# Network State Experiments Roster In *[[The Network State]]* (2022), [[Balaji Srinivasan]] laid out a sequence: build an online community, buy land, and end with diplomatic recognition as a new country. This page tracks the projects that have tried some version of that, and the older exit projects they grew out of. None has reached the last step. Status is as of November 2026. ## The projects | Project | What it is | Who is behind it | Host | Where it stands | |---|---|---|---|---| | [[Próspera]] | Charter city with its own legal code, taxes and courts | [[Pronomos Capital]], with [[Peter Thiel]] and [[Marc Andreessen]] money | Roatán, Honduras | Operating. Honduras repealed the enabling law in 2022 and its Supreme Court ruled the framework unconstitutional in 2024. Próspera is suing the country for about $1.63 billion | | [[Network School]] | Paid residential program meant as the seed of a "startup society" | [[Balaji Srinivasan]] | Malaysia, then Kazakhstan | Closed in Malaysia in July 2026 when the local council revoked its license. A new campus in Kazakhstan was announced the next day | | [[Praxis]] | Online "digital nation" looking for land to build a city | [[Dryden Brown]] and Thiel-network investors | Uruguay, after pitches for the Mediterranean, Greenland and California | Site deal announced September 2026, first residents promised for mid-2027. Nothing built yet | | [[California Forever]] | New city on about 60,000 acres of farmland bought quietly through [[Flannery Associates]] | [[Jan Sramek]] and Silicon Valley investors | Solano County, California | Ballot measure withdrawn in 2024. Now seeking annexation by Suisun City. Environmental review unfinished, nothing approved | | [[Seasteading Institute]] | Floating cities in international waters | [[Patri Friedman]], with seed money from [[Peter Thiel]] | The open ocean | Founded 2008. Its French Polynesia deal lapsed in 2018. An allied company's one-family seastead off Thailand was seized by the Thai navy in 2019 | | [[Liberland]] | Self-declared micro-state | Czech libertarian Vít Jedlička | Disputed land between Croatia and Serbia | Declared 2015. Recognized by no UN member state. Croatian police cleared a settlers' camp in September 2023 and banned its founder for five years | | [[Catawba Digital Economic Zone]] | Digital special economic zone built on tribal sovereignty | Catawba Indian Nation | Rock Hill, South Carolina | Established 2022 | | [[Highland Rim Project]] | Christian nationalist settlement on the network-state template | [[New Founding]], run by [[Nate Fischer]] | Jackson County, Tennessee | The main real-world case of the [[Christian Network State]] | | [[Zuzalu]] | Two-month "pop-up city" | [[Vitalik Buterin]] | Lustica Bay, Montenegro | Ran March to May 2023 with about 200 residents, then ended as planned. It set off a circuit of imitators, including Vitalia inside Próspera and Edge Esmeralda in California | | [[Afropolitan]] | "Digital nation" for Africans and the diaspora | Founders Eche Emole and Chika Uwazie, with [[Balaji Srinivasan]] reported among the backers | Online | Raised $2.1 million in 2022 for a staged plan that ends with districts in cities worldwide | | [[Itana]] | Digital free zone with a planned campus | Nigerian founders, with [[Pronomos Capital]] among the investors | Lekki Free Zone, Lagos, Nigeria | Raised $2 million in 2023 and signed a development agreement with the Africa Finance Corporation in 2024 | ## Related forms These are not network states, but they belong to the same family of privately governed places: - [[Freedom Cities]] — Donald Trump's 2023 promise of new cities on federal land. Stalled, but lobbied for by the [[Freedom Cities Coalition]], the [[Frontier Foundation]] and the [[Charter Cities Institute]]. - [[Starbase]] — the company town. SpaceX's Texas launch site became a city in May 2025, governed almost entirely by SpaceX employees. - [[Thiel Sovereign Exit Portfolio]] — exit as one man's collection of passports and property. ## What the record shows 1. **No one has left.** No project has won recognition as a country, and none governs itself without a host government's law behind it. 2. **The host holds the veto.** Honduras repealed Próspera's law. A Malaysian city council closed the Network School with a license decision. Croatia keeps settlers out of Liberland. Voter opposition in Solano County pushed California Forever to pull its ballot measure and look for a friendlier jurisdiction. 3. **The sites move and the money is conditional.** Praxis has announced four locations in five years, and its $525 million is financing tied to milestones. The Network School changed countries overnight. 4. **What works looks like an ordinary special economic zone.** The projects that operate do so inside a legal shell a government already made: a Honduran ZEDE, a Nigerian free zone, tribal sovereignty in South Carolina. When the fight comes, it is fought in that government's courts or in international arbitration, not by exit. ## Where the idea comes from The network state is a new name for an older ambition. See [[Charter City]] for the development-economics version, [[Patchwork]] and [[The Sovereign Individual]] for the ideological sources, and [[Crack-Up Capitalism]] for historian Quinn Slobodian's account of the zones that came first. The precedents have their own pages: the [[Special Economic Zone]] and the [[Company Town]] as forms, and [[Hong Kong]], [[Singapore]], [[Dubai]], [[Liechtenstein]], [[Ciskei]], the [[City of London]] and [[Canary Wharf]] as places. ## See Also - [[Network State]] — the concept - [[Balaji Srinivasan]] — its author - [[Exit over Voice]] — the underlying strategy - [[The Tech Right Hub]] — the wider movement