# Zuzalu **Zuzalu** was a two-month "pop-up city" convened by [[Ethereum]] co-founder [[Vitalik Buterin]] at Lustica Bay, a resort on the coast of Montenegro, from March 25 to May 25, 2023. About 200 people lived there for the full run, drawn from crypto, longevity research and artificial intelligence circles, and several hundred more came for shorter stays. Buterin explained the idea in an October 2023 essay, "Why I Built Zuzalu": a gathering longer than a conference and larger than a shared house, to see what a temporary community could do. ## The pop-up circuit Zuzalu ended on schedule, but the format spread. Within about 18 months some 20 groups had run their own versions. Among them: - **ZuConnect** — Istanbul, late October to mid-November 2023, with about 300 residents. - **Vitalia** — a longevity-focused pop-up inside [[Próspera]] in Honduras in early 2024, meant to become permanent. It later split into two successor projects. - **Edge Esmeralda** — a month-long gathering in Northern California in June 2024. - **Chiang Mai** — several pop-ups running side by side in the Thai city in late 2024. [[Balaji Srinivasan]]'s [[Network School]] in Malaysia grew out of the same scene. Buterin has named two unsolved problems with the format: who sets the rules, and who gets invited. ## Why it's on the map Zuzalu is the mild wing of the [[Network State]] movement, and the most copied. It claimed no land and no sovereignty. It rented a resort and went home. That format, not the new country [[Balaji Srinivasan]] describes, is what most network-state activity has looked like since: a circuit of imitators running temporary pop-up cities in rented venues. Buterin agrees with the core of Srinivasan's idea and has criticized parts of it. ## See Also - [[Vitalik Buterin]] - [[The Network State]] - [[Network State Experiments Roster]] - [[Mark Lutter]] — an organizer