The Network State

Srinivasan argues that new sovereign entities can be created by starting with an online community, building internal cohesion around a shared moral position, crowdfunding physical territory in many locations rather than one contiguous area, and eventually obtaining diplomatic recognition. He calls the result a network state and gives a one-sentence definition that he then unpacks across the book.

The sequence he proposes runs from a startup society, to a network union with collective action capability, to a network archipelago holding physical property, to a network state with recognition. He argues that crowdfunded property acquisition allows a community to accumulate territory without conquest, and that census and cryptographic proof can substitute for the census and land registry functions of existing states.

His historical framing divides recent centuries by the dominant technology of communication and records, and he argues that the state, the corporation and the crypto network are three successive forms of collective organisation. His political analysis positions three competing forces, which he labels the American establishment, the Chinese Communist Party and the decentralised crypto community, and much of the book is a critique of the first, particularly of institutional media.

The practical obstacles receive less attention than the vision. Recognition requires existing states to grant it, and no mechanism is offered for why they would. Defence, jurisdiction over disputes, treatment of dissenters and the position of people who cannot exit are addressed briefly. The book is long, discursive and repeats its political arguments. Its influence in cryptocurrency circles is substantial and its practical demonstrations so far are small.