Core argument
The decentralized web has built extraordinary infrastructure for distributed coordination. But coordination is not governance — and the question of how networked communities actually govern themselves is both urgent and unresolved. What holds a distributed community together over time? How are shared resources stewarded, disputes resolved, participants kept accountable?
Networked sovereignty is emerging as a genuine new layer of political organization, and the governance patterns we normalize now will shape what kinds of polities become possible for decades. The Network State is currently the dominant blueprint, but it is only one answer. The design space is wider than any single model, and if it closes prematurely, we risk locking in a narrow version of what networked sovereignty can become.
This talk introduces Network Nations as a framework for democratic, commons-grounded governance among translocal communities. It presents three core mechanisms — functional sovereignty, commons governance, and entanglement — as institutional scaffolding for communities to self-govern across distance. The DWeb community has essential design knowledge to contribute: decentralization, peer-to-peer infrastructure, ecological responsibility, open protocols, and public goods stewardship. As a session, it is well placed to engage the broader design space and develop concrete alternatives to startup-led models of networked sovereignty.

Detailed Breakdown
1. The mismatch
Political authority is still largely imagined through the territorial state: borders, national institutions, legal jurisdiction, and citizenship.
But the forces shaping our world (climate, digital infrastructure, capital, migration) operate at planetary scale
Result: growing mismatch between global, interconnected problems and territorially bounded institutions (felt in many different ways…polycrisis, institutional decay, lack of civic agency etc)
2. The opening — networks make new forms possible
Network technologies both intensify this mismatch and create new political possibilities.
Communities can now coordinate, build shared institutions, and govern themselves across distance at scale.
A diverse set of initiatives are already experimenting with this: open-source communities, diasporic networks, regenerative movements, Web3 communities, network states, charter cities, popup cities.
Umbrella term: new networked sovereignties — self-sovereign networked political communities transcending traditional definitions of sovereignty (De Filippi et al. 2023)

1. The risk — the design space is narrowing
   The dominant framing — the Network State — borrows the logic of the startup: founder-led, capital-funded, sovereignty pursued through territorial acquisition and diplomatic recognition
   One answer, but not the only one
   Its assumptions narrow the design space at precisely the moment we need it to be broad
   Networked sovereignty is genuinely emerging as a new political layer and we need to seriously explore what other kinds of polities are useful — before the field converges prematurely around a single model. Stakes are high as we’re risking path dependency for the sovereignty stack of the future.
2. Network Nations — a different starting point
   Network Nations offer a different model. They start from the same diagnosis and use the same Web3 tools, but propose a more resilient political form.
   They are translocal communities that build shared identity, govern shared resources, and coordinate collective action across borders.
   They do not require territorial consolidation or diplomatic recognition in order to exercise meaningful governance capacity.
   Their normative centre is democratic self-governance, commoning, mutual responsibility, and civic empowerment — not exit, competitive jurisdiction, or territorial capture.
   They draw on longer traditions of commons governance, cooperative institutions, diasporic self-organization, indigenous land stewardship, mutual aid, and peer-to-peer coordination.
3. How do they work?
   What makes Network Nations politically significant is not that they connect people - many networks do that. They develop the capacity for self-governance through 3 core mechanisms:
   Functional sovereignty - domain-specific governance capacity exercised where competence resides, without territorial claims
   Commons governance - shared resources, rules, and stewardship maintained collectively
   Entanglement - purposeful interdependencies that make the success of each part inseparable from the whole
   Together, these address the DWeb sustainability gap: not how to build distributed systems, but how to keep them governed, funded, and accountable over time
4. Examples
   Regen Network: ecological accounting and environmental standards coordinated across bioregions.
   SeeDAO: diasporic Chinese cultural governance and community infrastructure beyond a single territorial state.
   Community land trusts: housing stewardship as a commons, outside speculative market logic.
   Burning Man regional networks: portable culture, shared principles, and decentralized event governance across local nodes.
   Meta-jurisdictions: legal structures composed from multiple existing systems, giving non-territorial communities institutional coherence without requiring statehood.
5. Closing
   The talk closes with an invitation: the realm of networked sovereignty is wide open, and this Dweb community - with its deep commitment to decentralisation, peer-to-peer principles, and ecological responsibility - has essential design knowledge to contribute. The governance infrastructure we build now will shape what kinds of political communities are possible for decades. We should make sure the design space includes more than one blueprint.
   What participants will take away:
   A practical framework for networked self-governance, grounded in functional sovereignty, commons governance, and entanglement.
   Concrete examples of these mechanisms already in practice
   A clear articulation of what distinguishes Network Nations from Network States — and why it matters for the future of the DWeb
   An orientation to the emerging field of networked sovereignties and an invitation to participate in shaping it
   How this extends beyond camp: Network Nations is an active research programme at BlockchainGov (EUI) with a growing public body of work: the Network Nations Substack (Theory Briefs + Field Notes), and two podcast series hosted by The Blockchain Socialist and Greenpill respectively. After camp, participants can contribute cases from their own projects, access shared frameworks, and join the Network Nations Alliance as members.
   Track fit (Sustaining Infrastructure): Network Nations address the sustainability layer beneath DWeb's technical infrastructure: how distributed communities govern shared resources, maintain accountability, fund public goods, and hold together over time. Functional sovereignty, commons governance, and entanglement are governance infrastructure for communities that want to sustain themselves beyond initial enthusiasm. If distributed systems have political ambitions, this framework offers a way to build them.