Foreword

In the field of human collaboration, we are witnessing an extraordinary transformation. While the world's attention is still focused on traditional technology centers, a new model is emerging that may fundamentally change the way we build the future together. This model is the "pop-up city" - a short-lived but purposeful community. These cities prove that innovation is not limited to location but is catalyzed by the right people coming together in the right environment at the right time.

1. Beyond the traditional model: the next evolution

Understanding how pop-up cities transcend existing innovation models is the first step towards this concept. As Vitalik said in the article "Why I Created Zuzalu":

"We already have hacker homes, these places can exist Months or even years, but usually only ten or twenty people can be accommodated. We've also had some large conference events that can accommodate thousands of people, but each conference only lasts a week. This is enough for people to happen by chance. Encounter, but not enough to establish a deep connection."

Pop-up cities represent a leap forward—“a step in two directions at once”—creating spaces that can accommodate hundreds of people for months. This is not just an expanded Hacker House or an extended conference event. Vitalik describes it as a "sweet spot"—ambitious and unique enough to provide new insights, but light enough to be logistically manageable.

Over the past few years, I have been deeply involved in the crypto ecosystem and have personally experienced the unique challenges and opportunities of this industry’s remote culture. As a venture capitalist, I have witnessed countless teams building revolutionary technologies dispersed across different time zones and continents around the world. This distributed approach brought unprecedented freedom, but it also came with a hidden cost—which, I came to realize, was the lack of the “magic” of real human connection.

I still clearly remember the experience of attending an encryption conference for the first time. After months of Zoom meetings and TelegramAfter chatting, it was so exciting to suddenly see real faces behind those familiar usernames. They're not just meeting attendees - they're developers whose code I've reviewed, founders whose projects I've invested in, thought leaders whose thought threads I've followed. In those hallway conversations and impromptu whiteboard discussions, ideas that had been brewing in isolated digital spaces suddenly took on new life through face-to-face collaboration.

2. The first experiment: from the Internet to Zuzalu

2.1 Vision of the Network

The theoretical basis of these communities comes from Balaji Srinivasan’s revolutionary “network” concept - a A vision of digital communities unified by shared values ​​that can be translated into physical spaces. This hints at a profound future: the way humanity organizes may no longer be bounded by arbitrary geographic boundaries, but instead be shaped by shared goals and visions.

Source: Balaji Srinivasan’s Network Vision

What makes the crypto community an ideal vanguard for this new paradigm? Unlike the traditional tech industry, which tends to concentrate in a single center, the crypto space has always embodied a different ethos. Ethereum’s development teams are spread across the world, from Switzerland to Singapore, from Berlin to Romania. This natural resistance to centralization, combined with years of experience in global coordination, creates the perfect foundation for this new thing.

2.2 Zuzalu: From theory to reality

At the beginning of 2023, this A vision comes to life in Montenegro under the playful name "Zuzalu", which has no specific meaning. Within two months, Lustica Bay became home to 200 residents—a carefully selected group of Ethereum developers, longevity researchers, and governance experts. This is not just a party, but a living laboratory where new ideas can be tested, refined and implemented in real time.

Source: Peter Young - Lustica Bay, Montenegro

The impact is immediate and significant. An example is Zupass – a prototype identity system originally developed by the 0xPARC team. Through constant interaction with users and rapid iteration, a tool that might have taken months to develop in a traditional environment evolved into a practical tool in a matter of weeks and is now widely used in multiple pop-up communities.

3.1 Open Borders

The movement then evolved further in a decentralized manner unique to the crypto space. In December 2023, Vitalik proposed “reopening the frontier” and supported this vision through two rounds of Gitcoin funding totaling 500 ETH. The core goal is clear: remove any central authority and empower anyone who shares the mission to create their own "Zu Village."

This new method explicitly discards:

A core long-term event

The binding of the name "Zuzalu" to specific physical events

Instead, it actively encourages existing community members and newcomers to host their own pop-up cities, even if they are on the same time and in close proximity to each other.

3.2 Chiang Mai: Realization of the vision

Witnessed by Chiang Mai, Thailand, in October 2024 The simultaneous emergence of multiple pop-up cities has created an unprecedented interconnected community ecosystem. It is worth noting that

Many of these projects can be traced back to the original Zuzalu experiment: Edge City Lanna, ShanhaiWoo, The Mu, MEGAZu, HER DAO, Invisible Garden, Lovepunks, Funding the Commons, and other emerging communities. Each community brings Comes with a unique perspective, while retaining the unique collaborative atmosphere of Zuzalu spirit

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As a VC at IOSG Ventures, we are honored to sponsor The Mu and I have the opportunity to witness this vibrant Social Layer ecosystem firsthand. The platform becomes our shared digital "city center", showcasing the incredible range of activities across all communities every day, from tech demo days where builders showcase their latest projects, to rock climbing classes, Muay Thai training, meditation work. Activities range from workshops to leisure trips exploring Thailand’s cultural sites to community dinners and social gatherings

What makes this experiment really special is that each community actively encourages cross-border collaboration. Everyone is welcome to participate in the activities of each community - it is not only allowed, but also

Being celebrated. Weekly Zuzalu Community meetings became a central event, where representatives from each pop-up city shared updates and community members could network across projects and interests. These moments of convergence demonstrated what happens when traditional constraints of time and space are removed. , how ideas flow freely, relationships deepen, and innovation accelerates in ways not possible through traditional means

4. New Silicon Valley Model

What’s special about pop-up cities is that they redefine the nature of innovation centers. Traditional technology centers such as Silicon Valley were successful by gathering talent in one place, but today they have limitations. The sexism is increasingly evident: outrageously high living costs exclude diverse perspectives, visa restrictions lock out global talent, and even more damagingly, an increasingly homogeneous culture threatens to stifle real innovation.

The pop-up city provides a completeTotally different options. They recreate the kind of density of talent and interaction that Silicon Valley relies on, but for the global digital age.

In pop-up cities, developers can experiment with the cooperation model through short-term projects before formal cooperation, teams can test compatibility, and ideas can be Get verified in real time by a diverse global community.

The contrast was particularly stark when I attended both Devcon and The Mu. While Devcon is full of energy and possibility, its short time span means that many potential connections may never actually develop. You might have a great conversation about zero-knowledge proofs in a coffee shop, exchange contact details, and promise follow-up contact—but that momentum tends to dissipate once everyone returns to their respective time zones.

Pop-up cities solve this problem by providing "relational infrastructure" - the duration and shared context required for true collaboration . They find a middle ground between the fleeting interactions of conferences and the long-term commitments of traditional tech hubs. This is the missing piece of the puzzle in our industry’s remote-first model: enabling spontaneous, unstructured collaboration that leads to breakthrough innovation.

As part of IOSG Ventures, we support this vision because we see the fundamental potential for an innovative future in pop-up cities . The success of multiple co-existing communities in Chiang Mai demonstrates how transformative this model is—it combines the best features of Silicon Valley’s density of innovation with the globally dynamic nature of the crypto ecosystem.

5. The promised future

At a discussion in Chiang Mai called "The Promise of Pop-up Cities," Vitalik painted a compelling vision of a future in which specialized communities would emerge to tackle specific challenges, from biotech Center-to-self-sufficient infrastructure experiment. This specialization, coupled with the global flexibility of pop-up cities, reveals their profound significance.

Looking back at the various crypto conferences, hacker houses, and now pop-up cities I have participated in, I feel that this movement is not just It’s an evolution of how we work and how we build communities in an increasingly digital world.. The remote-first nature of the crypto industry has given us unprecedented freedom, but it has also taught us the irreplaceable value of face-to-face connection. Pop-up cities don’t just solve issues of productivity or innovation – they feed deeper into a sense of belonging and purpose in our globally distributed industry.

Perhaps the future will not appear in a "Silicon Valley", but will appear in a series of on-demand, purpose-oriented In the community, they can emerge anytime and anywhere whenever there is a need for innovation. In fact, such iterations are already starting to take shape – such as ZuThailand, which will be held in Pattaya in November-December 2024, and which we at IOSG Ventures are proud to be a part of supporting. These communities will be more than just temporary gatherings – they are, as Edge City’s Janine puts it, “social incubators” where we can test and develop new models of education, healthcare and human development.

Looking ahead, I believe we are only scratching the surface of what is possible. Each new pop-up city teaches us valuable lessons about community building, governance, and collaboration. Through these experiments, we are witnessing the early stages of what may be the most significant transformation in human collaboration since the Industrial Revolution. The potential is clear: Pop-up cities are not just changing where innovation happens—they are fundamentally reshaping how we build the future together.