In a hotel-turned-campus on a reclaimed island in Malaysia, crypto and tech entrepreneurs are building software, chomping down Australian prime ribeye, hitting the gym ¡ª and getting schooled in a radical blueprint for creating new sovereign states from scratch.
They have descended on Forest City to attend Network School, the brainchild of former Coinbase executive and ¡°The Network State¡± author Balaji Srinivasan. In this troubled megaproject once envisaged to house some 50 times its current population, they¡¯re conducting a real-life experiment of sorts with Srinivasan¡¯s vision of ¡°startup societies¡± defined less by historical territory than shared beliefs in technology, cryptocurrency and light regulation.
Techno-utopian ideas have circulated in Silicon Valley and the crypto community for well over a decade, with few signs of gaining wider acceptance. Yet Srinivasan is doubling down on his bet that the world is ripe for his brand of nation-state disruption, and is making Forest City a testing ground for plans to roll out the movement globally.
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