During the summer break I was deeply involved in drafting the SEEDAO white paper, including several consecutive days of offline salons, as well as some online written exchanges. The concept of “digital polity” or “network polity” is SEEDAO’s signature idea, and I had many discussions about it as well. Below I have excerpted part of my written Q&A on the network polity and compiled it into this article. When I have time later, I will also write a separate piece to explore it. (By the way, I do indeed appreciate some of SEEDAO’s characteristics and ideas, but that does not mean I support all of the practices it has actually adopted, let alone that I am, in any sense, endorsing SEEDAO.)
What is a network polity?
A network polity is an “imagined community.” See Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (the famous Harari, in A Brief History of Mankind, in fact developed this concept further). Such a community is organized around a certain “narrative,” not merely on the basis of objective commonality (such as kinship) or actual shared work (such as guilds). Only a community based on “narrative” can be so large and diverse. In ancient times, religion and kingship were two ways of forming communities: people gathered together on the basis of shared belief or shared rulers. In modern times, partly propelled by the technological revolution of printing, the concept of the “nation” rose to prominence, and the “nation-state” replaced divine rule or royal rule as the organizational form of community. A “nation” is not an objective concept, but one constructed on the basis of a narrative of consensus. I think that the nation-state, which rose after movable-type printing, may now be slowly being replaced by another technological revolution (it will not disappear all at once, just as religion and kingship have not completely disappeared even to this day, but will gradually fade). What will replace the nation-state is the “network polity.” Members of a network polity do not gather on the basis of objective commonality (such as kinship, skin color, ethnicity, nationality), nor do they gather the way ordinary online communities do around shared interests or shared work (fan clubs, programmer communities). A network polity has no objective threshold for entry, and can accommodate diverse interests and needs. A network polity is built around a “narrative.”
Why is there a network polity?
First, note the historical background of the shift from priestly and royal rule to the nation-state: science and technology played an important role. Science gradually weakened religion, printing technology broke the monopoly on knowledge, the “right to narrate” was decentralized, and industrial technology dissolved the power of landowners, while on the other hand it required the establishment of a stable and efficient vast industrial chain. Under these technological conditions, the new narrative of the nation-state had a greater chance of becoming mainstream. But today, the technological environment is no longer what it once was. Science and technology are no longer merely liberating forces; they themselves have also become the new cage of modern people. Science has suppressed local knowledge, while industrial technology has turned human beings into machines. “Technological progress” has become the only narrative, but within this narrative each concrete individual is increasingly unable to find a place for themselves, and loses sight of their own meaning. On the other hand, from the internet to blockchain, the network space established by digital technology is making a “comeback,” and creation and action in the digital world are increasingly being regarded as more important matters. But the logic for handling these matters is completely different from that of traditional industrial production; the production and circulation of digital things have entirely new logic—first, they are inherently “borderless,” thus leaping beyond the sovereign boundaries of the nation-state; second, they are inherently “infinitely reproducible,” thus leaping beyond capitalism’s system of rights attribution and valuation; finally, they are, under mechanisms such as blockchain, “immortal”/“indestructible,” thus requiring no military force to guard or seize them… In short, whether the nation-state or capitalism, the organizational mechanisms human beings developed to adapt to the industrial age are about to fail, and a new organizational form is waiting in the wings.
Why can a network polity exist for a long time?
If we set our sights on it and keep practicing and building it, then at least we can ensure that the polity exists during our lifetimes. For the rhythm of today’s ever-changing information age, these thirty or forty years already count as “long-term.” Perhaps a hundred years from now there may be yet another revolution. We do not need to guarantee the long term; we only need to guarantee a cause we can proudly pass on to future generations.
The significance of building a network polity.
We believe that the network polity is the way of the future. But a network polity is not monolithic, and it is not universally the same everywhere. It is not the case that if any random bunch of Americans or Russians build a network polity, we can simply take it and use it. We can participate personally, build our own ideal home with our own hands, contribute a share of diversity to the world, and create an ideal land for ourselves.
Human beings as constitutive elements of the network polity.
I suggest that “human beings” should not be placed in the “material” category; that image is not good. Human beings are not the material of the polity, but its purpose. In principle, human beings do not belong to the polity; rather, the polity belongs to human beings. Human beings are independent of the polity, and we cannot support sayings like “first the nation, then the family”; first there are people and families (intimate small groups), and only then does the polity come into being. A person can belong to several polities at the same time, or belong to none at all and simply be a passerby.
The network polity is subject-centered, and this should not be controversial. But the key question is: what is a human being? In what way do we define “one person”? Using an ID card or passport or similar proof of identity still depends on traditional centralized authority institutions. Using biometric data such as iris scans depends on the reliability of the relevant hardware and also raises security issues. In the early days, SEEDAO’s core members emphasized offline meetings, which is the best way to confirm an individual’s independence, but this is difficult to scale once the membership becomes larger and more diverse. Moreover, maintaining anonymity online is very important for people in certain political environments, such as political dissidents. For example, the current domestic environment is still relatively loose, and contradictions are not yet prominent; but if the domestic environment were to tighten and all forms of online association were to be harshly suppressed (a very possible future), then requiring all participants to use real names and even appear offline would be catastrophic. The network polity should redefine human identity and the way it is manifested externally. So-called Web3, at the most basic level of its technological environment, is an independent and autonomous identity system built through blockchain wallets; the network polity should use wallet addresses as identifiers of personal identity, and this should be the minimum requirement. The problem is that wallet addresses can be generated without limit, and there is no guarantee that there is even a living person behind an address. The solution should be: not only look at the identity label of the individual, but more importantly at the “behavioral history” that accumulates on that identity label. We should encourage participants to do more “human actions” within the polity (creation, social interaction, speech, charity, political action…), rather than machine actions (checking in, gaming the system, high-frequency trading, and so on). The polity will record people’s actions and sediment them into their respective identity labels. “Anonymous accounts” (not disclosing any real-world identity) and “raising secondary accounts” should be allowed; as long as a secondary account also acts like a person, we should treat it like a person. If we encounter large numbers of machine-run secondary accounts that farm points, then that means our point system is badly designed and should be redesigned, rather than banning secondary accounts.
A typical Greek polis had three kinds of people: free citizens, foreigners, and slaves. A network polity likewise roughly includes these three kinds of people. First are the residents of the polity, who have a fixed “status” in the polity (status is a spatiotemporal complex, determined on the one hand by the history of their actions, and on the other by the terrain of the field they occupy). Second are foreigners, who do not have polity identity (for example, SEEDNFT), but nevertheless participate in the polity’s activities in a free capacity. Third are wage laborers, who of course are not slaves, and are essentially free individuals, but insofar as their relation to the polity is concerned, it is instrumental: they temporarily participate in various construction projects for external purposes such as salary or funding. By “external,” I mean that these purposes are, in principle, neutral and unrelated to the polity; they do not care who gives the money, or for whom the work ultimately provides a contribution.
The historicity of the network polity
See “On transhumanism, the logic of blockchain, Huawendao, in a conversation at SeeDAO” and “Longevity: the intrinsic connection between transhumanism and Web3.” Blockchain technology contains two basic tendencies: one is “decentralization” (liberalism), and the other is “immutability” (long-termism).
Harold Innis proposed that media technologies have both a time bias and a space bias, and different communities depending on different media exhibit different characteristics (religiosity or expansiveness). Blockchain is naturally more strongly time-biased.
But “history” is not just a matter of recording every event in minute detail. If every event is recorded indiscriminately, memory will instead present itself in a noisy and chaotic form, to the point that people will be unable to respect history. “History” is “facts” endowed with “meaning”: a jumble of facts is absorbed by the thread of meaning and remembered, and meaning is subjective, but not private; a private preference or aversion has no public character. Only when countless private opinions gradually collide and settle through common life, forming a community’s consensus, will the community’s history finally sediment.
Blockchain provides the solidity and independence of “facts” in the digital world, while the network polity infuses facts with meaning.
Space and terrain in the network polity
Digital space is not a false space, nor is it a simulacrum of offline space. That is why I suggest replacing the concept of virtual space with digital space or network space.
So-called “real space” is not monolithic either; cities, villages, and wilderness are also clearly distinct. The history of human civilization is the matryoshka-like process of continuously building new spaces within old spaces. Early agricultural people separated themselves from the space of beasts and from wasteland with fences and city walls; industrial people separated themselves from mud and fields with concrete and asphalt roads; and network dwellers in the information age separate online and offline. These separations do not mean forbidding intercourse, nor do they mean severing ties. For example, farmers also hunt and reclaim wasteland; industrial cities still need to rely on farmers for grain; and network dwellers still need real housing and sufficient food and clothing. This kind of separation is a re-evaluation of meaning or value, and what is separated out becomes “neutralized” and “instrumentalized.” For example, in the agricultural age, the meaningful world of all things having spirits in mountains, rivers, grasses, and trees was downplayed; while in the industrial age, agriculture itself was brought into the industrial chain, and the meaningful dimension of land (settling in one’s native place, returning one’s fallen leaves to the roots) was weakened. It was no longer that one region nourished one kind of people; rather, different urban environments (all artificial environments) shaped different cultures and ideas. In the network world, the industrial system may also become an adjunct background for survival.
In digital space, there are many polities, and different polities have different histories and narratives, as well as different “positions.” The overall structure of a polity is first formed by interpersonal relations, but these relations are sedimented through the technological environments people create and transform, as well as the historical records of their respective actions. As the saying goes, there was no road in the world to begin with; once many people walk it, a road appears. There is no terrain in the network world to begin with; once people’s activities become numerous, terrain, or structure, will emerge. Whether technically alterable or technically unalterable, these terrains all possess an inertia of self-preservation.
“Public space” is one of the most important kinds of terrain in the network polity. A network polity is not a project team with a specific purpose, nor is it a fan club with a clear interest. The meaning of the network polity’s existence is to allow diverse individuals to collide with one another, so that value can emerge in interaction. Therefore, this kind of communicative space cannot consist only of “factory workshops” (product- or efficiency-oriented); it also needs spaces for non-utilitarian, purposeless free chat. But completely aimless chatter is chaotic. The network polity can provide more specific layers, channeling different kinds of public exchange. See On the “structure” of the digital polity. Looking only at public spaces for casual conversation, one can at least distinguish: city hall, market, temple, stadium, theater, and bathhouse. Each of these categories can in turn be subdivided by theme.
The currency of the network polity
In the long run, the network polity definitely cannot use the U.S. dollar stablecoin as its base currency, because the original intention of the entire digital currency movement was to challenge the central banks. If the benchmark currency is still decided by the Federal Reserve, then the entire blockchain “narrative” collapses; without a core narrative, it is impossible to build an ideal community. The base currency could be Bitcoin, or a circulating currency such as wbtc backed by Bitcoin. Issuing an entirely new currency out of thin air is not very meaningful, unless that currency carries functions that Bitcoin cannot carry, such as dividend rights? (In fact, in later offline discussions I was persuaded that under certain designs, the right to issue currency does have positive significance.)
Public Goods
Actually, I don’t much like the translation “public goods,” of course, and goods itself is not a great word either. Things, commodities, products… all of these are concepts formed in the production environment of the industrial age. According to Wiener, digital works and industrial products differ in a very important way: they do not obey the conservation law. A loaf of bread is a loaf of bread; if two people come to share it, each gets only half a loaf; if three people come to share it, then each gets only one-third. A car is also a car; inventing a new car is not the key point—the key point is that everyone wants a car, so more cars have to be produced. Producing bread, producing cars, and so on: the essence of industrialized production is “replication,” but because of the conservation law, “replication” must consume productive forces, and this becomes the main task of industrial society. Not only are things all reproducible, but in order to adapt to a society centered on mechanical reproduction, human beings have also made themselves reproducible, turned themselves into screws. A factory-line worker does not need to be unconventional, does not need superb skill, only the skill of replication: the same as everyone else, not a bit less and not a bit more, playing the role of a replica of a replica that produces replicas. The concept opposite to the replica is the “work.” A typical example is a book, a painting. The value of an artwork does not lie in its physical properties. If one person sees a painting, it moves one person; if two people see it, it moves two people; it does not mean that once more people look at it, what each person gains will diminish. This value mechanism is completely different from the value of bread and cars. In the digital world, the mode of existence of digital works is closer to that of works of art than to bread and milk. In a certain sense, digital things are naturally “public.” We should promote the public nature and openness of digital things. Open-source software is the classic public digital work. And the technology of NFTs actually provides a very good balance: on the premise of ensuring that works are open and shared, on the one hand it guarantees, as open-source software does, that creators enjoy reputation, while on the other hand it makes creators and holders profitable through the act of collecting. In CC0 artworks, the creator can receive “royalties”; this is a very interesting trend.
Reputation
In the Huawendao White Paper, I mentioned that the reputation system tries to reverse the direction of “seeking fame—pursuing profit,” guiding people to pay attention to fame, while at the same time being able, in the long run, to expect reward in the form of material benefit—“seeking fame” and “pursuing profit” are not incompatible, but the question of which comes first makes a great difference. If people care about profit first, and those who sit on enormous wealth can automatically acquire fame, then the atmosphere of the community will be impetuous and barbaric. But if people first pursue fame, cherish their good name, and ultimately can also let those who have built up a good name through sustained effort obtain the wealth they deserve, then we may be able to create a community atmosphere that is friendly, decent, far-sighted, and attentive to accumulation.
Education and Public Opinion
As for “education,” it also has two parts: all reproducible resources (videos, texts, etc.) can (and should) be opened up and shared as public resources. But the non-reproducible part should be a privilege of the citizens of the city-state, such as the opportunity to participate in discussions, Q&A, and even offline face-to-face courses; this too can (and should) be charged for. In addition, there is the part of personal honor, such as completion certificates, mentorship relations, and so on.
As for the space of speech, I discussed that in the earlier piece on terrain. In addition, in principle we should avoid any form of censorship of speech—whether Eastern or Western—but we can use different spatial layers to limit the topics of speech in specific areas. The mechanism of anonymous posting should be guaranteed, and it can be implemented through zk technology to achieve limited disclosure. For example, I can choose to remain anonymous while disclosing my completion certificate for the AI course, in order to prove my expertise on the relevant topic.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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