Ipê News #4 - Nepal, the First DAO Country?
Your weekly update on what is happening in the Startup Society ecosystem.
Hey builders!
Welcome to our 4th edition of the Ipê News. Are you liking it so far?
Every week, we’ll explore the most compelling concepts and projects emerging in the Network State space, from new communities and cities to innovative governance protocols and parallel institutions.
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🏘️ Community Updates
Highlights from Ipê City, partner communities, or aligned initiatives.
Pulse of the network: Valocracy Report - Ipê Village Contribution System
In May, we launched Ipê City in Florianópolis, the first pop-up city in Brazil. The goal: test the principles of The Network State in practice.
We implemented Valocracy, a governance model where influence comes from contribution, not capital. To run it, we built the Rarity Calculator — a system that recognized 43 contributions from 23 members across 12 rarity levels, from Seeds to Mythical.
Ipê City is now part of crypto-history: a living lab for decentralized governance and collective action, with results and methods ready to be replicated by future pop-up cities.
🏫 Learning section
Everyone talks about tokens and NFTs, but how do you actually make one?
Non-Fungible-Tokens are unique tokens popularized by expensive JPEGs, but they can be a lot more, from IP assets to deeds of ownership. Tokens are the fungible version of this (think divisible), including memecoins!
Since all tokens live on the blockchain, they are made by writing smart contracts. Thankfully, there are many options to create them with no-code tools, on any chain.
The most popular marketplace Opensea allows you to easily mint NFTs, but for a more professional creation you want to try Manifold. For membership and ticketing, Unlock Protocol is good open-source solution. However if you’re looking for a social media approach to NFT, you need to try Zora!
Some no-code platforms for tokens are CreateMyToken, Smithii, but if you’re serious about your token you should consider forking a standard smart-contract!
Tokens are nothing without a good design, so it is worth learning about tokenomics, or exploring the best Token Engineering courses.
🌐 Network Societies Update
A quick pulse on emerging cities, nomad groups, and experiments shaping the future of network societies.
Liberland is an attempt at building a new country on an unclaimed island on the Danube, between Croatia and Serbia
It has a flag, an anthem, a constitution, a currency (LLD for LiberLand Dollar), and recently a on-ramp with Alchemy Pay!
This year was busy for the small island, celebrating its 10-year anniversary, organizing a month-long pop-up city, sending NFTs to the moon, and soon, a flag on an asteroid as part of its space program.
And when it comes to governance, Liberland has a political token (LLM for LiberLand Merit) which needs to be stacked to vote at elections every 90 days. The next Congress election will happen on October 1st, with an online debate on September 28.
There’s actually a lot more to mention, so best to check their whitepaper if you’re interested in innovative governance!
⚖️ Governance Tools
Exploring mechanisms for coordination, decision-making, and digital governance.
The idea of a Network State — online communities using digital tools to build new cities and governance — is moving beyond theory. This week in Nepal, we saw a striking example: online coordination helped challenge and topple a corrupt government.
Since shifting from monarchy to a republic in 2008, Nepal has had 14 governments in 15 years, plagued by corruption. Gen Z, 40% of the population, turned against the “Nepo kids” flaunting wealth on TikTok and Telegram. The government banned 26 platforms on September 3, but lifted the ban five days later under pressure. Protests continued, and police repression left ~20 dead, igniting nationwide revolt.
Through digital coordination, with a Discord group reaching over 100,000 members, people started destroying official buildings (video) like the parliament, and protests erupted all over the country.
On September 9, the Prime Minister resigned, and on September 11, the Discord group, still with no specific leader, decided to propose a new Prime Minister (the first female PM in their history), and she was inaugurated on September 12.
Everything is coming back to normal in the streets, as a new government is taking shape, but now people are seeing the seeds of a digital democracy and potential for decentralized governance.
🛠️ Web3 Tools
Tech shaping decentralized living, finance, and identity.
Ethereum phone?
Have you ever thought about how a network state will communicate with its citizens? Well, everyone is on their smartphone all the time: introducing the first Ethereum phone!
Freedom Factory started shipping the first batches of dGen1, with a new OS called EthOS (v4), build on LineageOS, and made to runs dApps on the blockchain! The device is sold out, but since it sold as an NFT, there is a secondary market! And in crypto, you can track everything.
The phone should allow to send crypto via SMS, system-wide ENS, NFC minting, camera roll NFT creation, and more … keep an eye open for the first Youtube reviews.
Hardware wise, the phone has a futuristic look but fairly basic specifications … for the exception of a laser pointer … because it can!
The crypto experience on mobile devices has long been a pain point, and it is finally tackled at the roots. However, dGen1 is not the only crypto-enabled phone since Solana is releasing its second generation and others like the Xforge are integrating DePIN features natively. The future of crypto phones is bright.
🌍 Other Interesting News
Broader movements and stories from the frontier of digital-first governance and societies.
How do you build a digital city ecosystem? With AI of course!
Replit just release Agent3, the most autonomous software builder ever seen. 200 min of autonomy, spinning off new agents to automate tasks on Slack, Telegram, Notion, Linear, Dropbox, Spotify, Sharepoint … and the list goes on.
The bottleneck of these AI is usually the debugging, that’s why Agent 3 regularly opens its browser to test the apps to find bugs and fix them. Watch it in action!
It’s not like vibe-coding requires a tutorial, but they still have one, just to make sure you know what to do. Do you need an app to sell beers and track consumption? Done!
💡 What is Ipê City?
A Techno-Optimist Community and Governance Lab
Ipê City is an innovative, techno-optimist community and social laboratory dedicated to exploring and experimenting with new ways of self-governing. It serves as a real-world testbed for decentralized social models, blending technology, community, and governance.
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