowd. As I approached, Aubrey waved and then warned me: “Don’t get your hopes up… it’s sparkling apple cider. With stevia, by the taste of it.” We shook our heads in unison.

I asked if he had any alpha on the longevity escape velocity. He was hesitant to say anything definitive… after all, most people at the end of their lifespan were not undergoing experimental treatments. He did, however, acknowledge that some treatments did seem to be undoing cellular damage, but upon prodding, admitted that most were languishing in biotech’s valley of death. We spoke of shared acquaintences and he concluded that “It seems to me that we were perhaps remiss to not better factor cognitive measures into our evaluations”. The prospect of having one’s body but not one’s mind for decades caused us both to purse our lips and look at the floor.

The doors to the main chamber opened. My prediction had been wrong: Kurzeil’s body had not yet been shipped to Texas. Rather, it was in a portable cryo chamber next to the pulpit.

A techno remix of Mozart’s Lacrimosa (Requiem) started playing, but not the good one. It was meant to cue people to take their seats. I took it as a sign to step out to the back garden for a drag of my ethically-harvested neuronal growth factor spiked vape.

As I exhaled, I spotted the only person in attendance who might push the prediction market to resolve affirmatively. Their hair was jet black, shaved on one side. Their skin was caramel and flawless. I couldn’t tell their age, but I guessed that they had never experienced life sans internet.

They were a ‘they/them’, not in the ‘confused about the agender nature of spirit’ sense, but because their Agent had unfiltered access to their neural impulses. The symbiont had a metallic band affixed to their temporal lobe, and a cerulean glow emanated from their eyes. It was impossible to say if one was speaking to the human or the Agent that suggested dialogue options to them in their contact lenses.

Inlaid on the band, a purple light indicated that raw recording was turned off - assuming that their gear wasn’t jailbroken.

I am still holding off on implants, as an open source model that would not be rapidly obsolete always seems another year away. The only internal gear I found suitable was a vibrating egg that lets my Contacts marked as ‘Intimate’ ping me whenever I am dopamine detoxing from my Shard.

I could tell that they were waiting for their Agent to tell them that I was maximally approachable, so I decided to dispel the wait. I put away the vape and waved them closer.

“I had a hunch that you might be here” they said.

“A fellow prediction market appreciator, I take it?” I asked.

It was then that I realized the activity on the prediction market might not have been just bots. They might have made their own bets to draw me out, as any symbiont worth their silicon could spin up many Alts to mask their online dealings.

“Ahhh... you were the reason why the likelihood plateaued a couple hours ago?”

They neither confirmed nor denied, only smiled softly, before explaining that they were a judicant. My heart skipped a beat.

A judicant is like a tax auditor, an insurance adjuster, and a judge rolled into one. At best, they examined suspicious transaction patterns and resolved disputes. At worst, their clout burned your hard-earned reputation, forcing you to pack your e-bags and reroll a whole new identity.

I had met plenty of symbionts before, but this one was uniquely positioned to pierce my psyche, examine my shortcomings, and then post proofs to trash my rep. My bracelet glowed red, indicating that my heart rate was spiking. I covered it with my other hand, but that didn’t seem to be necessary. Their gaze was to the distance, and it was hard to tell if they just had the ‘tism or if they were using eye movements to navigate their interface. Eventually, they said:

“I wanted to ask you a few questions, and it did seem like our paths might converge here. Is it okay if I record our exchange?”

I gritted my teeth. “Sure,” I said, and a moment later the light on their temple turned red.

“Can you prove your identity?”

“Sure.” I placed my right ring finger tip onto the opal of my obsidian bracelet for a second, and then clasped his hand with mine. I waited a moment before realizing that they didn’t have a sensor there like most symbionts. I graciously saved this gesture from awkwardness by tenderly combing a few strands of their hair, bringing my bracelet into range of their temple implant.

As I withdrew my hand, they were presented with a cryptographic proof for my Main identity, and for any of my Alts that they followed.

The Judicant squinted, and raised their brow, before fixing their gaze back on me.

“Tristan Roberts - why were you in attendance at the first Vitalia?”

I glanced side to side, and prayed this wasn’t a sectarian plot to try to ‘cancel’ me.

I explained that “I had already visited Roatán numerous times and felt inclined to guide those adventurous enough to search for the fountain of youth.”

“And why had you already been to Roatán?”

“The gene therapy company I had been working with decided to run their Phase 1 there, in Próspera’s ZEDE. Surely, you can fill in the rest?” I said, gesturing to the Agent housed in their temple. I waited a few moments for their human to be briefed. I could feel their eyes looking off to the infinite and then to me, piercing through to my core.

“What was it like at Vitalia?” they asked.

“It was a lot like Zuzalu, but… hornier.”

“Hornier?” they asked with a discouraging lack of inflection.

“Yes. For instance: a planking contest, where the winner would get an hour-long massage by the organizer. Or… a pheromone study, looking at whether having ball sweat or cum on your back during a hug altered subsequent female behavior.”

They paused. I had thrown their Agent for a loop.

“I… see. And what about the attendees… What were they like?”

“They were some of the best and the worst people I have ever met, and it was hard to tell them apart. Some of them were offering up their hearts for a chance at a better world. Others were using ‘intelligence’ as a cloak for racism, and ‘the free market’ as an excuse for parasitism.” My thoughts drifted, and I sighed. “At the original Vitalia, the ratio between fanatics to sociopaths was rather favorable… but, as with most ‘good’ things, the sharks were attracted to it.”

The Judicant paraphrased Tolkien: “The Shadow can only mock… it cannot make new things of its own.”  It was my turn to raise my brows.

“Do you think Vitalia is succeeding in its mission of ‘Making Death Optional?’" they asked, and I could not tell if they were joking.

I stared. “Look at where we are… it seems Vitalia’s greatest accomplishment was finding a way to market timeshares to Millenials.”

They continued with their questioning undaunted. “Are you aware that the Immortalists have an above average mortality rate?”

I sighed, then racked my brain. I had known many biohackers who had met early ends.

But the Immortalists were generally more cautious; typically waiting until some human data was in before partaking in new treatments.

“No… the Immortalists I have known have seemed abundantly cautious. They glare if you suggest staying up past 9 or enjoying dessert.”

A pause followed, and then the Judicant said, “This concludes the interview.”

The light on their temple returned to purple. I let out a small sigh of relief. They apologized for the formality, explaining that it was necessary to provide some record for their peers who might dispute their decision.

“You do not fit the profile that my model suggests is responsible for the early deaths of the Immortalists,” they assured me.

Ahhh. This was no woke cancel mob, but rather, an investigation into the prediction markets surrounding Ray’s (and others’?) passing. My market had been just ambiguously threatening enough to warrant a visit by an investigator.

We both looked towards the door. The music emanating from the hall was fading, suggesting that the service was about to begin. An agnostic technophilic preacher offering copium did not sound like my scene.

“LGBT?” I asked.

In a few moments, my cringe Millenial dialect was translated for them.

“Sure. I’m always down for bubble tea,” they replied.

I went to grab my Shard to find the nearest spot, but the Judicant waved my effort off as futile and beckoned me to follow through the back of the garden to the closest sugar dispensary.

“Modeling the trajectory of your agency has proven remarkably difficult,” they said after we took our seats, presumably choosing the flirty option their Agent had suggested.

“I wish I could be of more help in your investigation…,“ I said before placing the half sweet kiwi jasmine bubble tea down. I wriggled the straw seductively. “Tell me, how did you end up on this beat?” I asked, looking them in the eyes. Theirs darted immediately.

They explained that they had been working the life insurance and biotech courts on the Kleros dispute resolution system. A group of interested parties had crowdstaked an investigation into seemingly related disputes, and their case had been randomly assigned to the Judicant.

“As in… that the Immortalists seem to be perishing faster than expected?” I asked to show that I sometimes listened, but then followed with an actual question: “But I thought that murder prediction markets were delisted?”

“They are… nominally. But synthetics for life and death are still made by bundling the person’s projects and memes on leverage, along with seemingly innocuous markets like yours.”

“And so… have you tried to control for other factors?” I asked.

“Of course. I ran comparisons against similar demographics; the billionaires, the quantified self community. None of it explained the string of deaths… and, well…,” they said, before leaning in to whisper: “There’s a direct correlation between the notoriety of the Immortalist, and their likelihood of early termination.”

I froze as the leaked images of Huberman’s blue corpse, preserved for days in an ice bath before being discovered, and the wreckage of Sinclair’s Tesla wrapped around a tree trunk flashed in my mind.

We sat in the discomfort for a while, and then the topic returned to Vitalia.

I felt like I was being asked about dial-up internet by a Zoomer. Network states had become a political force capable of disrupting nations - even tipping them into balkanization, just as Cabin and the Catboy Separatist Army had done with the Texas Republic. But few had been there to experience their awkward births.

“Do you think that Vitalia would have accomplished its mission if the sociopaths hadn’t gained power over it?” they asked.

“Well… It does seem like if rep tech had been further along, Vitalia might have kept more, uhhh, true to its mission, but that doesn’t seem like the primary reason.”

“Then, do you believe Vitalia failed because of the Próspera arbitration settlement?”

Some years back, the Honduran leftists had tried to re-annex Próspera, by dropping out of the international dispute court that threatened to levy a massive fine to protect Próspera’s tUS investors. The powers that be then threatened to take the fine out of Honduras’s SWIFT banking system directly, so the leftists responded in kind by threatening to switch their currency and banking to a synthetic BRICScoin running on Tron, creating a banking and trade outpost for China in Central America. This was so unpalatable that a settlement was reached, whereby the land would return to Honduras 50 years after Próspera’s launch.

“No, I don’t think that was the reason. If anything, that agreement accelerated progress by giving investors certainty that the ZEDE would be around more than a couple years.”

“So… why didn’t Vitalia flourish?”

I paused, reflecting. “Vitalia was not just fighting windmills, but the entropic nature of the universe. And they lacked the epistemology to even recognize the scope of their undertaking.” I slurped some tea before revealing what I would have said earlier had they not been recording.

“Every great city (or network state) has a spirit… But no god would adopt Vitalia’s cause. Humans ascending would mean the end of their godhood. And, perhaps more pragmatically… nobody would die for the cause, because their cause was not dying. Without skin in the game… nobody is willing to do whatever it takes… and so nobody would fight to keep out the devils and the charlatans.”

“Do you think Próspera will secure the popular vote to extend its 50 year lifespan?” they asked.

“The island’s gross domestic product has certainly gone up. But so have the gross number of people employed cleaning toilet bowls.”

I shrugged. Then asked if they wanted to come back to my place. 😼

“As surely as the sun rises in the east…,” they said, while making a few gestures with their hand, then pointing towards me. “…it sets in the west? Well, actually, my place is up north…,” I fumbled, just as my Shard vibrated.

As I looked, I saw a ZK proof of recent STI tests signed by the City Clinic. I smirked and replied back with own from a month ago, signed by LabDAO.

I slurped the last of my boba.

“Let’s go then - I’d like to prompt your vocalizations with something other than silicon.”

On the train ride back to my place, our knees embraced like lovers having missed each other for lifetimes.

When morning came, they gave me their Contact as I walked them back to the train station.

I saved it under my ‘Intimate’ contacts.

I marked the prediction market as resolved, in the affirmative.

Every mint of this article nudges me to finish this cypherpunk mystery novella.

Addendum: Thank you to Grant Fok for inspiration and editing, and DALLE 3 for the wonderful artwork.

DALLE 3 Prompts

Unitarian Universalist flagship church in 2034. View of front entrance, in downtown San Jose. Neo-brutalist architecture, imposing yet heavenly, warmed by intelligent lighting. The singularity is in full bloom. Photo Realistic, Hi-Res (2034)

A funeral in a heavenly concrete Unitarian Universalist church in 2034. A small cryo-preservation chamber houses the deceased, emitting a blue glow, next to a pulpit. The high fashion cyberpunk socialites sit in the ergonomic modern pews. The lights of the concrete church are emitted by recessed glowing LEDs.

A hi-res photo of a symbiont in 2034. They are male, androgynous, mixed latin/asian race. Their jet black hair is asymmetrical. They have dark clothing. On their temple, a small cybernetic implant made of silver with a purple light. Their contact lenses glow cerulean. In the background is a brutalist church garden at night.

Foreground: A male caucasian wrist wearing an advance bracelet, made of obsidian material with a single flat opal. Background: It is night time in a neo brutalist unitarian universalit church garden in 2034.

A cozy bubble tea store in near future San Jose. It's night time and emitting a glow from LED lights. Mysterious, noir, cyberpunk themes.

Historical oil on canvas painting with frame, depicting an anime Catboy Army marching through the Texas highlands on alpacas and cybertrucks.

A scenic painting with cyberpunk and noir themes of the Caltrain in the mid penisula, surrounded by low rise development. Two silhouettes of male figures are visible on the train next to each other, clearly sharing a romantic moment.

A product view of a hand holding a glass Shard mobile phone, made from transparent nano-materials. On the screen of the Shard, an elaborately hyperscripted name appears to be a mix of english, emojis, and superscript.

Zuzalu felt like an acceleration of humanity's future. It remains to be seen if this nudge forward was to a timeline where technology defuses the worst of humanity’s dystopian impulses. This article paints a hopeful yet critical picture of Zuzalu and its ideas, using anarchist & animist brush strokes. It features photos from myself, Tristan Roberts (TG: @aitheric),  and Rhiannon (IG: rh1create_).

Part I: Enter Zuzalu

(a summary suitable for those who did not attend)

Part II: Tools for Longevity

(the metaphysics of health tech from a science/woo integration maxi)

Part II: The State of Trust

(a survey of governance structures, from a Zuzalu 'Visitor' who overstayed their 'Visa')

Part IV: Towards Nütopia: Intimacy, Cuddle Puddles, & Armed Militias

Part I: ENTER ZUZALU

Little information about Zuzalu was available online.

The word 'Zuzalu' was chosen in part because it had no previous meaning.

What was clear: the crypto-billionaire Vitalik was backing it; and people from all over the world were coming to attend. The fear of missing out snowballed. Hundreds applied to be a 'resident'. Over a thousand people ended up congregating; some staying for days and others for months.

Zuzalu took place in a newly constructed marina resort town called Lustica Bay. The pavement was unscarred by gum or oil leaks. The scent of jasmine pervaded, and everything seemed suspiciously perfect.

It was easy to tell if someone was there for Zuzalu or for the more typical tourism[22].

Hoodies and airy linen clashed with boat shoes and knit sweaters.

Most weeks had themes that drew in visitors for particular fields.

Unlike a festival or conference, Zuzalu seemed more 'sustainable'. It was possible to work in the ballroom that had been repurposed as a coworking space, and seemingly at all hours someone was taking a call in the nearby halls.

The resort was isolated from the nearby town by a steep thirty minute walk. This made running into new friends inevitable, whether it be at the breakfast restaurant, coworking space, or the sauna. It was impossible to attend every talk or side activity; a wave of FOMO crashed every day as the events were posted in a massive channel on Telegram.

Breakfast was free. Rooms for the residents were subsidized; to a degree - those with passports from lower income countries paid a fraction of others paid. Many Zuzalu residents - “Zuzalians” -  ended up with their own apartments, and waves of visitors crashed upon the empty beds and open couches.

In the absence of material scarcity, social currency became the commodity to covet.

To 'shill' your own agenda, heedless of the 'vibe' (or to be associated with someone who did!) was to lose standing. One might gain status by gifting rare items or organizing memorable events.

Most people I met there were not just 'hoping' to innovate; they already were creating, working on fantastic projects that promised to change the way we interact.

Zuzalu attempted to showcase emerging crypto technology.

The most recent wave of innovation was around the concept of 'zero knowledge' (ZK). ZK can allow someone to prove something without revealing unnecessary details to others.

A basic example: when you show your ID to enter a bar, they can see your name and address, when all they really need to know is whether you are of age.

Similarly, 'ZK' technology allows you to prove a claim, such as 'over 21?' without revealing even your birthdate to the person seeing the proof (or anyone hosting the network).

This solves one of the greatest outstanding issues with Ethereum (and most other blockchains): privacy. Typically, anyone can see ALL of a public address’s activity, which makes privacy practically impossible.

Much of Zuzalu was organized using a 'Telegram' social hub; a chat room that had dozens of subchannels.

ZK tech enhanced the experience; allowing Polls and Anonymous Messaging through a Bot that was good at keeping secrets. This Bot allowed someone to, for instance, tell one of the visiting geneticists that they wanted to recombine genes with him, without revealing the sender. [2]

The 'ZK' tech also powered a passport, called a ‘ZuPass’. When the website was opened, it presented a QR code that could be scanned to determine if the passport was valid.

Zuzalu was a place of many paradoxes.

While most participants would be for open borders, most seemed to appreciate how closed their temporary society was. Zuzalu had a "higher barrier for entry and a low barrier" for banning undesirables.

Many Zuzalians believed in a post-capitalist society, yet it was hard to deny the amount of capital that had been deployed to create the facsimile of a bay village. The design of a marina wedged into a hillside was based on an ancient Egyptian town, but here, nothing was real:  The lighthouse on the jetty, for instance, did not actually guide ships; it was intended to be a scenic location for a restaurant.

The vision was certainly utopian, but only partially realized.

While the luxury hotel had a gym and sauna, the residents of Zuzalu had endeavored to build their own gym, on one of the huge terraces behind one of the apartments. The gym’s weights and machines did materialize, but the wood Sauna was only assembled during the final weeks. And it was only then that they realized that there was no access to a suitable power outlet to make the sauna get hot.

This ‘sauna that almost was’ had the funding, it had the vision, but a recognition of existing limitations seemed missing. In many ways, this paralleled Zuzalu. Could this group of idealists build a society? And if they did, would it just be the same old patterns, using cooler new terms?

One final scene to encapsulate the forces at play: A meeting to discuss a “longevity network state” was called; addressing the collective drive to push a jurisdiction to be friendly for researching and administering longevity treatments. Two dozen of us crammed into a living room and terrace overlooking the Adriatic sea. One charismatic chad pushed his plan to persuade thousands of longevity enthusiasts to move to Rhode Island in hopes of brokering power there, similar to how Libertarians have tried (and mildly, failed) to take over New Hampshire.  One precision-seeking person argued with him, fruitlessly, over semantics. A developer pushed for building information technology to enable a digital FDA. These forces dominated; incoherently drowning out any other input, until I pushed the group to break into smaller discussions, so that the introverts had a chance of speaking their minds.

Zuzalu’s fate is unclear. It seems like it will annually pop up across the globe, a rare flower that never truly puts down its roots, like many of its nomadic attendees.

Part II: TOOLS FOR LONGEVITY

Zuzalu was a glimmer of society as it could be. Participants were not just fantasizing about the future; they were organizing to make it.

For as long as there have been emperors, there have been those focusing their wealth on extending their life [13]. VitaDAO, a 'decentralized' longevity research group, was instrumental in organizing Zuzalu. Where VitaDAO begins and Vitalik ends is hard to say: Vitalik was one of the contributors of ETH to VitaDAO, and without his crypto and social currency, VitaDAO may have never taken flight.

Zuzalu had around ten days dedicated to the topic of longevity and biotech. The first week was designed to impart the Zuzalians with enough knowledge to evaluate and contribute to longevity projects. I gave a presentation on the history of clinical trials, explaining the purpose of each phase of testing, and how the regulatory and financial burden meant that many therapies - valid or not - would never make it to market.

The following weekend was focused on longevity biotech projects; bringing together academic researchers and startup founders. Some were working on mRNA vaccines; others on tissue replacement; some even on cryonics for pushing ‘pause’ on the decomposition of our bodies until our descendants figure out the secret to immortality.

Having long been a supporter of 'decentralized science', it was heavenly to see the crypto and biotech experts communing. Just as crypto decreased our reliance on banks, it may also uproot the academic and regulatory institutions that have grown inept, if not corrupt, over time.

“Most imagine a scientist to be an independent researcher who thinks for himself, and this figure may still appear in children’s books, but in practice the occupation mostly entails the enforcement of a fixed set of dogmas”. -Thiel

WHO WANTS TO LIVE FOREVER

I saw that a cute longevity organizer would be coming to Zuzalu. 😳

I asked him in advance over Twitter: "Would you like to have tea?". [10]

There was no response. When I found him in person, he asked if by ‘tea’ I had meant ‘drugs’. Considering my background, it was a fair assumption.

Amused, I prodded a little further, to discover that he had never used psychedelics.

He explained: using psychedelics might make him lose his fear of death.

Without this fear of death, perhaps he would not be as motivated to work on longevity. Consequently, psychedelic usage might cause him (and others!) to miss out on living forever.

The logic was cringe, yet sound. I pointed out the converse: what if you end up spending your only life pursuing a futile goal? Later, I thought: What if the weight of trying to save humanity from death, only ended up only crushing his own spirit?

That conversation ended up shaping the heuristic I used when meeting other longevity enthusiasts: Were they more motivated by a fear of death, or by a love of life?

Typically, it was easy to see which of these two camps the participants fell into after a brief conversation.

One director of a longevity research non-profit, however, broke my schema:

She was interested in reducing suffering globally more than living forever or “defeating death”.

Longevity might be better defined not as living indefinitely, but increasing one's ‘healthspan’. Sure, being 'alive' is great, but are you also able to make it to the bathroom without assistance? Can you remember what happened yesterday? Are you doing anything meaningful with your ‘life’, or simply consuming media and food, biding your time until the Reaper visits (or your Dogecoin portfolio goes to 0?).

The "reducing suffering" answer seemed to address not just improving healthspan, but possibly an even bigger context as well.

If reincarnation is real, then it might be ideal to have a long, healthy life so that one may ‘complete one's karma’; to increase the odds of escaping this cycle of birth and death. Without the inconvenience of dying and having to grow up again, we might be able to "learn our lessons" or whatever it is that is the purpose of mortal existence.

Many members of the longevity community, however, had a more atheistic perspective. After death, there is simply nothing. Rather than embracing the void, they run from it.

Many of these ‘fear of death’ folks fell under the umbrella of 'transhumanism'; a term that refers at times to those pursuing immortality, but also those seeking cybernetic and genetic enhancements.

I was in a strange spot: as a ‘genetically modified’ human[14], I could see the appeal in becoming something more than what I was. Yet, the hubris in the transhuman community gave me the ick.

A METAPHYSICS OF TOOLS

Many transhumanists seem to believe that human life is fundamentally broken, and that only human ingenuity can provide its salvation.

I am for a more nuanced perspective: all tools are not inherently good or bad; even biomedical therapies. But tools that ignore the economic, political, and metaphysical issues surrounding their usage, often do more harm than good.

While I was at Zuzalu, a spiritually-minded friend sent me a podcast on a metaphysical interpretation of tools. Tools "make the world a better place to live in", according to the Catholic (heretic?) philosopher Illich. Tools may be “an assistance to remedy a little bit of the damage we have done to the world”, but they will not bring about our salvation.

After watching the presentations on emerging biotech at Zuzalu, I became convinced that longevity enhancement is scientifically possible… but that many experts were ignoring the related political and economic problems. How could longevity treatments become broadly available? If they did, how would that impact the species? What would happen to our society if only the rich and powerful got these treatments?

While "tools can remedy the ills of the body, as agriculture can improve the soil", it is "only to a point. Beyond that lie dispersion, grandiosity, and ultimately, nemesis." In other words: tools may reduce suffering at first, then may come to cause stagnation and imbalances, and ultimately may make existence worse.

Cars may have increased personal mobility; but now our dependence on them stifles public transit and pedestrian pathways.

“Freud once pointed out that new technologies merely solve problems created by other technologies. To the common refrain that without the telephone, we'd be unable to hear the voices of our adult children who live hundreds of miles away, he replied, "If there had been no railway to conquer distances, my child would never have left his native town and I should need no telephone to hear his voice." Civilization, Freud believed, was nothing more than a repetition compulsion, humanity's attempt to replicate and reinscribe its fundamental disunity with nature through the very tools that created that alienation in the first place. Psychoanalysis may be a somewhat outmoded therapeutic framework, but it's one that takes human irrationality seriously, and perhaps offers insight into the absurd belief that we can use digital tools to solve a health crisis that is. at least in part, exacerbated by them.”

Similarly, Western medicine may have saved us from deadly bacterial infections, but now its incentives tend to keep us addicted to pills that treat rather than cure our ailments.

A recent reading of Illich reframed this as:

"People in highly capitalized societies have acquired iatrogenic bodies[8]. They perceive themselves as their bodies; they perceive themselves as doctors describe them." [7]

Our system of biomedical knowledge points to these two questions:

Are you diseased or not? Are you on this medication or not?

From this “Western medicine” frame, the ability to heal is “outside” of one’s self.

THE BOUNDARIES OF SELF

To go deeper, we must examine the boundary between the "self" and the "tool".

Where one draws this boundary is based on "where the permeable boundary between your temporary self and the rest of the cosmos exists".

In other words: Are you an isolated entity, distinct from all of Creation, or are you a drop in the ocean?

Examining this boundary of "Self" allows us to better relate to the "fear of death" camp. Many, if not most, in this camp constrained their identity to their physical body and its seemingly singular mind. They view tools as different material than themselves, and often view actions that benefit their “local self” over the “global self” as "advantageous”, if not good. These "materialist atheists" may treat their loved ones and fellow humans with compassion, but they tend to view Nature with contempt, if not suspicion.

Is there not a reciprocal relationship between the temporary self and everything else?

As the atheist seeks to impress their will upon nature, does not an equal force come to press back on them?

Although rarely spoken out loud, there seems to be a desire to replace God with advanced technology (if not one’s super-cyborgian self) running through the Transhumanist community.

Perhaps it is wiser to recognize “limits are inherent to embodied existence”, and to respect, if not celebrate those limits. After all, these “limits [are a necessary] condition of meaning, and suffering [is] the expression of this experience”.  It would be divine comedy to achieve godhood and then realize it was more fun to be a mortal, without the burden of omniscience.

Moreover, when we try "to create something better than what the creator did", we are   “reaching behind the cosmic role of what a tool is". When we act with such hubris, our intentionality taints our tool usage, making it more Luciferian. When we pridefully “overextend over the cosmo vision that birthed” us, we are succumbing to ego and, likely, going against the creator’s intention.

This leads to nemesis: the creation of an opposite force that ends up being our destruction.

It's possible for life extension to become viable, and be very "good" at first, before it causes even “worse” effects on the quality and meaning of our lives.

Society could tear apart, tugged between those who have access to life extension and those who do not. Or, perhaps longevity treatments are accessible, but the resulting overpopulation accelerates ecological collapse, until only a spaceship filled with Earth’s greatest assholes leaves to colonize the stars as the Earthlings choke. Almost certainly, though: living forever without a purpose beyond “consume!” would become a purgatory, if not a hell. [11]

The intentionality that we carry with us when we develop and use tools can not be ignored. Are we fulfilling the creator’s vision, or are we trying to ‘attack and dethrone god’? Humility is the difference between ‘helping beings complete a little bit more of their karma before they have to reincarnate’, and creating a techno-fascist space cancer that was once called humanity.

Part III: THE STATE OF TRUST

Zuzalu was not just a conference about society: it was itself an experiment in building a new one.

Many at Zuzalu spent their creative energy not just imagining new societies, but building them, along with technology that might empower them.

This section will survey trends in the ‘alternative governance’ space, assess some of the technology and dynamics, and conclude with thoughts on whether trust can be scaled and power can be decentralized.

NETWORK STATES

I first heard about Zuzalu through someone that was organizing the 'Network State' conference. A 'Network States' is:

“a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.”

Surely, if we combine enough tech nomads together, some government would listen to us, right? Montenegro’s incumbent prime minister seemed to be one of those people; having invited Vitalik and his entourage to visit, leading to Zuzalu. [15]

Network States seem to resonate with the emerging global digital nomad class. While they tend to take advantage of low rent and taxes, many would still like to be part of a community.

SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONES

I knew the Network State organizer from Prospera[12], a 'special economic zone' on the Honduran island of Roatan. Prospera is also an experiment in governance. On my first visit, it seemed like a co-working space on a tropical beach that was pretending to be a country. It has since annexed a neighboring golf course resort, and has nearly completed the first of four planned fourteen story residential towers.

While ‘special economic zones’ and ‘network states’ have similar visions, of cutting through red tape and building new systems, the power asymmetry between the ‘locals’ and the ‘tech bros’ means that extractive forces lurk in the shadows; the ghosts of colonialism seeking a new place to call home.

Prospera advertises itself as being focused on creating Honduran jobs, but if those employees rarely see any equity, how much upward mobility is there vs a perpetuation of class differences? Is lifting a middle class upwards good, if you are cementing a lower class below it?

ZUZALU

Zuzalu itself, despite all its aspirations towards building something new, seemed like a monarchy. The reason why Zuzalu existed in the first place was one king (Montenegro’s prime minister elect) inviting another to hold his court in a seaside town. Vitalik wore the crown, paired with a small council of organizers. While Vitalik never exercised his powers, at least that I saw, the mostly female organizers were willing and able to do so.

It's fun to pretend to be in an egalitarian society, but it's almost impossible to execute.

By my evaluation, Zuzalu’s class hierarchy was the following structure:

• Vitalik

• Influencers

• Organizers

• Residents

• Visitors

• Lustica Bay employees

Even before I made it to Montenegro, I was recruited into the Zuzaluan social hierarchy. One resident wanted to gift Vitalik with a cowboy hat, and as I was in Austin, I found myself tasked with shopping for and transporting it. The gift economy did seem to have a strong hold.

There was little doubt that many attendees were motivated by the possibility of sucking Vitalik's dick, metaphorically or otherwise. Begging for investment directly - ‘shilling’ -  may have been taboo at Zuzalu, but more subtle forms of clout chasing were still very much in vogue.

On its surface, Zuzalu's mission was to build technology that benefits humanity. Some participants were better able to wrap their interests in the garb of altruism [6]. Those that were able to recruit others to their vision of the future held greater clout.

BLOCKRAVERS

An alternative method of social gating was tested by the 'BlockRavers', a group of partying nomads that congregate at crypto conferences. Wherever crypto folks were gathered, their Telegram channel was an excellent lead on good parties. During Zuzalu the BlockRavers rented a stunning AirBnB on the other side of the peninsula from Zuzalu.

My AirBnB was located halfway between the marina and the BlockRavers; I spent several evenings at their nightly parties. I remember standing outside of a window, and hearing in one ear: "Do you identify as a transhumanist?" Meanwhile, resisting the temptation to eavesdrop after hearing: "Wouldn't that be considered insider trading?" in my other ear. Meeting someone in a sterile professional setting did not seem as informative as meeting in this atmosphere. Could you *actually* get along with the person you just met? Were they *actually* cool?

When the BlockRavers started advertising their party, they said that everyone needed to see them in person at the marina first, to receive a Venezuelan bolivar.

The hyper inflated currency was useless, except as an entry ticket to the party.

At first, this might seem like unnecessary gating: the people there for Zuzalu were already highly curated!  When I got there, one of the organizers filled me in on the bigger objective: everyone who received the currency was supposed to take a photo of themselves with the currency, along with another participant. These photos should have the serial number of the Venezuelan notes visible. These photos would act as a social trust network; creating a record of who vouched for whom.

If someone was banned, the person who vouched for them might get banned as well.

This made a lot of sense considering the history of BlockRavers: at one party for EthDenver, one of the attendees ended up trashing the AirBnB after everyone else went to sleep, presumably causing thousands in damages.

While an app for this vouching system did develop during the hackathon, it faced the typical usability issues. [4] Using an Ethereum ‘test network’, party goers could vouch for their friends and store this claim ‘on chain’. The serial numbers meant that privacy could be preserved, rather than revealing actual names. The BlockRavers had bigger plans: eventually, all sorts of attestations could be made, such as whether or not someone is into Web3, or is a great graphic designer.

COORDI-NATIONS

One Zuzalu resident described the Network States conference as having “brought out the Patrick Bateman types”.

There was a certain tension between the left and right leaning attendees, about which economic systems would be preferred. This tension seemed to be apparent to others, and Vitalik invited a leftist contingent led by French scholar Primavera del Filippi to jam on alternatives to ‘Network States’ called ‘Coordi-nations’.

Their first week they worked on better defining their idea, before spending several days presenting what came out of the workshops. During that workshop week, I found myself hanging out with the dozen or so core contributors, drinking wine, chucking clouds, and dreaming big. I could easily imagine this same group of anti-authoritarians in a Parisian café during the Enlightenment era, plotting to overthrow the monarchy.

At times, I found myself frustrated by the pace. People in berets squabble over the semantics of calling a Coordi-nation “Nation-like” or “Nation-ish”, rather than figuring out what social capital they could deploy now. I dipped out of the session early to go practice handstands along the jetty.

This group did achieve consensus on this definition:

“Coordi-nations are voluntary interwoven networks of communities with aligned values and a shared identity. They mutualize resources to redistribute them within the network and to engage in collective action through participatory governance and interdependence between nodes.“ [16]

This, to me, sounds much like what humans have been doing for time immemorial. Groups form, build alliances, and these shift dynamically. But perhaps by being so precise, we can identify the unsavory forces that should be avoided. The fractal nature of Coordi-nations means that if any one group becomes too powerful or selfish, the others can simply stop operating with them, rather than have to organize a coup.

TRUST

For decades, cryptographers have been working on developing such a 'web of trust'. This seems crucial, now more than ever, as we enter an era in which bots become difficult to distinguish from humans.

“How can we know that the person we're talking to online is real?” can be solved by the same technology that helps us know “Do I want to invite this person I just met to my party?”.

So far, however, these ‘webs of trust’ have not gained the ‘network effect’ necessary to make them a staple of online life. I admired the idealism of the BlockRavers; of making parties the ‘killer app’ that gets the snowball rolling.

Scaling trust past Dunbar's number seems to be one place where crypto might help.

Humans seem capable of managing trust at the scale of a ‘village’, but once we move past that, it’s easy for bad actors to wreak havoc. Blockchains and attestation systems may be suitable for empowering ‘trust’ at the ‘medium’ scale; around the size of towns and companies. Humans yearn for a tribe, and the sports teams and corporations that often that void tend to be more exploitative than fulfilling.

THE FREEDOM TO EXCLUDE & INCLUDE

If you do not like your nation state, why not put your energy (attention, taxes) into the communities that you do support? Of course, without residence cards and passports, the question becomes, how do you create a ‘boundary’ of those in the community, versus those outside it? Both the ZuPass and the Venezuelan currency projects seemed to offer partial solutions. In both cases, however, the 'threat' of exclusion was used more often than actual exclusion. Most status-seeking people did not want to do the socially dangerous work of telling someone “No!".

Zuzalu offloaded this exclusionary work to the Lustica Bay guards, who rarely ever checked the ZuPass via the QR code. Because of this, I was able to continue attending the conference events despite my ZuPass losing its validity. A couple times, though, the organizers' lieutenants did check and turn me away. The threat of exclusion seemed to be sufficient to shape the social dynamics.

I saw this first hand at the end of Zuzalu. A final dinner was organized on the jetty with the fake lighthouse. The actual organizers were checking the ZuPasses, and consequently I was refused entry. Considering I had not sent a dime to the Zuzalu organizers, and had already received so much, I was not offended.

Dejected, I sat along the jetty. I watched as groups of other ‘illegal aliens’ were turned away, before striking up a conversation with someone in the same situation. They were a contributor to the crypto and longevity fields, but they had been explicitly banned by one of the Zuzalu organizers from attending the final events that evening. Their crime? Being “a bit shilly”.

Whether or not they deserved this designation, it made me reflect on the power structures behind the curtain:

• Who had the authority to ban someone?

• Was there any chance to repeal it?

• Was there a process for giving people warnings for minor offenses?

• Would it ever be declared publicly, or would the declaration of banishment remain only in secretive group chats?

DECENTRALIZING POWER

In "The Dawn of Everything", Graeber argues against the dogma that as societies grow, so does the need for organized violence. Order can be maintained through a hierarchy of violent lackeys, but it can also be maintained through the undeniable charisma of a leader, or through a sect capable of ordering its secrets (see: Scientology).

Zuzalu faced a conundrum, as it did not actually have a monopoly on force. While people could be banned from events, it was up to the Lustica Bay employees, or even the Montenegrin police, to actually exercise violence. Consequently, an underground was formed, as someone could be "banned" by Zuzalu but not actually removed from the area.

Is it possible for these new communities to scale, without having some sort of organized violence? And if so, will they provide it on their own, or be dependent upon the existing nation-states to do so?

Many view the recognition by nation states as one of the final steps in the evolution of a ‘network state’; to be able to, for instance, create a passport that actually permits travel to other regions. However, by the time a ‘network state’ gains recognition from nation states, it seems likely that the ‘network state’ will have lost its way; becoming a centralized point of corruption, despite its supposedly “decentralized” governance.

Alternatively, the ‘coordi-nations’ model may prove to be a more robust way of organizing society run. Direct action to redistribute resources could eventually supplant most of the reasons why we perceive a ‘need’ for government; pushing nation states to focus on building infrastructure rather than trying to provide solutions for everything.

No matter what label they apply to their community, leaders will eventually rub elbows with incumbent elites, and run the risk of ‘selling out’. When it reaches that point, will a successful ‘coordi-nation’ or ‘network state’ continue to operate for the benefit of its members, or will it become an entity itself that marginalizes its members for the sake of its continued growth? The fractal nature of ‘coordi-nations’ at least permits the non-violent excision of cancerous ‘nodes’, but co-opting seems inevitable as the balance of power shifts. Whether or not a coordi-nation is actually able to act like a fractal, rather than a VC cap table, seems the crucial differentiator.

MOSAIC

Rather than finding a perfect solution, perhaps we would be better off embracing a mosaic. To let the Boomers cling on to their Medicare and Social Security like passengers on the Titanic. To allow the Network State bros to have their little fiefdoms, and for the leftists to fill in the gaps in between.

While my ZuPass may have been invalid for much of my time at Zuzalu, I did gain two ‘stamps’ on it by moving my phone by a ‘NFC’ card. One was for attending a Pho party; the other for having interacted with ‘Zuzu’, the puppy that was rescued by Zuzalians.

A mosaic of stamps and attestations may be used to signal that someone is both ‘real’ and ‘cool’. If someone has stamps and positive attestations from a great variety of people and communities, some of which I know and respect, then that is a very strong signal that they would be a valuable addition to my own party or tribe. Will such crypto-stamps ever let me through passport control? Perhaps some day. Perhaps some day, they won’t need to.

Communities are united strongly when they share a taboo; of what NOT TO DO. In the “Dawn of Everything”, Graeber points out that the native Americans inhabiting California practiced many types of collective organization, but they seemed united in refusing the system of chattel slavery that their neighbors to the north practiced.

Even though there is tension between left and right leaning anarchists (the ‘coordi-nation’ and ‘network state’ groups, respectively), we may see them uniting to reject the worst parts of authoritarian regimes, even if they can’t agree on how to divide their cows.

While technology may empower some exponential curves, ‘trust’ can not be scaled without introducing exploitable weaknesses. True community must be worked for, it must be cultivated. Crypto may allow us to coordinate globally without the need for nation-states, but it will never satisfy the human yearning for genuine community.

Part IV: Nütopia: INTIMACY, CUDDLE PUDDLES, & ARMED MILITIAS

The final week of Zuzalu featured very little programming, but an onslaught of parties, culminating in a “Sunrise Celebration” on the penultimate night. Many of the discussions posted on the agenda revolved around the question of “What comes next?”.  Talk about when and where the next Zuzalu would be[17] punctuated the final days filled with reminiscing, dreaming about the future, and outdoor excursions.

By this point, many attendees no longer had a valid “ZuPass”. Dozens had extended their trips, with or without the blessing of the organizers. This created a selective pressure; those who were willing to stay “unofficially” seemed to be the most hungry to see Zuzalu actually turn into something real.

My AirBnB trip had ended, and I took to squatting in one of the fancy apartments in the marina village. I found out the space would be vacant for the next few days after co-hosting a dinner party there for the queer attendees. The party had been a ploy to see if any eligible bachelors had been missed in my census, but it also provided a reminder on the difference between ‘queer’ and ‘gay’.

Most of the attendees to the queer dinner party were female. One of them spoke about how she seemed to be attracted to couples; whether they be romantic or business partners. One married bisexual shared their excitement about going to a swinger’s resort in Mexico with another bi couple. Another shared that her girlfriend had become pregnant. Aside from the sharing of struggles and triumphs, talk trended towards ‘queer theory’ and ‘intersectionality’. The cisgender gay I had recruited from Grindr, who would have perhaps identified as queer, seemed lost. What was political about who he fucked?

My reading was that the females had experienced ways in which they were marginalized based on gender, and noticed a similarity to how they were marginalized based on their sexuality. This is what ‘intersectionality’ refers to; how marginalized groups face similar systemic pressures; that are often embedded into our institutions.

Many cis gays, having gained political recognition by their nation state, go on to use that system for their own agendas[19]. Queers, however, mix with established political structures like oil and water. They tend to recognize that nation states are used for one group to oppress others. This risk is very similar to one I’ve noticed amongst “libertarians”. While they resist the “boot of oppression” being applied to their throats, many seemed willing to don the boots if it meant making “profit”.

Zuzalu was incredibly queer. You can tell it by the way their boy-king runs. You can sense it in the pink unicorn rainbow aesthetics of Ethereum. In its matriarchy of organizers. I found the abundance of queer energy superficially pleasing, but also incredibly frustrating, because my gaydar was practically useless there.

I made a move on a Zuzulian at a dance party twice. The first was at the end of the first Grimes performance, hosted in a Soviet-era building repurposed as a night club in the nearby port town of Tivat.

I had noticed that a cute boy flailed with more grace than most of the other nerds, and eventually I caught him in some place where the music did not obliterate any chance of communication.

“Hey - are you straight?” I asked bluntly.

“Yes…” he said, before I immediately followed with: “Why?”

He paused for a moment before a grin came over his face. He put out his hand, and met it with mine, before pulling me close in a ‘bro hug’. I am not sure what was going through his head, but I was satisfied with the outcome.

My other attempt came during the ‘Sunrise Celebration’.

The night had started with a final dinner party on the jetty, followed by an open bar at one of the beach clubs. A pair of musicians improvised on electric violin and saxophone over the blasting techno. This gathering was eventually shut down, but the diehards migrated to a smaller beach area. A guard posted to defend the liquor eventually started serving it instead.

During this exodus, I approached another guy, his face streaked with blue face paint. I asked him the same questions.

“Are you straight?” was followed by “Yes”, which was followed by “Why?”.

This time, I seem to have struck a nerve. “Err… it’s just… not tonight, sorry.”

My reading after the fact was that he may have dabbled in homo-intimacy in some social circles, but here, with his ‘straight’ friends, he did not want to muddy the waters.

The sunrise finally happened. People took turns dipping into the brisk water. We congregated around a firepit. A cuddle puddle formed on its perimeter.

I had been seeking intimacy, and while I did not find it in the way I had imagined, I still felt a stirring of my heart. During the course of my stay, I had built connections with some of the most active Zuzalians. The form varied; from holding each other up in acroyoga; to practicing “advanced cuddling” in jiu-jitsu classes, to risking our bodies together via parkour. Towards the end, we all shared a deep appreciation for Zuzalu; even a willingness to defend it.

This masculine intimacy came not just from respecting each others’ physical capabilities, but through sharing an emotional connection founded upon the belief that we humans can do better. I had been seeking a partner, but ended up finding kinship.

“Kinship [...] is a form of attachment that is “not just biological or even social”; it helps us understand how “disparate people [are] brought together by their shared, though different, experiences of marginalization”. “Instead of asking for recognition of stable and fixed ways of being, kinship offers a “potentiality of the otherwise.” [20]

Zuzalu was a celebration of the otherwise.

As emotionally vibrant and spiritually rich as communes and tribes may become, they struggle to scale past Dunbar’s number; and for this reason, they have historically tended to lose autonomy to the force of militants.

Will crypto and all this neo-governance chatter ever change that? Will trust and coordination be able to be built between tribes and DAOs, city states and trade guilds, until there is no need for a rent-seeking elite?

The outcome is still undecided, but I know now there is no “moat” for any community without genuine connection and the willingness to protect it.

Footnotes

[1]Typically each apartment went for $400 a night. In theory, by paying $2000 a night, with five other roommates, it would have been possible for this to not need the help of a billionaire, but coordinating that would have been practically impossible.

[2] The messenger never followed up, leading to much frustration.

[3]The effects of the therapy seem to be useful for extending human healthspan.

[4] People needed a special type of ‘test network’ currency called Goerli eth to use the app; so the project had to fund people in this fake currency for them to use it, creating a large barrier to entry

[5]  I ran into a hierarchy of 'simp farmers' that run 'this part of twitter';

relatively attractive females that exploited the gender ratio in nerd communities to accumulate followers.

They were seemingly not affiliated with crypto, but like a horny straight man in a yoga studio, it was hard to not sense something being off.

[7] From Gordon's podcast on Animism; paraphrasing Hugh on the ancient philosopher Ivan Illich. https://runesoup.com/2023/05/tools-of-the-magician-artificial-intelligence-technology-and-the-future-solo-show/

[8] Iatrogenic: illness caused my medical treatment

[9] Meet the Crypto Rich Who Want to Live Forever: Inside Vitalik's Zuzalu - Decrypt

https://decrypt.co/142530/meet-crypto-rich-who-want-live-forever-inside-vitaliks-zuzalu/

[10] Feeling inspired from Burning Man, I had brought a selection of teas to ‘gift’ to people. Additionally, I offered both tarot reading and massage services. All provided a great excuse to get time to talk 1 on 1.

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_ghost

[12] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/prospectus-on-prospera

[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_alchemical_elixir_poisoning

[14] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41990981

[15] Aside from offering Vitalik a passport, it seemed likely the incumbent prime minister was in talks with the infamous Do Kwon before his arrest in Monte Negro. Presumably, Do Kwon was seeking a new identity or protection in exchange for crypto.

[16] https://theblockchainsocialist.com/otns-the-rise-of-coordi-nations-phase-2-has-begun/

[17] Thailand seems a likely candidate. When polled, residents liked the 8 week format, but some would prefer a 10 week.

[19] Drag queens/transexuals have inherited the political machinery used for gay marriage

[20] https://thebaffler.com/latest/queer-history-now-miller

[21] https://decrypt.co/143690/do-kwon-claims-to-have-backed-political-party-in-montenegro-report

[22]Many of the nearby towns were on the Adriatic sea. The nearby port town of Tivat recently had its harbor excavated to fit megayachts, and Kotor provided docking for cruise ships. Connected to the Mediterranean, it felt like Montenegro was aspiring to be Italy if not Monaco, but mostly for vacationing Serbs and Slavs.

[24] Graeber, The Dawn of Everything

Bittersweet memories are the strongest.

Meeting with you was a release of so many years of frustration. For so long, I felt like a lone daisy in a field of grass at these conferences. To finally meet another queer in crypto... and to find out that you had some modicum of conscientiousness? To melt into one another so effortlessly… absolutely, unforgettable.

Yet as pleasantly surprised as I was by our compatibility, the harsh reminder of our union's transitory nature bit me deeply. This missive is an explanation for why I was so quiet the morning after.

...

I am wrapped in a protective cloak of irony; many statements are both truth and sarcasm at once.

One such example: for me, first base is massage, second is sex, third is kissing, and fourth is making plans for the future.

Despite this, it was shocking to find a similar hierarchy mirrored back at me.

As we lay in bed, still in the post-orgasmic afterglow, I contemplated whether to ask you for snugs. After all, many people have difficulty falling asleep while spooning. Your response both shocked me and made a lot of sense.

Boundaries are, after all, our only chance to keep things sacred. Without making some things forbidden or mundane, how can we elevate others towards the heavens?

...

While I was in the would-be cult leader Carol's thrall, my heart was torn in two directions. 💔

In one way, it reached towards loving all: an impossible task, even if a noble goal.

In the other, my possessive boyfriend forbade me from loving any others as I loved him.

I'm still gluing back the pieces.

...

On this most recent Valentine's day, I had a surprisingly pleasant first date. I so respected him, and so looked forward to seeing him again, that I lingered on first base rather than trying to steal second. My reward? ... being ghosted. 👻

And yet, fate would not have it: he was on the same flight as me to Denver!

And that, I suppose, mirrors what I am worried about now: to be nothing other than a source of momentary pleasure, rather than be recognized as a fountain of eternal love.

It may be impossible to love all… but being near you makes it seem worth trying,, if not easy.

I hope that you might find me worthy of being a lasting member of your ever evolving circle of friends.

Yours Truly, Tristan

Their union will bring change how we come to know truth.

At Your Own Risk is a collection celebrating the expected child: #DeSci.

Draw inferences from the following collection: At Your Own Risk.

auction://0xabEFBc9fD2F806065b4f3C237d4b59D9A97Bcac7?network=mainnet&tokenId=8622&auctionId=0x8da397f19d1e7d5c93fa301b970ff93ef3b3dc11db82df6f3ef11a3acb52bc00

Proceeds from the above auction are ‘Split’ to the researchers involved in the project, a multi-signature wallet for conducting additional HIV research, and partnering organizations:

• Dog Longevity DAO

• The Foresight Institute

• Desci.Eth

• Science Fund

More info below on this series of experiments below:

https://mirror.xyz/0x735B3E637d8006887D97b7DfE4D846a3F1002A6D/FGOfWaNnIj8xllXb8PGS_AqFKDDFPl9C2xHLXJglaeQ

Phase 1 Follistatin Plasmid Trial Interview Access Token (5/5)

https://mirror.xyz/0x422dFd5F83361149598B7BA7cBF6180e30f05ED5/uhPCudlAD9Z8ay66PhfPwPTjY_RtO_Kdkj2AZXnhAcM

”Supercoiled Plasma” (2022)

This DESCI art piece created by Foresight Existential Hope studio to support the clinical research of Mac Davis and Walter Patterson at the Minicircle Gene Therapy Clinic in the special economic zone of Prospera in Honduras. It features a closed loop of supercoiled plasmid DNA floating above a pool of discovery. Plasmids are small circular loops of DNA which can be used to genetically modify adult humans at very low cost. Plasmids as a gene therapy platform express existential hope for our species by inspiring the human imagination to creatively re-write the future of our identity.

From the Foresight Institute’s Existential Hope SXSW collection

DHM on Post-Drinking Headache Intensity

"Patrick Bateman in 2021”

A cutting parody of the mindless maximalism of some biohackers; examining what Patrick Bateman may be like in the current era.

https://mirror.xyz/0x735B3E637d8006887D97b7DfE4D846a3F1002A6D/RlKdGHlLrG-2rBiQEodCkXwCOF97oHqjzyjWsY0Hg6o

“Mammalian Gene Therapy Cassette X-8 with Intronic Sequences…

The Humble Lab Mouse Fighting the Grim Reaper

From the OpenSea collection ‘At Your Own Risk: Sci-Files’

A Video Loop for the Research Collective by Protobacillus

https://showtime.io/t/polygon/0x8a13628dd5d600ca1e8bf9dbc685b735f615cb90/21440

As featured in this video explaining the plasmid gene therapy project:

EMBODIED, ENMESHED

Five digital collages exploring the intersection of human bodies and technical systems by socio.

https://mirror.xyz/0xF4b33DeE35C12aa1660263C4C9Aa553dcb407Bbe

A BioArt series

contributed by ANdi Wallwhore

https://zora.co/collections/zora/8636

https://vimeo.com/335690825

https://vimeo.com/594666293

“DNA ID DECON - Problems in Techno-Ancestry in the 1000 Vaginas Project” (2018) & “The Libidinal Economy of Aseptic Containment, Interpersonal Protective Equipment (IPE)” (2020) now available on OpenSea [1 , 2]

Autophagy Activator Drug Discovery (2021)

Dani Elyse (UltraRare Bio)

License for Future IP as NFT

https://mirror.xyz/0x735B3E637d8006887D97b7DfE4D846a3F1002A6D/lVayd7423jeE5Rofa8XYCUrG00hjKk_y6KDRAsP7zAs

At Your Own Risk

https://zora.co/collections/zora/8530

At Your Own Risk was held on 3/13/22 in Austin, and had the following objectives:

• Bridge the scientific and crypto communities

• Showcasing new ways for coordinating and sharing research

• Revealing data and prototypes for community projects

NFTs can be more than JPEGs:

• The HIV series will automatically split auction proceeds to a number of contributors that made the experiment possible, while the majority of the proceeds will go towards additional research

• Some will be be representations of patents, some will be actual licenses for future patents, and one is an ‘anti-patent’; placing the concept into the public domain.

As the decentralized ecosystem matures, the pipeline from idea to experiment to commercialization will surely widen; enabling treatments and technologies that were previously unattainable to manifest into reality.

A Mini #DeSci Manifesto

‘Science’ as it is today, has been captured by institutions; directed by, at best, careerist mid-wits, and at worst, profit-seeking psychopaths.

There is no such thing as ‘science’ separate from the economic forces that fund the research, the research’s interpretation, and the interpretation’s dissemination.

Distributed ledgers may upend many of the perverse incentives that perpetuate the status quo at the cost of innovation. #DeSci may very well bring about a second scientific revolution.

At Your Own Risk was organized by the Research Collective, a 501c3/DAO for performing and promoting science.