NN Ep:14 - Networked Diasporas: The Case of SeeDAO with Helena Rong

Transcript

Welcome back to the network nations miniseries on the green pill podcast. I'm Felix Bear. I will be your host for this episode. And in this episode, we want to move from theory to practice and look at how network nations can actually begin to take shape in the real world. That means we will focus on something we often call proto network nations. So very early stage experiments where communities start to tinker with some core elements of the network nations framework such as translocal membership, decentralized governance and shared resource management all across geographic boundaries and facilitated by digital networks around the globe. We see many of these protoet network nations um that are beginning to take shape um and some of the examples we

have already discussed in previous episodes. Um we talked to community stewards of um communities such as Buringman region and edge city and today we want to look at yet another very interesting uh case another interesting early stage community experiment which is seed and seed um was founded in 2021 and describes itself as a digital polace for global nomads. It brings together builders, creators, and thinkers, many of whom are part of the global web 3 community into a self-governing ecosystem that spans both physical and digital spaces. Today, the community stretches across more than 25 countries and it includes more than thousand contributors. But what's interesting

about CEDO is that it's not just merely a decentralized autonomous organization which is purposed for you know coordination and investment but it really has this ambition to become something like a community of kinship and at its core um it is also stated on their website. So the website says basically sea aims and aspires to become a community to nurture a sense of a good life together through practices of like collective action, mutual support and shared learning and essentially also through an ambition to cultivate a strong sense of common belonging.

So beyond all the governance tooling which is often um built in in Dow such as onchain identity and reputation systems and so on there are a lot of cultural practices and social organizations that CEOs tries to build on top. So, Cedor has a town hall um where members are often meeting in digital or sometimes even in physical spaces to discuss matters um to vote on things to get a sense of where they want to move this collective community project towards um and they have also um gatherings in physical spaces. So, they have um local nodes and they have a set of cultural practices which they are trying to cultivate.

So the interesting thing is that CDO brings together the technical dimension of Dows with like the aspiration of becoming a nation and in this sense is like a very interesting case to look at when we talk about protoet network nations. It has many familiar features and that we try to describe for our theory. There's a translocal community as I said so there are people meeting in digital but also in physical spaces is a strong sense of kinship and there are a lot of emerging forms of collective governance. So the question we want to explore is whether Cedaw can be understood as a protoet network nation and what its experience can teach us about building networks forms of community self-governance from the bottom up. To explore these questions,

we are very excited to be joined today by Helina Rang. Helena Rang is an assistant professor um for interactive media and business at the New York University in Shanghai where she leads a lab um on protocol innovation. Helena is also a close friend and collaborator of the network nations community. So she's very familiar with a lot of the concepts we're trying to discuss and explore in this context. But at the same time she has also conducted research in-depth research um on the seed community itself. So she spoke to a lot of the members and explored basically how um forms of digital governance, trust building and um yeah community practice are taking shape within their framework.

So she's basically perfectly positioned to bring together network nation theory with the practical realities of CEDA. So this will be an exciting episode. I'm very much looking forward to it. Enjoy um the ride. Hi Helena, super excited to have you on the episode to discuss Cow as a potential case study for network nations. >> Yeah, super happy to be here. You are one of the few people probably on this planet right now who can discuss this interesting intersection between the emerging community project of Cedaw since you've spent some time with them and even worked I think with them um and you are also a close collaborator of our

network nations community so you're familiar with our theory um so I hope you can help us build a bridge um between CAD as a case study and network nations as like a theoretical framework today yeah maybe you want to kick us off actually by telling us a little bit about CIDA, what this community is about and what your relationship and maybe also past engagement with this community is. >> Yeah. So, um yeah, my relationship with this group, I guess, has been, you know, um I've been studying the group uh as an example of a decentralized Chinese community and because I've been, you know, looking at Dow's uh more of a western context in the past. So I was really curious to see you know like whether different cultural and kind of you know societal norms actually brew

different kinds of governance. And so when I discovered Sidow which is one of the largest kind of Chinese-speaking DAO community uh I was really intrigued because I wanted to know you know their philosophies how they are you know dealing with governance and kind of compare uh my understanding of what I learned about Dows in the past with you know like a different context. Uh so I've been kind of you know like looking at this group for the past uh I would say over half a year and so working closely with my kind of collaborator uh professor Sununju um who's also based in Shanghai on kind of you know uh analyzing this from a sociological uh perspective and so you know producing kind of academic papers and I think like being part of uh network nations discussion really helped us kind of you

know formulate a lot of our ideas um and so is actually um know this data that was established published back in 2022 and we know that that's a period where you know like Dows were um you know like very popular it was very trendy a lot of you know different kind of groups and uh from all over the world were experimenting with it and so it was one of the most kind of prominent uh it became one of the most prominent kind of Chinese speaking Dows despite the fact that they actually welcome everybody uh but I think you know um it was I think in its inception kind of drawing mostly uh you know like Chinese people from around the world. So, uh that's where we, you know, kind of see it as a diasporic uh community. Uh but what was interesting is the background of Zidow

is it at first uh was initially a company like the two founders uh who you know started the DAO they were actually at first working on a web 3 like NFT company uh which I think at the end they realized okay you know this company structure this hierarchical structure wasn't for me like wasn't for them. So, so they wanted to kind of, you know, they were also paying attention to what was going on kind of these new organizational innovations and then so wanted to turn their kind of company into like more of a community and that's where it kind of you know had this transition. Uh so which I thought you know when I found out about this it's a very interesting kind of background right because I think um it had some of its DNA in kind of you know like um uh

innovation and kind of you know like thinking about like you know organization governance and structure and there was a very intentional kind of um you know switch from what was seen as these traditional kind of uh structures of how people organize themselves to do things to you know these more decentralized versions which focus more are the community building aspect. >> Yeah, I think that's super interesting. So, they started out uh as kind of a small community project within the web 3 scene, but they have definitely the aspiration as far as I can tell from your stories, but also from the website to grow into something much larger because on the website it also mentions that they want to become actually a digital polace so like a city state for global nomads not only for the web 3

community but also as you said the Chinese diaspora at large. So, could you maybe tell us a little bit about this um this community they're trying to speak to? Um you call it a diaspora community. I don't think they explicitly said it on the website, but it attracts mainly people with a um link to the Chinese culture, I would say. Um so, so what's what's the connection there? >> Yeah, I think that has to do with kind of like, you know, their own um you know, founders own background. they were based in China but they also you know like were very aware of what was going on like uh you know in the western context of what was happening to Dows but I think in my interviews with them actually I I found out that you know at first they wanted to kind of integrate

with the existing kind of you know like western Dow so I think they reached out to you know groups like banklist DAO and a few others trying to learn you know what others have been doing but I think maybe because of language because of culture and because of you know like the physical location uh it was you know like they it it was kind of difficult for them to integrate into kind of you know these western dows so they were kind of like okay why don't we build our own dows and to um you know serve the community who you know in China there was also a lot of people who were interested in this so I think yeah you're right about their you know website featuring uh kind of their vision which is building a digital coal for like a million people or something

and I think that kind of um there's another background that is quite important here is because uh when it was uh you know first being created it was actually during the period of covid right so we know that it's a period where there's a lot of uncertainty you know a lot of kind of shift uh to like work from home hybrid work hybrid you know work and so people's lives were you know facing a lot of changes and it was also a period where you know like I think people might have felt isolated if they weren't able to if their physical mobility was reduced because of regulatory changes uh which varied from place to place but we also know that in China, you know, there was a period where it was much more difficult to kind of, you know, like uh move around, right? So, I think um so all of these

things sort of coincided uh to a moment where, you know, they uh you know, first were kind of interested in Yeah. what was going on kind of with these organizational innovation, but then they realized it was an opportunity to also kind of build these primarily online based community to connect people who maybe needed that uh during a special time. Yeah. Right. And um it is um a platform to connect um beyond just like you know the usual web free stuff which is often focused on like investment and like you know I don't know like different kind of tech stuff. Um but they also have like that they seem to focus really on these kind of core values right which they want to nurture and cultivate together. And there is

this interesting notion on their website that they want to build like a decentralized community right with web free infrastructure but focused on the Chinese diaspora as we said um with the purpose of pursuing a good life and that's almost like very philosophical right almost arisetilian in a way so so there is this notion of like how to constitute um yeah a virtuous good life together and I wonder if you you can plug us a bit more give us a bit more info on on what they actually think is a good life and what constitutes it. >> Yeah. So what is extremely interesting uh about this group and in particular like uh the the philosophy that they adopted as part of their vision which also drew me in at the first place is

they're kind of um they were drawing inspiration from Dowist philosophy >> right so actually uh but Dowist philosophy is not something that's entirely foreign within you know web 3 because actually you know in the paper that uh Vitalik uh Glen Wild and Puja Haver has written the decentralized society searching for web three soul when they first introduced the notion of you know like uh soulbound token they actually quoted chapter 62 of lau uh which says that the heart and home of the 10,000 things good souls treasure it and lost souls find shelter in it it's kind of like you know depicting this notion of a kind of a free wandering world where you know all kinds of beings are accepted in this very plural uh and

uh way right and that's a kind of uh delineating very different notion of liberty and freedom that is very different from kind of you know the uh you know kind of liberal notion of freedom that we know in the western context >> and you know like Sata in particular has also drawn to these ideas and in their you know manifesto you know white paper >> um and I think also like featured on our websites the three key words uh that encapsulate what they think a good life is are uh co-presence emergence and wondering. So wondering in in Chinese translating to sao is kind of you know the dowist philosophy of what freedom is. So I think these three words kind of

you know like show um in different ways of what you know the group was aspiring to be uh at a kind of visionary level. So uh or co-presence is kind of talking about the who of what is part of a good life which is basically you know the good life begins with collective living uh with being with others right means kind of co-present you know you're co-present with someone someone else and so this might include you know like friendship uh mutual recognition and building some sort of a comments right and that's something that you know like in web 3 I think uh some some people uh are really kind of interested in you know drawing inspirations from like you know Elanor Astramm uh and the kind of

the literature on comments is something that we're all very familiar with um and then the second key word is uh yongen or uh translating into English it's emergence and this is the how right so how does you know how does um co-presence emerge how does a good life kind of emerge from you know like being together so I think this is um kind of you know what what they think governance ance uh should should function as so it's kind of like you know governance should enable emergence rather than impose control and I think this is what differs uh you know seed out differs from uh maybe some of its western counterparts because I think when we talk about like you know like governance mechanism design uh it's always kind of

you know this this trend of uh you know thinking of how to optimize governance how to you know optimize everything we can think of kind of you know uh pre preemptively such that we can encode these laws as code and have them you know like built into smart contracts and basically have this kind of perfect you know like uh automated uh process in which decisions can be made but I think um you know the notion of emergence introduces something quite different and also in Dowist philosophy um there's a word for it it's called woue or non-action right so it's kind of like you know um governance emerges from this notion of non-governance as a form of governance uh which is you know it's it's not about coercive coordination but

it's actually about you know leaving enough kind of gray space uh for things to kind of you know juggle jiggle around if you know they don't they don't necessarily work and I think there's examples of seeds governance which you know like uh following this sort of um philosophy in their design of their governance protocols which can which we can talk about later uh wi-i which we see you know like during moments of uncertainty they actually emerges as something that provides some kind of resilience and infrastructure. Um and then finally the third word uh that that you know the third key word uh which is or wondering. Um, so this is kind of the why of they're doing this, right? Like why do you have to have a co-presence of people who share the values and you know

they need to kind of emerge their the way they they govern themselves and this is kind of you know at the pinnacle of what they you know see what a good life is is particularly the notion of a form of freedom that is very different uh from you know the western freedom from constraint but rather it's freedom through relation right so it's cultivating kind of ease and balance while while living inside constraint and it's about you know not necessar- neessarily pursuing kind of individualistic pursuit of freedom but actually just allowing kind of differences to exist and you know to to to be right and so um and I think this is you know like in the context of uh you know the Chinese context where we know you know the kind of um culture is very different I think this you know

this is something that people find a form of kind of you know like uh solidarity and kind of connection connection too which is a very much kind of culturally embedded um element um so Well, I think you know to encapsulate what you know like good life means in sido it's kind of like you pursue this notion of wandering as a type of freedom you know drawing out what I was kind of describing from even uh La's uh original writing uh through um allowing for you know governance and rules and kind of these um uh you know ways of interacting as a collective to emerge and then you are sharing that with the collective through uh you know this notion of

co-presence whether it's online or offline. >> Yeah, I think it's beautiful. I mean, they have a very deep philosophical and cultural understanding of the community they want to build and I think that is in many ways like a stark contrast actually to a lot of the web 3 projects which often have sophisticated tooling and so on. But I I would say at least um often not a very thorough or deep understanding of the the cultural elements of the communities they want to nurture. But um despite of this um I think the key question then becomes though how to actually um bring the these kind of values alive. How to build a community around this. Um you mentioned building as one of the activities that can help to instantiate a community. That's actually something

which was also echoed in another episode we recorded with Teimmo Costner and John Hillis who are both community builders Absid and Kevin and they also said like it's great to to build like tooling and cultural and philosophical concept of community but in the end of the day you need a practice a day-to-day practice which brings people together and allows things to naturally evolve. So maybe before we go into the entire um theoretical part around network nations, maybe you can give us a sense of like what what is the kit that keeps this community together and helps it thrive at the moment like what are people doing in the day-to-day practice in Cedaw?

>> Yeah, I can definitely uh kind of try to describe it. Thankfully I have my notes with me on you know they they have a pretty elaborate uh governance structure. There's a different kinds of tokens that they use. I think to this day like I still like you know try to identify oh this token is used for this and so they they do have um so they have two um kind of uh main documents which hold the group together. One is kind of the white paper which is kind of outlining you know the visionary kind of ideals you know why they exist what they're striving for uh which is more qualitative right and then on the other hand it's about like how do we actually encode these into kind of governance rules through what they call a meta protocol. So with these two documents,

it's kind of almost like a yin-yang like dance, right? Like one is you know trying to uh uh you know like take them to the state of you know wondering and then one is like okay we're still on the ground like how do we you know manage these people who are you know joining the community. So basically um you know with this kind of meta protocol it's basically their kind of document uh for self-organization and so membership uh kind of begins uh with the creation of an onchain wallet uh and also a small transaction to activate participation. So this is kind of like you know the onboarding experience. I think a lot of people who first come in contact with web 3 uh would experience um and then so for them you know these newcomers they can earn

uh non-transferable contribution points I think it's called SCR uh for for the group and so this is kind of through like community activities uh which may be uh then converted into like a citizen badge uh or their seed NFT which is kind of granting you know people with voting rights uh in in their they have this kind of node um uh uh con consensus assembly, what they call like a basically kind of a arena for for people to like make proposals and to vote, right? So, it's kind of like you have to contribute enough in order to like kind of upgrade your badge into like a voting or uh at least you know person um right to make proposals. So it's not like you know I think with some other Dows sometimes you

know people can just join they can buy an NFT online and then without you know ever kind of uh having contributed to existing uh initiatives you know people can just make proposals that that's what I have seen other Dows but for Cow it's kind of like you need to settlement yourself into this community before having the right to do so um and then apart from the seed NFT they also have three um additional kind of um token instruments uh which can help you establish their entire socioeconomic infrastructure. uh one is is they have this kind of non-transferable reputation system uh called the Wong token which is kind of something that records uh the historical contributions and kind of determines the governance weight right

so we know that you know for some Dows uh the one token one vote uh you know generates a lot of problems with like you know SIBO attacks or kind of the whale problem right so I think like you know Cal having studying many other Dow governance models we're trying to kind of like reduce that um risk by introducing kind of this you know governance uh weighted token based on kind of um a reputation system which also I think like refreshes like every three months or something. So it's not something that you know you can accumulate. It's kind of like you know it's um kind of introducing uh this um uh way of encouraging people to constantly stay engaged in order to even have the governance right uh to to do uh to do certain things. Um and then they

also have you know their own soulbound tokens uh which represent you know their member skills, works, social identity. So it's kind of like you know what distinguishes one person from the other and so this is kind of you know something that's recorded uh and anchored within the seed naming service. Uh so this is you know basically each person would have their unifying credential under a unique onchain identity and I think this is also something quite intriguing because uh I think this is a moment where you know we see blockchain turning from a financial ledger to a social ledger and you know like I think this concept might be really abstract but you know I was in one of their in-person events actually

right after our network nations workshop last summer uh where Sidalo basically was having this digital nomad week. They were organizing this 200 person event uh in a small village in uh Fujian province in China. And then one night uh they had this kind of um uh this kind of group gathering with you know all the o OGC members kind of onchain identity their SNS and kind of a list of their contributions displayed on screen recognizing each person's endeavors and I think that moment really you know became really emotional for a lot of people because I think you know sometimes each person is made unique because of our unique kind of memories but I don't think there's necessarily

this kind of memory device which tracks these special moments and I think that's when like you know tokens not just financial tokens but you know the the real power of NFTTS I see is that you know it it can actually turn something that's intangible memorable meaningful into something that we can see and it not but might not be something that you know in the moment we recognize as being valuable but many years later right like these members when they see a list of things that they have done for the community that's when they feel like you know there's a strong resonance and I think that you know that's the power of the social ledger kind of recording these memories and having it an infrastructure for them to be stored and exist without the fear of eraser. Uh and and so I I I thought that was you know

something really beautiful about the way that they use tokens for managing this kind of social uh infrastructure for the group. Another token which is they they originally wanted to design also their you know own economic currency uh which is the C token. Uh so this was kind of like you know to sustain our common based production but in practice I think this was never this never took off and actually they just passed a proposal recently to you know basically uh entirely shut down this idea and just keep seed like a you know more of a social community without you know any financial motives because I think you know with good hearts law right like uh once you turn um you know financial incentives or you introduce that as part

of the group that kind of you know turns some people's contributions sentenc into something different. So I think that's something that they're um you know intentionally moving away from and that's a decision that has you know finally been made after the group has existed for more than two years. Um so yeah >> yeah super interesting. So I think like so we have two elements now here. Um on the one hand side there is like this philosophical and cultural aspiration to become more than just me merely like a online community but really cultivate this community of kinship around these set of like thist values which are embedded in Chinese culture and as as far as I understand there is like a lot of communities around the world which they are trying to bring together into this um larger community platform and

weave this kind of emergent identity from this. And then on the other end you have um the this very sophisticated um it sounds like it at least um governance structure with um various tokens which are enabling this community to you know um to to to coordinate together to collaborate and and yeah create a collective value I would say. So I think for us it's really interesting to to look at this as like a case study for network nations because it has a lot of the elements I think that we would assign to a protoet network nation at least um it has this kind of political identity it has sophisticated governance structures. So I wondered like from from your perspective do you feel like there is an emergent sense in this um in the seed amongst the seed people um that

there is some sort of like a form of nationhood maybe. So is there a strong sense of like shared kinship solidarity with the people in this network where people actually align around these kind of values and they're really trying to construct something with a shared future where they have some sort of like a political project you could say. Yeah, I think that's very interesting because I think um you know even during our discussion network nation as a name like nation carries a lot of you know connotations about you know nationhood and kind of you know kinship blood and um you know like like you said even political identity and I think um so for seed if we were to match its characteristics its qualities one to one

with some of the qualities that we see with network nation I think some of them really resonate while others may be more debatable. Like for instance, I think the notion of building a community where you have a bunch of people where, you know, there might not be necessarily, you know, related by blood, but they share, you know, similar values and, you know, this kind of mutual bonds and sense of sense of kinship, you know, like basically a good life that they wish uh they they they aspire to uh to to be part of. I think that definitely, you know, checks, right? like um you know as I mentioned before like seed is uh I think the commons that they're governing is the community itself right they're not building a software I mean they are building software and such

these tools to help you know the community to function but I think the primary um uh the primary kind of um you know purpose of the group existence is to sustain that community itself right it doesn't it simply just wants to exist um but I think in terms of um uh you know so so this I think shared identity uh the names the badges the reputation you know all of this is you know creating a sense of belonging across borders and I think that works also nicely with uh the idea of transport locality right because I think network nation um as we've mentioned how it differs from network state is it's you know refrain it's refraining from a claim of uh kind of territorial uh

ownership right so it's kind of like the emphasis more on the values rather than claiming land per se and I think that's exactly you know like what you know seed is also uh also doing right it's not you know really going around having people move there and buy land etc um and so uh it you know at least before existed primarily as a online community >> but maybe I just to to dive a bit deeper into this notion of transllocality just just to make it a bit more clear so what we understand as trans locality is basically this idea that um network nations are probably communities which are a existing in specific localities around the world. So there are people um with a Chinese kind of identity who kind of associate um with seed but they live

in scattered around the world and they meet either in online places or converge in gatherings or something in physical localities uh together at some points in time and I think and this creates this kind of online offline hybrid which is kind of like spanning the globe or at least large large parts of um of of of you know the world uh and brings them together into this shared governance um structure and political um framework. But I think and actually interesting thing is just to to mention this here. I remember that seed was actually trying to um not only exist in um online spaces so so to provide like a platform but to intentionally bring people together for gathering similar to pop-up cities in

order to kind of really build the communities in the real world as well in a tangible way. >> Yeah. And I think that like kind of physical presence is part of the co-presence, right? I and I think it's a more powerful one than a purely online one. And I think the group is you know um with the event that they hosted last summer which is this digital nomad week actually um which was collaboration with local kind of or you know like nonprofit organizations NOS's and kind of you know local groups universities uh trying to explore the intersection of kind of you know digital nomadism and this idea of rural revitalization which I think in the context of China is super interesting and so yeah I think like this kind of offline online kind of um

you know like um duality definitely exists to both mutually reinforce the group because I think you know most of the members are scattered across China across the world and you know like some sometimes maybe you know there's not really um uh I think in bigger cities you might have you know like uh more you know group members who can meet offline but you know there's also others who are like kind of scattered in you know uh maybe places where there's no other sit members so I think Their locality nature is like you know one one is they might have you know multiple members who are in the same city. They can, you know, maybe sometimes organize, you know, their own gatherings, but they also make these intentional endeavors, which is more puffet city-like, which is, you

know, having these very um uh sort of, you know, planned events where people actually, you know, block out a date in their calendars and they would fly over uh for example to to this P9 village uh that I was also, you know, fortunate enough to have attended last summer. So, so there's a kind of a mix of these things, but I definitely see that you know like in-person engagement is super important for community building because you know you can have so many Zoom meetings but you know having offline engagement is just different and I think uh that's also what I think the trend that we see with edge cities pop-up cities right like uh people kind of you know actually intentionally gathering offline uh to to discuss ideas to kind of you know share moments together so I

think that's also one one thing that uh seed's operations s uh yeah the the way they kind of you know uh um you know have this group uh also resonates with u ideas that we've talked about in our work nations >> and and I think in this sense it is like an interesting upgrade to um the more I don't know traditional or widespread notion of what what Dows can be and are usually are purposed for because usually Dows are kind of like almost instrumental kind of like governance architectures you have a platform and you have people engaging with it and usually they're just engaging with a DAO in order to refine its toolings or or have like a very narrow kind of you know like purpose of like you know fintech or something but like in this case it feels

much more like you have actually an existing global community around this like Chinese diasporic identity and now they're building scaffolding and coordination tooling with the DAO platform to support this existing real world community to coordinate in better ways and I think that's qualitatively speaking something very different that was like having a D which is kind of like a end in itself. >> Yeah, absolutely. I think like definitely there's this kind of tension between instrumental rationality versus value rationality, right? Like one is like how we do it and then that's about like you know designing the governance systems and optimizing the way you know organizations function to usually strive for more efficiency. Um and I think with the speed of web three like sometimes

that you know accelerates to something that's very rapid and on the other hand is value rationality right it's like why do we this at the first place apart from just you know like playing with these tools which are super cool and new and I think that's you know uh kind of in resonance with what I was discussing earlier with these two documents which is key to seed right one is white paper which is outlining its values and one is the meta protocol which is you know having this very elaborate kind of design of you know different kind of tokens in order to achieve that. So I think like you know one is definitely serving the other but uh you know I I think the the the value rationality here is even more important if you want to build something that's more long-term that's more kind of you know socially uh

sustainable. Yeah. And before I think so, so we started this part of the conversation by kind of outlining okay we have um elements of the network nations theory that map quite neatly on CDO and I think we discussed like some core elements now um and on the other end we have maybe some elements that are maybe less aligned and before we um I think so we had some discussions of course leading up to this interview and we discussed for instance the notion of sovereignty which is key to our understanding of network nations. So in our understanding for you know like a political entity and like a network nation to operate with um as little interference by external actors as possible you need a sovereign

infrastructure and like some sort of like tooling which allows you to act with a certain degree of autonomy as at least in specific domains that are relevant to you. Um and that might be a little bit intension I think with um how CEO sees itself as far as I understand and there there's maybe a little bit of interesting um background also to unpack with um the relation between CIDA um as like a global community and also the Chinese state which is obviously kind of like at least culturally interwoven with this project.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I think in yeah the word sovereignty is definitely you know something that's more uh kind of tricky right in the context of China and I think you know in the context of China we don't see much of too much of collective action uh because so so I think like you know to to to see as potentially become a political identity I I don't really see that happening and I think you know they would also disagree that that is something that they're you know moving toward or striving to be but I think on the other And uh what is you know like possible and what we do see as something that's prevalent is social action right so in China you actually have a lot of kind of these you know like bottomup initiatives where you know communitydriven kind of

um governance kind of innovations that's happening to um essentially you know like solve for a lot of you know like social collective problems from the bottom up um and so I I would say you know maybe categorize sidal uh as more of a social and even a spiritual identity, you know, because they're, you know, striving for these dowist kind of um uh ideals. But I I don't really see that uh them being like a political identity per se. And I think in terms of you know like um building this uh infrastructure which you know allows for self-organization I think for seed the the goal isn't necessarily to escape from the existing you know to ex their existing uh kind of

state or nation. It's rather kind of building this kind of parallel world which you can you know then have the the opportunity to um you know connect with others and kind of who share the same value. So it's in a way I think it's exit without exiting right there's still a lot of touch points like people's lives are still very much entangled within their existing systems and the goal I think for most people or at least you know all the members I've talked to I I don't think there is a kind of um intentional you know placing the the the existing like nation nation state as the opposition that's something they need to run away from but it's kind of like building this parallel infrastructure which allows them to have more to you like basically have an expanded notion

of how life could be possible, especially, you know, if we were talking about, you know, COVID and people, you know, wanting to find communities. I think those were real needs, but I don't think it was, you know, like trying to necessarily escape or exit from where they were. So I think that's also why you know with this kind of um you know digital nomad meets rural radization is particularly interesting to me as a researcher because then we see you know these very interesting touch points where these two worlds actually collide interface and there is a potentiality for common ground in which you know I think at the end of the day like you know people want to live a good life and that's their primary value and and you know why they they do certain things and

not necessarily to build something you know new uh for the sake of it. Um so so I think that that would be uh you know what what I >> and I think it's not in opposition to how we um understand what network nations could be because um in the first instance uh network nations um try to fulfill the needs and aspirations of a specific community and that does not have to mean that they are in opposition to territorial states nation states um and pre I think that's precisely um not necessarily the case because in Contrast to the network state right the project of Balagi and his peers um network nations are not try trying to claim territory so they're not trying to buy

land and you know like basically compete on the level of the nation state around territorial jurisdictions uh and and the control over them but basically they can build um scaffolding which can be complimementaryary and layered on top of um the existing international order and fill in where maybe our existing public institutions sometimes fail or have difficulties to address the specific needs, expectations and so on of um underrepresented communities and in this way it can be in and I think that that's actually also an interesting case with CDO there can be this interesting collaboration between potentially in the future between network nations and um um nation states because they might be able

to plug in um where um to to mutually support each Because in the end of the day like the members of course of network nations also are always um have multiple identities and affiliations because they are of course located in specific actually existing nation states um they are part of you know like the essential services healthcare system all of these kind of things which are hard infrastructures that probably network nations cannot provide in the foreseeable future. So most network like a quite narrow I guess like value proposition and try to plug in where there's a concrete need of specific communities to build additional like institutional frameworks if that makes any sense like could you maybe flash

also let's maybe hypothesize a little bit but like where do you see this potential collaboration between um the existing structures in the Chinese state and and seed to to play out like where where can plug in maybe to fulfill specific in YouTube. >> Yeah, I can maybe speak a little bit more about kind of um you know this uh mergence of kind of you know the the trend of digital nomadism in China and across the world right and you know what China is trying to do with you know rural revitalization which has been uh the question you know how to deal with the countryside which has been you know like decades of uh uh of endeavor and so I think in the context of China like um you know there's a lot of kind of these

rural areas which uh I think the state has trying to you know introduce new infrastructure promoting people from you know maybe moving from the urban areas to you know reoccupy these spaces so that they they would also you know breathe new life new life as if you know like what we see with urban regeneration in the cities and so over the last 10 years uh there has been a lot of resources dedicating to you know building new roads upgrading you know the uh you know um uh kind of infrastructure for basically people to live right and sanitization etc. Um and then you also saw a lot of people who moved to these areas but I think over the last couple of years what you know uh that the state has realized is uh is

reaching kind of this um uh kind of problematic kind of state where you know you have people moving into um these you know from the urbanites kind of moving into um these new villages and then they're you know like opening their own Airbnbs. uh they're kind of you know you know establishing new communities but then these areas they attract you know like uh primarily tourists during tourist peak seasons right so like during the summer or like during holiday season and then for the rest of the year it's just empty so how do you actually really attract you know people to these areas and then they'll notice that you know there's digital nomads like seed like you know a lot of you know not just web three communities but I think you

know like postcoid this trend of people having greater mobility. And so I think this experiment that Sida was somewhat part of uh that we in Fujian province uh is you know like seeing okay could we actually introduce you know this social kind of capital uh which is enabled by this kind of digital capital or digital flow of information uh which then eventually would introduce you know economic financial capital circulation. So they're trying to see whether you know you can uh introduce kind of these kind of social holidays which are you know like they don't necessarily have to be Chinese New Year they don't necessarily have to be you know timing festival or something but actually each

group because you know if I have a DA or you know we have a network nation you know you can have your own holidays and festivals and kind of these activities which can you know like be programmed throughout the year and then so I think they're seeing this trend as something that potentially can fill the void of you know the non kind of holiday peak seasons and so I think seed is you know one of the first um you know groups that's participating in this and I think that's actually something you know quite beautiful to see the old villagers and these kind of new villagers and now like seed me their members uh as you know these new incomers which are introducing fresh kind of um circulation of information which actually activates

these areas and then the the the you So these people from all three worlds uh can you know somehow coexist and then that also kind of resonates with their idea at the first place which is this co-presence right so this co-presence actually this boundary can expand to you know a much larger surface to serve more people who you know like I think at the end of the day are pursuing some kind of a good life right so so I see that as a really kind of um uh you know interesting moment and an example of where you know like a proto network nation could kind work very closely actually with existing uh you know components of uh of the nation you know that that that they're actually part of.

Um and and so I'm I'm really looking forward to see where this goes because actually uh you know after this event which was supposed to be kind kind of you know one-time temporary pop-up city um the found one of the founders of Cedar he actually moved there and I think they're establishing some of of a more semi-permanent maybe station right to kind of integrate these uh uh you know digital nomat culture uh and so I think this is all kind of you know something that's happening in real time and evolving and something that definitely worth paying attention to. >> Yeah. Um so so as we said I think so and this is a very different project again as the network say is proposing was it's not about like acquiring land and building gated communities but it's

really about like integrating in local communities trying where where to see where you can build meaningful synergies and collaborations and um yeah basically adding um an additional layer on top of of of um the territorial jurisdictions um which are hosting these uh kind of community gatherings. Um and I I think like Edge City for instance is also like a great example of this and I think this is also um like how they are thinking about um how to move their experiment forward is to understand how they can actually bring specific value from like a pool of global talent to specific places in order to work on local

challenges. Right? like now you talk for instance about the revitalization of like um maybe economically disadvantaged or rural areas in China and there's also a set of different challenges I think um that could be addressed through this kind of prison going forward and I think it add exactly all you described it creates this interesting new kind of um approach where you're trying to solve local problems with local communities but a pool of international talent but yeah so what are certain directions um because you just mentioned it yourself like how do you see this experiment of CDO evolve and and what are steps they from your perspective at least would have to take in order to become more

fully a network nation going forward. Yeah, I think what is interesting is um you know even in the context I was describing like this kind of rural revitalization it cannot just rely on a single group like seed right it actually requires more uh a plural kind of network of different organizations who each have their own kind of you know self-governing rules and you know token structures or you know like governance structures but somehow are able to you know like in a interoperable way to work with each other and And I think that's also something that we discussed you know in the network nations workshop is right like you have these you know these smaller groups or these you know sub communities or you know independent

communities which then belong to like some of a meta you know larger kind of uh network of communities which can you know share some resources or you know like work with each other um and so I think like you know for seed to um uh kind of proceed forward I think it's also about okay how do you maybe potentially work with other groups that might be coming in either you know belonging to within the web 3 ecosystem or not like how do you um you know actually uh you what resources do you share what kind of you know common protocols do you share how do these things get established um and I think we that's also something that we were kind of discussing about you know back um in Stockholm is which is you have so many different types of intentional

communities and each community have their own flavor character people that some of them might overlap others might have very small you know overlapping vend diagrams right but somehow you know they they have something common in u which is kind of this fluid nature and you know the these network communities with physical touch points I think like having a more kind of meta governance of these communities I think will be really interesting and I kind of look forward to seeing how how evolve because definitely you know the uh the peanut village uh it already contains uh people of different communities right and I I think there will be more people coming to occupy you know the the spaces and infrastructures. So uh I'm definitely

going to keep keep a close eye tracking uh you know how how they kind of navigate these uh changes and kind of you know different different people that they will encounter. >> Yeah. Exciting. Um yeah maybe because you also mentioned um our workshop. So um Helena you were one of the um people who was part in last year's workshop on network nations in Stockholm. We brought together some community builders, some theorists and so on to think through um the ins and outs of our emerging um you know framework. Maybe to close this um kind of conversation and to bring it back to our movement, the network nations movement we want to create. Um what are lessons that other people um in our community can draw maybe from seed

order to better understand how we actually trying to construct the network nations going forward? Yeah, I think seeds um yeah, one of the most kind of interesting takeaways for me personally and also I'm writing a paper about this uh is kind of you know non-governance as a form of governance which has kind of mentioned earlier where you know I think a lot of times we try to optimize for governance structures but I think in seed you know if we take a closer look at how exactly their kind of you know this governance mechanism works there's very interesting features which are allowing for these kind of you know room for uncertainty and room for kind of you know possibilities. Um so I think that's

something that you know a lot of uh other groups can potentially learn and uh but I think you know there's also a lot of uh you know just the examples of communities that we have discussed like each one has you know their own uh you know unique kind of uh contributions to this. So, so I I hope that in the future we see, you know, kind of more research just, you know, interpreting and encapsulating all the interesting things that's going on because I do think that this is a kind of, you know, pretty niche area that that we're all working with. And so, I think sharing that knowledge and having um yeah, just people becoming more aware of what others are doing uh that that could potentially lead to a lot of interesting cross-pollinations of ideas.

>> Yeah, absolutely. Ning gear research is like a prime example of of of the interesting questions that can be surfaced here and addressed and that's maybe also an open invitation to all of our listeners you know all the researchers amongst you to to join us in this endeavor to really conceptualize but also study the empirical examples of some proton network nations and try to understand like what are core principles tools and frameworks um that can be synthesized and uh taken away from these uh experiments and uh shared at a larger scale with other community builders. us to collectively move forward this network nation uh yeah movement we're trying to build and thank you so much for your time Helena it was super insightful um and a great example I think of what a proto network nation

could look like um maybe to close us off where can people um find your work especially your recent work on seed and um yeah where can they follow your your um work? Um so we just submitted this article to a special issue um in you know a journal but we also released a pre-print and so uh yeah if you search for the name of the article uh which I'm you know I'm kind of it's something um I think um is interesting it's called the Dao of the Dao uh Eastern philosophies in decentralized worlds. So if you search for that in SSRN you should be able to find it. Uh, and yeah, like welcome any feedback, comments. Uh, feel free to, you know, shoot me an email if

you, uh, find some of the ideas interesting or, uh, yeah, have any feedback on it. >> Cool. Thanks. Definitely check it out. And thanks again so much for your time and, um, to our listeners, hear you next time. >> Thank you.