Justin Sun, the founder of Tron, has been elected Prime Minister of Liberland, a self-declared sovereign micronation nestled between Croatia and Serbia.
Justin Sun, the founder of Tron, has been elected Prime Minister of Liberland, a self-declared sovereign micronation nestled between Croatia and Serbia. The elections were conducted on Oct. 5 entirely through blockchain technology.
The 2.7 square-mile micronation also invited several other VIPs into its Congress, including entrepreneur Evan Luthra, journalist Jillian Godsi, Croatian politician and former MP Ivan Pernar, and IT professional Dorian Stern Vukotić. For their part, officials from Liberland have stressed the transparent, algorithmic nature of their elections, a model that could be mimicked in the future, they say.
Sun's election as leader of a micronation is indicative of a growing trend among crypto enthusiasts and industry executives to tinker with the concept of "network states," popularized by former industry executive Balaji Srinivasan, wherein geographically distributed nations utilize blockchain technology and privately held land to function as sovereign entities.
Liberland’s founding is not without precedent; Bitnation became the first crypto microstate to unilaterally declare sovereignty in 2014. Since then, a spate of projects have emerged, from landlocked locales such as Liberland to proposed oceanic installations better known as seasteads. These floating cities, still purely theoretical, represent a rather audacious vision of sovereign nations built on international waters.