Srinivasan defines the network state as a “highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.”

Stripped down to the basics, the idea is you start with an online community – one that’s economically prosperous, engaged and has shared values – and then manifest it into the physical world. Srinivasen considers the current nations of the world to be “geographically centralized” but “ideologically disaligned,” and given the entrenched polarizations of the United States, for example, this is a tough point to argue. The network state is the inverse: “ideologically aligned but geographically decentralized.”