Ashton Keys on the Evolution from Nation States to Synchronized State
Discussion
Society Protocol:
"Synchronized States are a relatively new invention borne of blockchain technology which can synchronize the state worldwide—enabling superior coordination9. Originally an evolution of the clock (for elaboration please read 4-Dimensional Synchronization)—these technologies include: Bitcoin, Web3 protocols such as Ethereum, CBDCs, and Web4 in Society Protocol.
People fundamentally misunderstand the nature of these new technologies. They are not immutable ledgers, censorship-resistant, trustless, nor credibly-neutral. What they are is: Synchronized States (or states in some cases): a group of people trying to coordinate around a shared state. This shared state can evolve to form a shared State.
Synchronized States merge the clock and State into one entity, allowing society to coordinate at levels unheard of throughout history and hard to currently fathom. These data societies are bound together by shared state and the algorithms governing it. For the first time in history, every participant can equally, instantly, and transparently share control of the state (and therefore, the State). This isn't just a fix to humanity's coordination problem—it's an order of magnitude improvement.
As the technological rails for tyranny increased throughout the 20th century via telecommunications, the Internet, AI, and CBDCs—enabling Surveillance States, a counter-balance for human agency and thriving had to emerge. Synchronized States are the counter-balance to the deepening coordination crisis created by these technologies.
We are currently finishing up the double-entry age of duplication, which began around Medieval Times, and dawning upon the triple-entry Age of Synchronicity. The transition from Nation States to Synchronized States is already underway. It is inevitable and will occur for very obvious reasons.”
(https://societyprotocol.io/articles/synchronized-states/)
Discussion
Reasons Nation States will transition into Synchronized States
Society Protocol:
"Duplication – Information duplication is breaking reality. Our systems are currently overloaded with state of all sorts. This state is not tracked or harmonized together, and this unsustainable paradigm is causing reality itself to collapse. Every real piece of data now creates 100 unconnected copies, followed by 1,000 deepfake versions. This pattern is accelerating exponentially—meaning next year will produce 1,000 secondary copies and 10,000 deepfakes for every original. The authentic signal gets buried under exponentially growing noise. Our systems can't effectively track where information comes from, where it's been, or who's responsible for it. Without synchronization, we're drowning in incoherent data that floods every aspect of our lives from all directions. This unsustainable duplication doesn't just overwhelm our information systems—it destabilizes the shared reality that holds society together. Nation States will increasingly become delusional—unable to tell real from fake, until switching over to Synchronized States (which attribute ownership and track the transfer of all pieces of public state).
Alignment – The will of the representatives isn't aligned enough with the populace. As the control of technocratic elites entrenches and grows in power with Surveillance States—the populace is becoming disenchanted and don’t naturally support them due to a misalignment of interests. The populace deeply fears giving up more control, and will do everything in its power to stop the continuous erosion of its control over the state.
Today, people fear virtually every system under technocratic control: fiat currency, surveillance infrastructure, social media platforms, media companies, the pharmaceutical industry, multi-tier justice, the military-industrial complex. The result is inevitable resistance. Intent is everything, and the people are (and will increasingly) not let these systems progress due to it tightening the noose around their own necks10. Instead, they will actively strive to create Synchronized States because Synchronized States offer a full overlap between control of the State and its citizenry—where they can regain power via control of the state.
Automation – Synchronized States can algorithmically enforce taxes, laws, and monetary systems with unprecedented fairness and efficiency—something Nation States fundamentally cannot achieve due to their lack of technological rails and reliance on duplicated data.
Consider the current tax and legal system: every individual must independently track disconnected accounting data, navigate labyrinthine tax codes, perform complex calculations, make subjective decisions about legal write-offs, and submit their findings to authorities who then apply laws inconsistently due to their system's inherent limitations. This broken process forces governments to continuously expand regulations until virtually everyone becomes technically a criminal, under full enforcement—creating systematic inequality where outcomes depend on connections, knowledge of tax loophole enforcement, or physical features such as race.
This represents the antithesis of fair coordination. Synchronized States eliminate this dysfunction entirely through algorithmic automation. Taxes, laws, and regulations become transparent, automatically calculated, and applied equally to all individuals—removing preferential treatment based on arbitrary factors. What currently requires armies of accountants, lawyers, and bureaucrats becomes a seamless, fair, and efficient automated process.
Coordination – Nation States operate at industrial-era speeds in an information-age world. Their decision-making systems are fundamentally bottlenecked by their inability to synchronize, as consensus requires synchronization. Nation States lack the infrastructure to achieve synchronization at the speed of modern civilization. They are unable to coordinate a society at 21st century speeds. Their decision making quality deteriorates with scale. Since they cannot make decisions quickly or effectively, encompassing the entirety of their populace, they will be surpassed by the more fluid and coordinated nature of Synchronized States—which will naturally overtake them in decision quality. Nation States will be forced to switch to Synchronized States—being the only way to increase their decision-making capacity.
Bureaucracy – Nation States maintain vast bureaucratic infrastructures requiring millions of personnel, countless government buildings, and enormous financial resources. Despite these massive expenditures, the resulting systems are riddled with waste and corruption, and fundamentally inefficient. As sovereign debts mount and fiscal pressures set in, Nation States will increasingly offload these processes to Synchronized States11.By merging the clock and State, Synchronized States will save trillions of dollars on bureaucracy. The costs of running and coordinating a State will come down from trillions of dollars to the costs of running a duplicated computer program. The Nation States which embrace this transition will watch their bureaucratic overhead collapse—while those that resist it will watch in envy…and eventually plainly disappear if they don’t switch.
Power – A way to explain it is, Synchronized States will replace Nation States for the same reasons that people fear CBDCs: because they’re powerful. If there wasn’t power over the individual there, the populace wouldn’t fear CBDCs—and CBDCs are simply infantile Synchronized States. Optimized Synchronized States like Society Protocol are tremendously powerful, and if adopted by neighboring tribes, the populace of a Nation State would fear not switching over or starting their own. This fear will transform into enthusiasm because the same populace (or any group of people for that matter) can deploy Synchronized States to gain agency—seeing that they are just open-source duplicated computer programs.
Prisoners Dilemma – Synchronized States do not see borders in the same way that Nation States see borders. They will develop trust quicker, more efficiently, and encroach on the lower trust thresholds of Nation States. Nation States will enter into a prisoners dilemma to switch to Synchronized States to preserve their continuity and survival—after which they will all defect from the Nation State paradigm—and the ones which do so earlier, quicker, securely, effectively, and legitimately—will have more opportunity to thrive in a new age.”