Audacious Folks are Building New States

A realtime archeological report on a first-of-its-kind pop-up city.

Jun 3, 2023

I make a point of attending first-of-their-kind events where a group of people come together, united by the shared attempt at doing something out of the ordinary.

Twice in the past I’ve written about these experiences in what I’ll now call my ‘Audacious folks are doing X’ series:

Audacious Folks are Rebuilding the Internet — Urbit Assembly
Audacious Folks are Curing Aging — GRC’s Systems Aging Conference

Welcome to entry III.

This one was the most unique so far because the goal uniting those coming together was being attempted in realtime during the event. This objective centered around the creation of an innovative framework that fostered communal living and the collaborative development of public goods within the community.

The Overview

‘Zuzalu’ lasted 2 months and was held in the remote cove of Lustica Bay in Montenegro. ~200 residents were brought together to learn, create, live longer and healthier lives, and build a self-sustaining community together.

My partner and I flew into Montentegro’s capital of Podgorica at exactly the halfway point of the event to join for the entirety of month two. The venue was a 90 minute drive from the airport through beautiful green scenery and a winding pass over the Dinaric Alps which serves as a natural boundary between the coastal region and the interior.

When we arrived, someone was waiting for us at the nearby Chedi Hotel. They warmly welcomed us and then drove us up the road to the apartment where we would be staying for the next four weeks.

Each of the eight weekends over the course of the two month event was dedicated to its own themed conference on subjects such as AI, synthetic biology, governance and more. Two weeks after my arrival, I was to be speaking at the longevity themed conference being organized on the sixth of these eight weekends by VitaDAO. If you want to read a sort of written version of my talk, you can checkout my last post here.

The weekend that most directly aligned with the theme of Zuzalu overall was the conference being put on on the weekend we arrived. The subject was network states. A tech investor and thought leader named Balaji Srinivasan coined the term to define online communities that are remarkably cohesive and possess the ability to collaborate effectively. These communities eventually raise funds collectively, establish their own territorial presence, and even achieve diplomatic recognition from established nation-states.

Zuzalu was at it’s core a trial run of this very concept in its latest stages. The experiment was largely subsidized by Vitalik Buterin, the founder of a project called Ethereum. It was also subsidized by countless hours put in by the organizers who wanted to see it happen.

The ~Vibe~

Over the course of many discussions with other residents, some of the recurring metaphors for how it felt to be in this community for 2 months included:

‘like a college campus’
‘like a summer camp’
‘like a tightly knit family’

…and at worst:

‘like a commune’.

But hey, communes can be great until they digress into a a mass hysteria, succumb to ideological takeover or disintegrate due to internal disputes.

There was a small subset of people who were cognizant and vocal throughout the event about how to build something like Zuzalu in a way that it wouldn’t fall victim to these kinds of existential risks. The rest were I think aware of these threats but selectively or subconsciously opted out of the depth of conversation that would be required to actually derive solutions to these issues as opposed to continuing to enjoy the endless summer that was this first get together. The folks bringing up these conversations were not on a mission to be pessimistic, but rather doing so because they wanted Zuzalu to succeed. I do not know or spend a great deal of time thinking about these solutions personally, but thought the fact that they were discussed here at all was important to bring up. To me it was an indication of the type of self awareness and intention that would be required to make something like this work longterm.

On a brighter note, it was neat to be able to walk outside at almost any time of day and have an deep conversation with a unique individual. This microcosm was comparable to something like the bay area in regards to a certain type of individual in high numbers in the same space. That type of individual might be broadly categorized as a person with novel ideas who is building things to validate or invalidate those ideas.

This was great, but also quite tiring. There is a healthy scarcity mentality to be extroverted and engage with strangers more often than your default at conferences and retreats. This may be because you are embedded in this unique environment for only a short period of time and feel the need to maximize the number of meaningful connections made. By the end of our month, I found myself slowly starting to ween back to my norm and not feel the urgency to leave the apartment for every gathering that was happening.

It seems others felt similarly, and I think this was a great place to settle into actually. By then end, we could walk out to the grocery store or to a restaurant and give our fellow Zuzaluans a nod and a wave as opposed to locking into a 10-15 minute interaction at each passing with a familiar face. This made the community start to feel more real as we settled into a more neighborly pattern of interaction vs the constant conference mode.

As a last note on vibes of Zuzalu, I’d be remiss to not to shill the evening festivities. On more than one occasion there were career musicians who performed a set for Zuzaluans, as far as I know, at no cost to the organizers, but rather to be a part of the program.

The most novel by far was a collaboration between Grimes, a pianist named Serene and an AI. During the set, Serene played the piano while an AI generated orchestra followed through live input from her performance. Meanwhile, Grimes is playing a PC game that is live tracking her focus states to effect the speed of the asteroids flying around her 3D Avatars in the simulation.

The Future of Zuzalu

So few people wanted to leave that it was literally a problem. Not a huge problem, but let me explain.

Over the course of the 2 months there were some folks slated to be on site during the whole period, and others who, like me, were only coming for a few weeks in-between start and finish. Many who came initially for just a period at the beginning quickly realized they’d like to stay longer, and so those with the flexibility and means to do so were quickly booking Airbnb’s nearby to occupy for the remaining duration of the event.

The reason I say this is not to highlight a problem but to show how enthusiastic people were about the experience so as to divert other plans and hang around longer. The challenge this created was that as time went on, there was a bigger and bigger drag of people continuing to stay who still wanted to attend events and join for group meals but that were not initially planned to be accommodated for. That said, the organizers did a great job of putting in place a guest system and an extension system where people staying off site could pay a fee to keep participating.

At the time of writing, the event has been officially over for about a week, and there is still a group of folks in Montenegro keeping a portion of the community alive.

The community has also splintered into a number of other less structured co-living groups around the world already. In the event’s social hub, group chats can be found for cities from Dubrovnik in nearby Croatia to Shanghai in China hosting their own post-Zuzalu gatherings and group homes.

I find this fascinating and have the slightest bit of FOMO to hop between some, but for the time being, it’s time to head home and start building again.

As of now, word on the street is the next ‘official’ Zuzalu will be in October. If you want to keep up with this experiment, the best place to do so it probably their website.

I think sharing this spotlight into Zuzalu is important because the progression of these structures, regardless of personal interest in network states, will have far-reaching implications for the functioning of our world. Just as it is crucial to pay attention to transformative technologies like AI that revolutionizes industries, it is important to keep an eye on experiments like Zuzalu that redefine the fabric of how people come together and govern themselves.

Let the best strategy win.

-Benjamin Anderson

Follow me on Twitter.

Contact me sovereignly on—
Urbit: ~padlyn-sogrum
Nostr: benjamin@buildtall.com

Thank you: Nicole, Janine, Marine, Ilana, Lawrence, Victoria, Vitalik, Milos, Vjera, Vincent and the countless others who made this event possible.