Zuitzerland Series Batch #1
7 interviews on topics like DAOs, pop-up cities, network states, solarpunk, cypherpunk & Swiss federalism
Zuitzerland is established to advance the exploration, prototyping, development and dissemination of innovative models for governance, technology, culture, and economics.
Late last year, we participated in their co-design off-site and conducted interviews with many of their attendees, aiming to get a sense of the people and stories that drive the community.
So, here‘s the first batch - the interviews in this post:
Blending Solarpunk, Cypherpunk, and Swiss Decentralization
Scaling the magic of pop-up cities
Maintaining Cognitive Sovereignty
Dark Forest of Resistance
Swiss Crypto Valley
What Happens When a Nation Runs Like a Tech Company?
DAOs: From Voting Machines to Collective Intelligence Engines
The Zuitzerland Series
Blending Solarpunk, Cypherpunk, and Swiss Decentralization
Could we transform Switzerland's 700-year legacy of decentralization into a blueprint for the future of Web3 governance? The discussion unpacks the fascinating parallels between Swiss cooperative models and Vitalik's concept of defensive accelerationism, offering perspectives on balancing individual sovereignty with collective progress.
The conversation weaves through Switzerland's unique approach to social housing, community spaces, and public infrastructure, revealing how these real-world examples of "maximum viable decentralization" could inform the future of web3 communities & network states. The speakers share their vision for Zuitzerland, an ambitious project that aims to bridge traditional Swiss democratic values with next-generation digital governance frameworks.
Scaling the magic of pop-up cities
QJ has been a pivotal contributor to the blockchain and Ethereum community since 2014, playing a significant role in several early Ethereum projects and fostering community development. Her dedication to empowering the ecosystem led to her election as the Executive Director of the Ethereum Community Fund, where she spearheaded the transformation of the grant program into a community-owned initiative that provides direct support to innovative projects and led the research of decentralised social consensus for knowledge bases.
ECF is also coordinating leading Zuzalu.city development and coordination of the Zuzalu Software movement, a mission to provide interoperable decentralised Ethereum ecosystem applications as public goods for innovative communities. What happens when you bring together 200 top minds across crypto, AI, network states, privacy, longevity, governance & biotech? Idk but its *electric*, and it spawned dozens of projects (like zuzalu.city) as well as the whole "pop-up city" movement.
Maintaining Cognitive Sovereignty
The magic happens when systems and ideologies get out of the way - if you have the right people, provide infrastructure, and reduce friction, you let the nerds nerd together." Burns takes us through how a two-month gathering created something magical - a space where the longevity folks could collaborate with network state builders, where synbio researchers could riff with AI ethicists. Pure intellectual cross-pollination that's practically impossible in our normal fragmented reality.
When Burns unpacks his views on d/acc and post-scarcity economics, you start to see the bigger picture. Not everyone wants to live in the Happy Box™, even if it comes with unlimited dopamine. Some want to keep expanding our bandwidth of reality, and we need spaces that nurture that impulse rather than optimizing for pure comfort. Unfortunately all of the coolest places also attract sociopaths, making it crucial to acquire tools for cognitive sovereignty 👀
"The people who are potentially interested and capable of being the game changers should have the ability to protect themselves from just easing into mindlessness because it's so cozy and culturally just not a thing to go for something else."
Dark Forest of Resistance
"Smart contracts are useless if you get thrown in jail." This isn't your typical "web3 will change everything" hopium – this is the raw, unfiltered perspective of someone who's been in actual combat zones fighting for his ideals. Amir rips apart the comfortable narrative we've created in crypto, showing how we've abandoned our Cypherpunk roots for VC funding and regulatory approval.
DarkFi isn't just building another privacy coin; they're crafting an entire ecosystem of resistance: anonymous chat, money transfers, swaps, and the world's first truly anonymous DAO. While the rest of us are begging for regulatory clarity & acceptance, they are building as if the crackdown has already begun – because for them, it has.
"The Dark Forest is an analogy for cryptography on the internet - the forest provides us cover and concealment, so the stronger the forest is, the stronger we are."
Swiss Crypto Valley
Starting with a humble meetup called "Beer2Beer" more than a decade ago, Alexis created something truly special - a thriving crypto hub in a town of only 30,000 people. Now they're about to open a three-story Bitcoin Center right on the main street, transforming what was once an underground movement into a visible part of the local landscape.
Alexis gets down into building the local crypto community, Swiss democracy, Swiss Pirate Party, his involvement in The DAO, coming up with a legal concept of "digital integrity" - which has been added to Geneva's constitution with 94% voter approval - and his latest project, Nym, a mixnet & the most private VPN.
"In Switzerland, the power resides in the commune and then it's delegated to the canton and then delegated to the federal government. In other countries, it's the other way around: the power resides in the nation-state, which is delegated to the region and then to the city. The fact that it's upside down changes the whole thing."
What Happens When a Nation Runs Like a Tech Company?
This conversation with Victoria unpacks the unique experiment that is Singapore - a tiny island that transformed from a third world country to a global financial hub in just one generation. What strikes me most is the trade-off they've made: extremely effective governance at the cost of democracy. "When I visit Singapore, I feel like I'm glimpsing one possible future of governance - where efficiency matters more than participation, and citizens act more like shareholders than voters."
While older democracies (except Switzerland) are suffering from declining participation, Singapore's almost corporate-like structure has delivered remarkable results. 91% of Singaporeans own their homes! Their education system is world-class! It makes me wonder if we crypto folks are too quick to assume everyone values autonomy. Most people, it seems, just want systems that work - and Singapore definitely works for its citizens, even if it makes any cypherpunk's skin crawl.
DAOs: From Voting Machines to Collective Intelligence Engines
"We're going from the horse to the car. We still suck at making cars, but they clearly seem more efficient in the long term." This quote from Zeugh perfectly captures where we are with DAOs - a messy transition phase where the potential is obvious but the execution is... let's say challenging! What we love about this conversation is how Zeugh cuts through the idealistic fluff that dominated early DAO discourse, when we all thought DAOs would magically solve every coordination problem.
Instead, he frames DAOs as experiments in working out how to harness actual collective intelligence. Recognizing all the innovation in the DAO tooling space over the past few years, Zeugh claims the biggest missing piece currently is the "mortar" to connect all the "bricks" together - a challenge that might be solved faster by AI. "We have all those different bricks and they are great, but they're a pile of bricks - and a pile of bricks is not going to make a wall."
The Zuitzerland Series
These interviews are a part of the Zuitzerland series - we got a few more coming right up! Keep an eye out on the newsletter &/or the YouTube channel.
Meanwhile, learn more about Zuitzerland and apply here 👈