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BREAKDOWN: Networks vs. Governments – Could Crypto-Powered Digital Communities Challenge the Power of Cities and States?

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Cryptocurrencies, Cryptocurrency, Dlt, Tokenization, Coindesk, Distributed Ledger, Blockchain, Tech News, Business News, Ethereum, Bitcoin, News, Digitalassets, Daily News, Decentralization, Defi, Crypto, Business

4.8689 Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2021

⏱️ 16 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A reading of Balaji Srinivasan’s essay “The Network Union.”

This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io and Bitstamp.

What exists between a Facebook group and a formal organization? Right now, not much. But in the future, Balaji Srinivasan argues, blockchain-powered communities will be able to exert the power to help them develop the polities of the future. On this “Long Reads Sunday,” NLW reads Balaji’s “The Network Union.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

0:09.0

It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.

0:15.2

The breakdown is sponsored by nexor.io and BitStamp and produced and distributed by CoinDest.

0:22.6

What's going on, guys? It is Sunday, May 30th, and that means it's time for Long Reads Sunday.

0:28.7

Recently, we have had a lot of heavy Long Reads Sundays. We've countered Bitcoin's utility

0:34.6

fud by seeing how Bitcoin is used in politically difficult countries around the world.

0:38.9

We've discussed the geopolitics of central bank digital currencies.

0:42.7

I thought for this holiday weekend, we'd get a little more out there and talk about not places

0:47.5

and political groups that exist today, but what might exist in the future.

0:52.1

In the same way that the internet has now evolved native digital currencies

0:55.7

that don't belong to any one company or geographic region, it strikes me as nearly unfathomable

1:01.3

that it won't also develop native organizational forms. Obviously, we're watching a lot of the

1:06.0

proto versions of those efforts with DAWS. How do you add resource coordination layers to informal social networks?

1:12.9

There are many, many steps left to evolve here, and obviously a huge range of networks and

1:16.8

communities and people doing so. And for today's LRS, I'm going to read a recent piece by

1:21.7

past guest Balaji Shrinivasin on one version of how this might all look in the future,

1:26.7

the network union. The network union.

1:30.6

The network union is the antecedent of the network state, a social network with a blockchain,

1:34.8

a leader, and a purpose. We know how to start new communities, new companies, and new currencies,

1:39.8

but the process of founding new cities or countries may require new ideas. Here, we describe an abstraction we call the Network Union, a social graph organized in a tree-like

1:49.0

structure with a leader, a purpose, a crypto-based financial and messaging system, and a daily

1:53.6

call to action.

...

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