Special Elon Zone

Discussion

BlockchainGov:

"Recent news about "The Special Elon Zone" (SEZ) proposal, which would grant Elon Musk control over land surrounding Starbase with authority to establish his own regulations, directly connects to our ongoing research on network sovereignty.

This development isn't merely headline news; it represents the real-world implementation of Network State theory that our projects have been examining for years. The SEZ case exemplifies precisely why our symposium with the European University Institute Schumann Centre on "New Network Sovereignties" is so timely and relevant. As our research has consistently highlighted, the emergence of private actors gaining "functional sovereignty" over territories raises profound questions about democratic governance that align perfectly with BlockchainGov's core investigations.

The symposium features interventions from Vitalik Buterin, Michel Bauwens, and Nathan Schneider exploring whether such private regulatory zones can be justified, and examining historical precedents that inform our understanding of these governance experiments. This real-world case study provides valuable empirical evidence for our theoretical frameworks on how digital innovations are reshaping traditional notions of sovereignty beyond physical borders."

(https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/blockchaingov-newsletter-19-march-2025-blockchaingov-1awgf/?t)