Nodes Digest #10 | Bhutan Partnership, Space Citizens, Chaotic Era Democracy
Edge City embeds with a nation-state's new city project while MoonDAO's citizen count passes 190
đž Snapshot
Edge City announced its first government partnership: sending mentors to Bhutanâs Gelephu Mindfulness City to work with Pelsung, the national youth program. MoonDAO crossed 190 citizens from 34 countries. ZuAfrique 2.0 completed its opening week with ceremonies, presentations, and beach cleanups. Patri Friedman shared 25 years of lessons on free cities, arguing execution trumps theory and building for locals beats chasing nomads. Vitalik posted on Farcaster about rethinking democratic tools for a âchaotic era.â Bitcoin Apes Cascais gathers Bitcoiners in Portugal this week to discuss sovereignty and decentralized AI.
â Nodes Pulse
Edge City Launches Bhutan Mentorship Residency in partnership with Gelephu Mindfulness City, the special administrative region announced by Bhutanâs King. Edge City will send international mentors to work directly with Pelsung, the national capability-building platform that identifies promising Bhutanese youth and places them on real national challenges. The first mentor arrives this week, with more following over coming months. Edge City worked with Bhutanese authorities on visas and logistics. The program development will continue, with more details to be shared at Edge Esmeralda (May 30 - June 27).
PrĂłspera Hosts Tourism Leadership Summit bringing together voices from Hondurasâs public and private sectors to discuss the future of tourism in RoatĂĄn. The event included CANATURH, COHEP, Senprende, and the RoatĂĄn Tourism Bureau. The messaging focused on the islandâs potential rather than the ZEDE framework itself.
ZuAfrique 2.0 Completes Opening Week with an opening ceremony featuring drum performances, community dancers, and conversations setting the tone for the gathering. The first week included presentations, cultural events, and a beach cleanup. Week 2 is now underway as ZuAfrique continues building the African community.
â Network Experiments
MoonDAO Crosses 190 Citizens from over 34 countries, with the newest cohort including aerospace engineers, researchers, physicists, and someone who has already flown to space. The project frames itself as âthe space network stateâ and offers citizenship benefits including access to jobs, funding, and opportunities to fly to space with Frank White through their ongoing initiative.
IpĂȘ City Hosts Bonfires.ai Session on April 17, demonstrating how AI agents evaluated 685 projects at an Ethereum hackathon using models trained on community knowledge. The session explored what this architecture means for network state coordination: âA network state runs on alignment and alignment runs on shared context.â
Bitcoin Apes Cascais: Sovereign Spring brings together Bitcoiners in Portugal on April 23 for an afternoon on Bitcoin, decentralized AI, and freedom. Speakers include Max Kei (Debifi), Obi Nwosu (Fedi), Bradley Duke (Bitwise), and Tomas Mamede (Portuguese Bitcoin Institute). The event features dual tracks on sovereign AI and Bitcoin basics, a privacy panel, and breakout sessions.
đłïž Governance Stack
Liberland at BWiGA 2026 panel discussed Web3 trends with representatives from across the blockchain ecosystem. The conversation focused on where blockchain is heading beyond speculation toward real-world adoption, including the role of decentralized technologies in governance and institutions.
8 Hard Truths from 25 Years of Investing in Free Cities: Patri Friedman shares lessons from decades in the space: execution trumps theory, founders in their 40s outperform younger ones, building for locals beats chasing digital nomads, and PrĂłsperaâs survival against a hostile government proves legal stability protections actually work.
đ Essays & Long Reads
20 Ideas to Grow New Communities by Tomas Pueyo uses PrĂłspera and Network School as primary case studies for examining how new communities, cities, states, and special economic zones can grow faster. The essay follows his earlier piece on âThe Cold Start Problem of New Cities & Statesâ and offers specific initiatives spanning urbanism, art, dating, religion, incentives, monuments, and influencer strategies.
Spanish Translation of Farewell to Westphalia now available from Logos Network. The piece examines what sovereignty means in a world moving beyond borders, aimed at those âquestioning the system and starting to imagine what replaces it.â
đ§ The Hivemind
Vitalik on Democratic Things in a Chaotic Era posted an extensive reflection distinguishing stable-era and chaotic-era approaches to democratic coordination. In a stable era, he argues, people ask âwhat would be a more perfect order?â and build large-scale mechanisms. In a chaotic era, such designs are unrealistic. Instead, democratic tools should function as âconsensus-findingâ instruments that identify shifts satisfying large cross-cutting groups. He suggests chaotic-era democratic things look like Pol.is-style tools, anonymous voting, and assurance contracts. AI could enable higher-bandwidth input with near-100% participation through âLLM shadowsâ fine-tuned on our actions making decisions on our behalf.
Logos Thinking Sovereignty Panel at Parallel Society featured speakers examining how tech, autonomy, and new institutions are shaping the frontier. The panel included FraMoira of Unruly VC and Sterlin Lujan of Logos.
đ Nodes Spotlight
Edge City has quietly built a model for popup city operations that now extends beyond events into actual governance partnerships. The Bhutan mentorship program represents a new phase: rather than building parallel to existing systems, Edge City is contributing human capital to a nation-stateâs experimental city initiative. If the Pelsung collaboration works, it provides a template for how network state organizations can interface with governments willing to experiment.
đ€ Our Thoughts
Patri Friedmanâs message cuts through: execution trumps theory, and building for locals beats chasing nomads. Thatâs the thread connecting this week. Edge City sends mentors to Bhutanâs government-backed project. ZuAfrique gathers its community through drums, beach cleanups, and shared meals. Bitcoin Apes Cascais brings sovereignty discussions to Portugal. These arenât manifestos. Theyâre people showing up. Meanwhile, Vitalikâs âchaotic eraâ framing suggests our coordination tools need redesigning for instability. The spring calendar is packed: PrĂłspera Weekend, IpĂȘ Village, Edge Esmeralda. Theory had its decade. Now weâre watching who can move dirt.