Wamotopia
= "The Summer of Wamo has since become a shared memory and a unique cultural phenomenon among Chinese-speaking Web3 enthusiasts. This decentralized, permissionless collaboration born from collective effort redefined the Chinese-speaking Web3 culture. ... Now, we're set to launch Wamotopia in Chiang Mai, a gateway to a new world."
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Description
WAMOTOPIA 2023: From December 16, 2023, to January 1, 2024, Wamians will jointly undertake a profound exploration of the future world, weaving a spectacular emergence, a prototype society of the future in Chiang Mai.
In August 2022, a group of Web3 enthusiasts and community members, driven by principles of positive externalities, openness, mutual benefit, and open-source, initiated the "Summer of Wamo | Dali Web3 Summer Fest" in Dali. This event, fueled by a passion for technology, a quest for governance and self-organization in DAOs, reflections on public goods, and visions for community living and the future, planted a seed in Dali. Now, we're set to launch Wamotopia in Chiang Mai, a gateway to a new world.
The Summer of Wamo has since become a shared memory and a unique cultural phenomenon among Chinese-speaking Web3 enthusiasts. This decentralized, permissionless collaboration born from collective effort redefined the Chinese-speaking Web3 culture, fostering public goods and DAO organizations characterized by positive. As this seed was sown in Dali, some participants chose to stay and continue this decentralized emergence. Today, Dali has transformed into the hub for Chinese-speaking Web3, DAO organizations, digital nomads, and community living. Its spirit, carried by participants, now thrives across the globe, transcending geographical and national boundaries.
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Wamotopia is a testing ground for Prototype Society. Each gathering of Wamians could be the start of incubating a prototype society. Our era demands coordinated efforts to confront systemic societal issues, creating new mechanisms and solutions. Due to the complexity of societal systems, it's challenging to derive a universal consensus from a theoretical model. Blind faith in a vision can also lead to disastrous outcomes. Like modern science and engineering achievements, social systemic changes require experimentation, iteration, and optimization after initial prototype feasibility, gradually gaining broader acceptance.
Wamotopia aims to create a space detached from traditional societal structures, where we can temporarily step away from the old world's Matrix, collectively imagining and shaping mechanisms, narratives, arts, technologies, and cultures of a future society. All Wamians will partake in molding the prototype society of the future. Participants can freely initiate or join any theme camp, with each camp embodying different thoughts and imaginations, intersecting and piecing together. In this process, mechanisms, cultures, technologies, and consensuses will gradually take shape through testing and verification, leaving seeds of the future – seeds that will sprout, grow, and become part of our future.
...
Wamotopia is a cultural emergence born from a shared creation of theme camps. Continuing the decentralized, permissionless organization style of the Summer of Wamo, theme camps and activities are spontaneously initiated by participants based on consensus. The Wamotopia preparation team will also provide infrastructure and public goods in the form of theme camps. Each camp will present a unique public space and vibe.
Wamians believe this free and open mode will spark the richest creativity, creating the best atmosphere and the most vibrant community. Theme camps serve as windows to the Wamotopia world, spaces for free expression, vision showcase, and connection building. These can be platforms to discuss future issues, display public goods creations, community playgrounds, hackathons, DAO community bases, Regeneration churches, concerts, art installations, workshops, or even ice cream trucks giving out free treats. These expressions and creations are not just future aspirations but the minimum viable practices transforming aspirations into reality."
Status
2025
“In August 2022, a group of activists from the Web3 and community practice fields, adhering to the principles of "positive externalities, openness, mutual benefit, and open source," and with their passion for technology, exploration of DAO governance and self-organization, long-term concern for public goods, and imagination of future social forms, launched "Wamao's Summer | Dali Web3 Summer" in Dali. This is a social experiment unfolding in the real world—under the consensus of " decentralized co-creation ," there is no single organizer or fixed stage; participants spontaneously organize content, space, and actions based on trust and initiative. The city itself becomes the vehicle—cafes, bars, street corners, and public spaces are constantly transformed into themed camps, where ideas, technologies, art, and lifestyles naturally converge and grow in a fluid manner. Summer of the Cats ultimately became a real-world validation of how decentralization works in the real world. It proved that trust, consensus, and self-organization can support complex and rich collaborative networks even without strong control. Today, Wamotopia, as a methodology and spirit, has long transcended geographical boundaries and been reinterpreted in different cities and cultures. From Dali in 2022 to Chiang Mai in 2023 and 2024, every year we gather Builders, Creators, Thinkers, and Dreamers from around the world to build a pop-up city in a real city to collaborate and practice our decentralized ideal society experiment, which we call Wamotopia, hoping to push the initial experiment to a broader reality.”
(https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/0OyCAh8mgNJFAcfdZUgmNw)
Discussion
Why Chiang Mai
"Chiang Mai, standing tall in the highlands of Southeast Asia, is the world's Dali. It embodies people's longing for a free, relaxed life filled with poetic possibilities. Chiang Mai, like Dali, has a natural ecology, rich history, and culture. Its Old City and surrounding areas, spanning 1.5 square kilometers, are dotted with cafes, bars, and public spaces. Chiang Mai's low living costs and visa-free policies for many countries with a wide range of accommodations attract young people worldwide to live and form communities. Its temples, tropical jungles, and Buddhist culture imbue a pleasant, chill vibe. Open, relaxed, natural, and wild – these are the colors of Chiang Mai. In Chiang Mai, one can effortlessly nurture the wildest life and boldest imagination.
Wamotopia – a co-creation of a prototype society, a forthcoming urban festival akin to Burning Man, a vibrant, diverse, experimental public realm, a dream forged by a collective. Where else but Chiang Mai could be more fitting for this event?"
Manifesto
Wamotopia and the Wamians of Wamo
Wamotopia is a vision where humanity flourishes—not as fantasy, not as nostalgia, but as a buildable direction: a modern, technologically advanced place designed to end coercion, reduce exploitation, and expand freedom for humans and for life as a whole. It is not “back to the old days.” It is forward.
A society where the foundations of dignity are stable, where technology is used as care rather than control, where abundance for essentials dissolves the survival game, and where competition—if it exists at all—becomes play instead of domination. In Wamotopia, we don’t worship megacities or scatter into isolated individualism. We build density without dehumanization—compact human living that leaves most land alive and flourishing. We design walkable forests, clean paths, and public spaces that support both personal autonomy and collective connection.
Wamotopia refuses the logic of exploitation. It refuses economic slavery. It refuses systems that force people to trade their lives for the right to exist.
- Technology as the Infrastructure of Freedom
Wamotopia uses automation to carry the burden of maintenance, logistics, and repetitive work—so human life is no longer anchored to obligation.
Robots clean, repair, deliver, and maintain where human involvement is unnecessary. Autonomous systems coordinate resources carefully, with a mindset of plenty rather than fear. Transportation is abundant and flexible. Materials are reused. Structures are built to endure. Extraction is minimized. The village is designed to run with low resource input while steadily increasing wellbeing over time. This is not a world without meaning. It is a world where meaning is no longer held hostage.
Because in Wamotopia, people do not have to work to deserve life.
Some will still build, explore, invent, create, grow gardens, run experiments, host gatherings, and deepen culture—not because they are forced, but because they desire to participate in becoming.
And true freedom means: if you want to leave, you can. The foundation of a dignified life does not vanish the moment you step away.
The Wamians
The people of Wamotopia are the Wamians—people of Wamo.
Wamians understand something simple and radical: the individual and the collective are not enemies. They are intertwined. Without one, there is no other.
Wamians build a concrete layer beneath relationships: coordination as infrastructure. When there are signals of deviation—when something threatens wellbeing, freedom, or the commons—the system can respond quickly and intelligently. Not through violence. Not through coercion. Through shared design, shared responsibility, and automation that protects the foundation.
The Wamians still play. They can still compete—in games, in art, in puzzles, in arenas that create meaning. But they do not fight over what makes life possible. Survival is not a battlefield. The basics are not prizes for the powerful.
Wamotopia channels human energy toward positive externality: toward systems that make everyone better off, toward beauty, toward discovery, toward connection, toward shared reality."
More information
- If you want to stay informed and participate in offline activities in Wamotopia, visit our public homepage @website/notion.site or website https://www.wamotopia.love/ for timely information.