NTARI-ville | A Network State

In 2021, Balaji Srinivasan published The Network State—a vision of digital communities that form online, build economic power, and eventually acquire physical territory and diplomatic recognition. His model starts in the cloud and moves toward sovereignty: gather people on social media, coordinate through existing platforms, accumulate capital, buy land, negotiate with governments. It's exit-oriented, treating the network state as an escape from existing jurisdictions rather than collaboration with them.

NTARI inverts this sequence.

We start with existing physical communities—Louisville neighborhoods, Denver cooperatives, municipal governments exploring broadband infrastructure. We add digital coordination tools—currently Slack, eventually open protocols. We build commons infrastructure that serves these communities without extracting rent. Where Balaji's network state seeks independence from existing governance structures, Ntariville seeks federation with them. We're not building a parallel society that exits from municipalities. We're building the coordination infrastructure that makes municipalities more capable.

What Ntariville Actually Is

Right now, Ntariville exists as a Slack workspace where NTARI's distributed team coordinates research, development, and implementation across time zones and technical domains. This isn't the permanent form—Slack is proprietary, closed-source, and ultimately controlled by Salesforce. But it's the training ground.

Think of it as network state infrastructure in two phases:

Phase 1 (Current): Temporary coordination on proprietary platforms

• Slack channels for project teams (Q-Zoo quantum computing, Agrinet agriculture, municipal mesh networks)

• GitHub for AGPL-3 code repositories

• Wix for public communications

• Existing tools configured for cooperative purposes

Phase 2 (Target): Permanent coordination on open protocols

• Matrix or similar federation protocols replacing Slack

• Federated git hosting with cooperative governance

• Static site generation on community-owned servers

• Custom-built tools published under AGPL-3, forkable by any participating municipality

The workspace isn't the network state. The coordination patterns we're developing are the network state. We're learning how distributed teams collaborate on commons infrastructure—how decisions get made, how technical work gets reviewed, how resources get allocated, how conflicts get resolved. When we migrate from Slack to open protocols, those patterns migrate with us.

How This Differs from Traditional Network States

Balaji's framework optimizes for exit and sovereignty. Ntariville optimizes for federation and mutual aid. The differences cascade:

Territory: Traditional network states seek to acquire physical territory separate from existing jurisdictions. Ntariville coordinates existing territories—municipalities that already own fiber infrastructure, agricultural cooperatives that already own land, community organizations that already serve neighborhoods.

Economic Model: Traditional network states often focus on cryptocurrency and capital accumulation. Ntariville focuses on commons-based peer production—AGPL-3 software, open protocols, infrastructure that can't be enclosed.

Governance: Traditional network states often experiment with libertarian or corporate governance models. Ntariville implements Ostrom's commons governance principles—clearly defined boundaries, collective decision-making, graduated sanctions, conflict resolution mechanisms.

Relationship to Existing Power: Traditional network states treat governments as obstacles to route around. Ntariville treats municipal governments as key stakeholders in building cooperative infrastructure—they own rights-of-way, they operate utilities, they represent democratic constituencies.

This isn't network state as parallel society. It's network state as coordination infrastructure for cooperative federalism.

The Strategic Advantages

Adopting the network state framework gives NTARI three capabilities we've lacked:

1. Identity Layer

"NTARI is a nonprofit" doesn't capture the distributed coordination we actually do. "NTARI is a network state" explains why we have members across time zones, why our Slack workspace functions as primary organizational infrastructure, why people participate remotely in governance decisions, and why our work spans digital protocols and physical infrastructure simultaneously.

The network state framing makes our operational reality legible—we're not a traditional nonprofit with an office and local staff. We're a coordination network that manifests in specific physical locations when implementing projects.

2. Development Pathway

The network state framework provides a clear progression: temporary tools → permanent protocols → replicated infrastructure. We're currently using Slack the way early network states might use existing social media—as a gathering point and coordination mechanism. But we're building toward protocol independence.

Every pattern we develop in Slack gets documented. Every workflow gets specified. Every governance decision creates precedent. When we implement open alternatives, we're not starting from scratch—we're migrating tested patterns to infrastructure we control.

3. Legitimacy Signal

Framing NTARI's work as network state development signals to municipalities, cooperatives, and potential partners that we're building governance infrastructure, not just software tools.

Network states imply:

• Long-term institutional thinking

• Coordination across jurisdictional boundaries

• Hybrid digital-physical infrastructure

• Democratic participation mechanisms

• Economic sustainability models

This matters when approaching city governments about municipal mesh networks or agricultural cooperatives about data governance. We're not vendors selling a product. We're partners building the coordination infrastructure that makes cooperative governance viable at scale.

Why "Protocols Are Permanent, Organizations Are Temporary"

NTARI operates under a fundamental principle: the organization might dissolve, funding might dry up, leadership might change—but the protocols we build should outlast us. This shapes every technical decision:

• AGPL-3 licensing ensures code remains in the commons even if NTARI disappears

• Open protocol specifications mean other organizations can implement compatible systems

• Federated architecture means no single point of failure

• Documentation emphasizes reproducibility and forkability

Ntariville as network state embodies this principle. The Slack workspace is temporary organizational infrastructure. The coordination patterns we're developing there become permanent protocol specifications. When we migrate to Matrix federation or similar open alternatives, the infrastructure changes but the network state persists.

The Progression Pathway

Here's how Ntariville develops from current state to target infrastructure:

Stage 1: Coordination in Proprietary Tools (Current)

• Slack for team communication

• GitHub for code repositories

• Wix for public website

• Google Workspace for documents

• Focus: Develop effective coordination patterns

Stage 2: Parallel Open Infrastructure (12-18 months)

• Matrix server for NTARI federation

• Forgejo or similar for federated git hosting

• Static site on NTARI-controlled servers

• Federated document collaboration

• Focus: Prove open alternatives work as well as proprietary tools

Stage 3: Migration to Open Protocols (18-36 months)

• Primary coordination moves to Matrix

• Critical repositories migrate to federated hosting

• Slack becomes legacy system for onboarding only

• Focus: Demonstrate complete independence from proprietary platforms

Stage 4: Protocol Replication (36+ months)

• Other municipalities deploy compatible infrastructure

• Federation grows beyond NTARI core team

• Network state expands to include partner organizations

• Focus: Prove cooperative coordination scales

What You're Joining

When you join NTARI's Slack workspace, you're not just signing up for a chat platform. You're participating in the development of a network state—a distributed coordination infrastructure being built to serve cooperative, commons-based internet development.

You're learning patterns that will migrate from Slack to open protocols. You're helping develop governance mechanisms that will serve federated municipalities. You're contributing to infrastructure designed to outlast any single organization.

The workspace is temporary. The network state is permanent.

Ntariville starts in Slack because that's where people are. But it's building toward a future where coordination infrastructure itself is part of the commons—owned by no company, governed collectively, forkable by anyone who wants to participate in cooperative internet development.

Join the Network State

NTARI's Slack workspace is where the network state currently coordinates—where developers, researchers, municipal partners, and organizers collaborate on cooperative infrastructure projects. It's simultaneously the thing we're building (coordination patterns) and the tool we're using to build it (temporary platform).

If you understand that protocols outlast organizations, that coordination infrastructure should be commons-owned, and that network states can serve federation rather than exit—you belong in Ntariville.

Join the coordination infrastructure: https://join.slack.com/t/ntari/shared_invite/zt-39injdzvr-a7jY2FVU00fYPopG7gyP4w

Support the work financially as we build toward platform independence: https://ntari.org/#give

For partnership inquiries about deploying network state infrastructure in your municipality or cooperative: info@ntari.org

Learn More

Network State Concepts:

• The Network State overview

• Platform cooperativism

• Commons-based peer production

Governance Frameworks:

• Elinor Ostrom's commons governance principles

• Federated systems

Technical Infrastructure:

• Matrix federation protocol

• AGPL-3 licensing

• Forgejo federated git hosting