Jon Hillis
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Jonathan Hillis

Jonathan Hillis
Learning from popup villages

Learning from popup villages

I have participated in 3 popup villages (Zuzalu, Vitalia, and Edge Esmeralda) and each one has given me increasing conviction in popup villages as an important form-factor for growing network societies. This essay includes some reflections on successful popup villages, why they work, and where they could go next. The

By Jonathan Hillis 27 Jun 2024
Crypto is entering the deployment phase

Crypto is entering the deployment phase

A turning point towards coherent growth and institutional recomposition One of the best macro frameworks for understanding the evolution of technologies is Carlota Perez's "Techno-Economic Paradigm Shifts". It charts the S-curve of new technologies through periods of (1) creation of the new technology, (2) frenzied financial

By Jonathan Hillis 26 Jun 2024
Supper, place, village, city, state

Supper, place, village, city, state

There's a basic playbook for building startup societies. It goes: supper, place, village, city, state. You start with dinner, and coordinate your way to something bigger. Over time, you can grow large structures of human coordination—maybe even new types of cities or states. Traditional suppers, places, villages,

By Jonathan Hillis 14 Feb 2024
Building Cabin's Network City

Building Cabin's Network City

Cabin is building a network city for our Citizens, who span the globe and gather in person. Citizens have passports that give them access to our City Directory of people and places that will make you feel at home anywhere you go. Over the next few years we'll

By Jonathan Hillis 06 Dec 2023
Rousseau's breadcrumbs and the blockchain leviathan

Rousseau's breadcrumbs and the blockchain leviathan

Modern politics, and its underlying post-Enlightenment political theory, is stuck in a rut. Since the French Revolution of 1789, when the nobles sat on the right side of parliament and the commoner delegates sat on the left side, we’ve used these terms to describe the political spectrum. Political polarization

By Jonathan Hillis 01 Oct 2022
How decentralized organizations win (and lose)

How decentralized organizations win (and lose)

For all of our excitement about the ways that DAOs could usher in a revolution of collective action, we should remember: they wouldn’t be the first one, and they won’t be the last. Our current world is designed primarily around large centralized structures like national governments, universities, and

By Jonathan Hillis 06 Jun 2022
Memes of Production: DAOs as Financial Flash Mobs and Hyperstructures

Memes of Production: DAOs as Financial Flash Mobs and Hyperstructures

There are two types of DAOs that seem to be gaining traction: financial flash mobs and hyperstructures. Each taps into a unique quality of DAOs that isn’t feasible via traditional corporate structures. They represent different extremes of on-chain coordination: fast and hot, or slow and long. In both cases,

By Jonathan Hillis 25 Mar 2022
A brief history of decentralized cities and centralized states

A brief history of decentralized cities and centralized states

There’s only two ways to advance civilization: bundling and unbundling Jim Barksdale, more-or-less Once in a while, in the long arc of civilization, a new set of coordination technologies come along and change everything. By allowing small groups of humans to better cooperate in the collective management of resources,

By Jonathan Hillis 05 Jan 2022
Unbundling social token economics, governance, and access

Unbundling social token economics, governance, and access

If you look at the social DAO landscape, you’ll see communities with different social token models. Some, like FWB, use a fungible social token to gate community access. Many emerging PFP-based communities like BAYC use NFTs as the primary community gating mechanism. Whether fungible or non-fungible, social tokens in

By Jonathan Hillis 10 Sep 2021
Tech stack for decentralized cities

Tech stack for decentralized cities

A decentralized city is a network of distinct physical locations tied together by shared governance and culture. It allows people to maintain close social ties and norms while moving around to different places. It also creates resilience against local changes in climate, regulation, and society. Inspired by Balaji's

By Jonathan Hillis 23 May 2021
$CABIN: crowdfunded creator residencies

$CABIN: crowdfunded creator residencies

This week, a group of internet friends tried an experiment: what happens when you meet online and then come together IRL to build something? What ideas emerge when you create the open-ended space to explore them collectively? I've spent the past nine months building remote co-living cabins with

By Jonathan Hillis 14 May 2021
NFTs, $GME, and the crowdfunded Cambrian explosion

NFTs, $GME, and the crowdfunded Cambrian explosion

This is the 5th essay in a 5-part series on funding models for the creator economy 1. Funding the creator economy [https://words.jonhillis.com/funding-the-creator-economy/] 2. Avoiding the venture trap [https://words.jonhillis.com/avoiding-the-venture-trap/] 3. Cash rules everything around me [https://words.jonhillis.com/revenue/] 4. Shared income

By Jonathan Hillis 17 Mar 2021
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Jon Hillis