What’s Trending in The Network State

We are thrilled to announce the launch of the Jur Alliance program, an exciting initiative designed to create a thriving ecosystem for Startup Societies, Nations, and Network States. At Jur, we believe in the power of community, and we are delighted to have you join us on this transformative journey. Fuelling Innovation and Empowering Change The Jur Alliance Program is our community's driving force, uniting community builders, thought leaders, and advocates like you. As a Jur Ally, you become an essential part of our vision for a decentralised future, actively participating in the community, promoting Jur, and contributing to the growth and development of our network. Embark on a journey filled with exciting challenges and rewarding opportunities. Engage in quests and campaigns tailored to different interests and skill sets, earning valuable fuel points and XP. Showcase your achievements on the leaderboard, competing with fellow Allies for top spots. The rewards include $JUR tokens, merchandise, event passes, and more. Navigating the Alliance The Jur Alliance program will take place exclusively on AirLyft. This dynamic platform will host quests and campaigns, each tailored to cater to diverse interests and skills. As a Jur Ally, you can join the community by signing up directly on AirLyft through Twitter. Once you're part of the Jur Alliance community on AirLyft, you can dive into the quests and campaigns of your choice. Completing these tasks will earn you valuable fuel points and XP, driving your progress and showcasing your achievements on the leaderboard. The more quests you undertake and excel at, the higher you climb on the leaderboard, competing with fellow Allies for top honours. Perks and Rewards Rewards are our way of showing appreciation for the ongoing support from our Allies, making them as rewarding and exciting as possible. We will continuously experiment and offer diverse reward selections to make your experience even better! Allies will receive their rewards on a monthly basis, with exact distribution details communicated on the Jur Alliance Discord channel. In the initial phase, we will be rewarding Allies with $JUR tokens, but that's not all! Soon, we have plans to introduce exclusive Jur merchandise, event passes, and much more, giving you even more reasons to be an active part of our growing community. To be eligible to receive rewards, you must fulfil the following prerequisites: AirLyft Authentication: Log into AirLyft through Twitter. This is our way of authenticating you, so remember to use the same Twitter credentials every time you login to AirLyft and follow Jur's Twitter account. Welcome Campaign Completion: Complete all tasks in the Welcome Campaign, including obtaining a Jur Passport and verifying your email. Only then will you become eligible to receive rewards and unlock the full potential of the Jur Alliance program. Valid Dotsama Wallet: Ensure you share a valid Dotsama wallet address during the Welcome Campaign. We won't ask for your wallet address for every quest or campaign; instead, we'll automatically release the rewards to the provided Dotsama wallet address associated with your Twitter account used to login to AirLyft. Engage and Connect Stay connected and engaged in the vibrant Jur Alliance community through our special gated Discord channel. This exclusive space is where we post updates on upcoming quests, monthly leaderboards, special private campaigns, and more. It's also your forum to ask questions, seek support, and discuss campaigns/quests with fellow Allies. Unlock access to this dynamic channel by ensuring you have a valid Jur NFT passport and have used it to connect to Discord. Additionally, keep an eye on your verified email inbox, as you'll receive a monthly update there, providing you with the latest developments and opportunities to participate actively in the Jur Alliance Program. Welcome aboard the journey of building a thriving Jur community, where innovation, empowerment, and positive change flourish. Join the Jur Alliance now.

Jur is moving from VeChain to a Solo Chain built on Substrate. $JUR token holders should swap their VeChain $JUR for the new substrate-based $JUR. Each VeChain $JUR that you swap will entitle you to one new $JUR. Please be aware that the Jur team is negotiating an exchange method, but temporarily there will not be a method to buy and sell the new tokens. In order to execute the swap, you will lock your VeChain $JUR in a smart contract. You will also need a Polkadot.js wallet and address so the smart contract knows where to send your new tokens. As soon as the state root is updated, you will be able to claim your new substrate-based $JUR tokens by providing your Polkadot.js wallet address.  The swap will involve a transaction on VeChain, so you will need a small amount of $VTHO for gas. In order to make the exchange, you will need to move your tokens to VeChain’s Sync2 wallet. You will not be able to send tokens to the swap smart contract directly from OceanEx or any other wallet, only VeChain Sync2 (full version; the lite version will not work). Note which account you are using within Sync2 and make sure to use the same account throughout the process. Don’t worry– it’s easy to perform the swap. Watch the tutorial to learn how or read the instructions below. https://youtu.be/oJb8fU97Nn4 Token Swap Instructions: Download your VeChain Sync2 wallet and run the executable file to set it up. Transfer your $JUR to VeChain Sync2 wallet. Set up a Polkadot.js wallet. Go to  https://swap.jur.io and where you see “connect your wallet” click the button that says Sync 2. Your Sync2 wallet will open and you can select “Continue and Sign” to confirm the connection. Next select the amount of VeChain $JUR to lock in the swap contract. To complete the token lock, you will be directed back to Sync2 to sign the contract. You will then see two success messages. The second message will allow you to view the transaction on VeChain to confirm the process completed. When you close the VeChain window, you will see a window that indicates that your “Transfer is in Progress.” Your new tokens will be available once the state root is updated. This can take 48-72 hours. Once the state root is updated, when you visit https://swap.jur.io the top status bar will say “Claim Jur tokens on Substrate” and a window on the page says “Let’s get your Substrate Wallet Address ready.” Enter your Polkadot wallet address and sign the certificate on Sync2 to confirm. Now your wallet is connected and you can click “Claim Tokens” to have them sent to your wallet. You will get a success message that gives you a link to the transaction record. You can also view your remaining tokens and go back to swap again. Once you finish you can disconnect your wallet in the top right of the page.  And that’s all there is to it. We hope you will find it easy to swap your VeChain $JUR and we are excited to show you how you can use them to create and manage your society soon.

Jur is thrilled to announce the appointment of Alessio Treglia as our new Chief Technology Officer (CTO). With an impressive background in software engineering, open source development, and the blockchain ecosystem, Alessio brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to our team. Notably, in his former role as CTO of Ignite (previously Tendermint) and as an essential figure in the lauded Cosmos ecosystem has prepared him well to guide Jur’s technical roadmap. This exciting appointment was revealed during a comprehensive and fun video interview conducted by Stuart (AKA the Wordsmith) – Jur’s senior affiliate writer and journalist. The informal discussion (which will be revealed soon in its entirety, alongside more in depth accompanying articles) highlighted several key aspects of Jur's vision, offering insights into how Alessio’s rich experience and unique perspectives will shape our future. It was clear that his visionary ideas, particularly about startup societies, network states, and governance, align seamlessly with Jur's mission. Alessio boasts over 15 years of experience in software engineering, and as such his robust understanding of the technical landscape aligns with the more complex aspects of Jur's ecosystem. Furthermore, his proven track record of managing large open-source projects and his deep knowledge of blockchain and decentralized systems make him an exceptional fit for leading Jur's technology trajectory. In addition, one of Alessio's significant strengths is his understanding of interoperability and the importance of efficient cross-chain communication. During the interview, he emphasized the need to build fair, transparent cross-chain trades and exchanges. He stressed the need for clear rules governing these operations, ensuring they are as secure, effective, and beneficial as possible for all stakeholders. This commitment to fairness and transparency is in line with Jur's objectives. Furthermore, Alessio’s experience building technological infrastructure and driving effective governance strategies on a large scale will help Jur advance the existing Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) framework into its next evolution as startup societies, and inevitably – Network States. His understanding of the complexity of governance mechanisms and the unique challenges they can present will undoubtedly contribute to creating innovative solutions for any teething issues that might transpire as these systems become more prevalent on larger scales.  Sharing a similar mindset to that of Jur’s existing team, throughout the discussion with Stuart, Alessio repeatedly underlined the importance of scalability and articulated his vision for "Democracy 2.0” - reshaping future governance models through the power of blockchain technology. His emphasis on the necessity of collaborative development and community engagement will be pivotal in scaling the decentralized governance movement and encouraging the mainstream adoption of Web3 technologies – particularly for those who want to see active change but are simultaneously dubious about what such a change might look like in action.  This is largely due to Alessio's vision for Jur being rooted in a community-oriented approach; he believes that by lending our expertise and experience, listening to and rewarding community members, and understanding the problems that people face, we can create a better product, and ultimately more successful societies. This approach once again aligns perfectly with Jur's ethos of innovation through collaboration, further underscoring Alessio's suitability for this role. Last, but most definitely not least (and perhaps one of the most exciting aspects of Alessio's appointment) is his unwavering commitment to constant innovation. He is eager to help Jur contribute to the general "webification" of blockchain and DeFi spaces, and firmly believes that  the company can spearhead overall progress in this area. Both his personal conviction and his faith in our team's potential and the groundbreaking technologies we are developing are yet more clear signs that he is the exact right person to appoint in this pivotal role – particularly given that our Startup Society Founder’s Awards has been proud to reveal that it has seen over 50 recent society proposals, (representing over 500,000 individuals across the multiple communities) – showing the huge rate of expansion that Jur, and its values are experiencing.   In welcoming Alessio to the team, we're confident his expertise and passion will be significant assets to Jur as we continue to pioneer innovative solutions in the blockchain space. We look forward to the groundbreaking contributions he will undoubtedly make to our team and the broader ecosystem. Alessio’s appointment as CTO signifies the start of an exciting new chapter in Jur's history, and we're thrilled to have him on board.  Finally, on a personal note, Alessio expressed his gratitude for the opportunity to join Jur. He is excited about the challenges ahead and the potential for making a significant impact on our ecosystem. We share his excitement and eagerly anticipate the groundbreaking contributions he will make in shaping our future.  Welcome to the team, Alessio!

When Jur announced the first Startup Society Founders Awards in March, the team was hoping for 20 to 30 proposals. For this first cohort, the team accepted 53 Startup Society proposals covering a wide variety of use cases including societies focused on providing education, affordable housing, longevity, alternative finance, and frameworks for cooperating to develop new knowledge. A committee of five Jur pioneer citizens elected by their peers ranked all 53 proposals to create a shortlist of ten for consideration by a panel of prestigious judges: Tim Draper of Draper Capital, Trent McConaghy of Ocean Protocol, and Ed Hesse of Energy Web.  The judges have made their selections. Jur is pleased to congratulate all ten shortlisted proposals for making it to the final round. The judges have selected five proposals: VitaDAO, Continuum, Umma Finance, Wezesha, and Fair Squares.  The founders of these five innovative Startup Societies will each receive $2,000 USD and 1,000 $JUR along with ongoing support from the Jur team. Jur’s Head of Product Development will work closely with the founders to discover the tools they need and establish priorities.  Now let’s take a closer look at the five winners. In our next post, we’ll dig into the five runners-up and share more details about what makes their projects uniquely positioned for Web3.  VitaDAO VitaDAO is an active community that has united to pursue longevity science to improve people’s lives. VitaDAO uses DAO voting mechanisms to fund and advance research into healthy life extension and biotechnology. Rather than focus efforts on treating ill health, VitaDAO seeks to address the root causes of age-related disease, and not a moment too soon. The current situation, with an increasing ratio of older people to younger people in many countries and age-related diseases accounting for 80% of medical costs, is unsustainable. VitaDAO is not just about extending life - it is about extending healthy productive life so that people can enjoy contributing to society in their old age rather than becoming a burden. VitaDAO started in 2021 and it has been moving fast; the DAO’s 9,000 community members have collectively funded 17 projects, dedicating around 4 million USD to longevity-enhancing research and resulting spinoffs. They have raised 5.1 million USD from their community and another 4.1 million from Pfizer, Balaji, and others. Their first spinoff is Matrix Bio based on the research of Vera Gorbunova on nake mole rats, which don’t seem to get cancer.  VitaDAO has shown a capacity for collective action as a Startup Society and is experimenting with in-person, research-friendly territories, potentially evolving into a Network State. Because as one of the Stewards observes, “Having a better jurisdiction is a matter of life or death for people.” VitaDAO has already helped organise a pop-up city experiment -  Zuzalu, initiated by Vitalik Buterin in Montenegro, from March 25 to May 25, 2023, and has been in discussions with various governments on establishing special jurisdictions for medical innovation. Continuum Continuum is designed to connect people who are eager to learn job skills with course providers that will pay them to learn and “level up” their skills. How does that work? Companies with new tech products need users who understand their products, so they are willing to offer tokens and NFTs as rewards. The platform supports gamified learning with social features and short 5 to 10-minute lessons to make it easy and fun. And it seems like they are succeeding, with 32,000 users who have taken a total of 346,000 mini-courses already! Venture Capitalists, including Balaji!, have taken note, investing $1.5 M USD so far and the team aims to close a $5 M USD + seed round by the end of October.  Umma Finance The Founders of Umma are working to create an interest-free Network State and they have a pretty good idea about where to find a lot of citizens; 1.4 Billion Muslims don’t use banks because they charge interest, a practice that Islam prohibits. In the normal lending model, the agreement between the lender and borrower is designed to insulate the lender from risk. In the Islamic finance model, risks are shared. Some banks are trying to follow the rules of Islam as best they can, but Umma founders point out that fractional reserve banking is an inherent inescapable part of the fiat money system and hence any kind of fiat loan is ultimately incompatible with Islam. Consequently, Umma will build a system based on sound money, for instance, Bitcoin. Umma plans to move forward in three phases, beginning with the creation of a value-aligned digital community, in other words, a Startup Society. They will provide an interest-free stablecoin and an interest-free lending protocol and eventually an interest-free Bitcoin-based charter city. The stablecoin will be over-collateralised with real-world assets and crypto assets and will offer Sharia-compliant profit sharing. The lending protocol will offer Sharia-compliant yields of 10-20% with short-term maturity. The founders have already recruited over 25,000 investors and 30,000 borrowers who have exchanged over $10 M USD to their previous Islamic banking startup, Iman.  Wezesha Wezesha enables tech progress and Web3 adoption in the ascending world, areas that have a lot of potential for economic development. Wezesha does this by providing vocational education to students and young entrepreneurs in areas in Africa and other places where opportunities are generally scarce.  Wezesha was inspired by the founders’ success with one of the first rural startup hubs in the world in 2015. Now Wezesha is working to develop a user-friendly web-based and mobile application with features such as browsing courses, crypto tasking, tracking progress, and communicating with instructors and peers. To incentivize and reward learners and startups, Wezesha will incorporate digital passports and tokens, including their own token called WEZ, representing membership in the community and granting access to exclusive features of the Wezesha DAO. Wezesha will generate revenue with a fee-based system for users as well as through partnerships and collaborations with educational institutions, businesses, and other stakeholders in the web3 economy. Wezesha’s uniting principle is the belief that everyone should have access to high-quality vocational education and the opportunity to develop skills and knowledge that can unlock their potential. And that is an excellent mission.  Fair Squares Fair Squares is committed to solving a significant problem that impacts a huge number of people, the lack of affordable rental housing. The founders of this nascent Startup Society are building a digital coordination framework to connect citizens who need housing, real estate sellers, social investors, builders, other real estate professionals, and public policymakers. The guiding principles of the Society are affordability, equitability, and transparency in the creation, sale, and renting of residential rental real estate.  Rental housing is often created by developers and owned by landlords. Their profits can be quite high, and the resulting rental rate housing is expensive. Fair Squares’ founders believe they can reduce rental costs by 14% by changing the capital structure. Instead of a normal landlord or developer putting up all the money, social impact investors within the Fair Squares community will fund projects in exchange for fractional ownership generating a low-risk return that is comparable with other risk-off assets like bonds. Initially, Fair Square will focus on crowdfunding the purchase of residential real estate and in later stages may progress to development.  The Founders are building bridges with government bodies including Housing Europe, Municipality of Groningen, and University of Erasmus & Utrecht, and working to develop a blockchain-based system with a grant from the Web 3 foundation.  Congratulations to everyone for being part of this important movement! Congratulations to all five winners and the runners-up along with all the participating Startup Society Founders. Jur team is excited to be working with you all as we enter what may be a true watershed moment in human history, the launch of Startup Societies that foretells the dawn of the Network States.

Polkadot India was an exceptional event! It was a pleasure for us to participate, and we strongly believe that it showcases the enormous potential of Polkadot.  We'd like to share an important strategic update with you. As you may have noticed, there have been some recent changes in the supply and demand dynamics of Polkadot's parachain slot auctions– now held monthly. Numerous projects, including Jur’s partners, routinely participate in auctions to initiate or renew their parachain leases. We have decided to launch Jur Chain as a solo chain first to ensure operational celerity. This will enable us to complete the $JUR token swap much sooner, without having to wait for the successful outcome of an auction. Similarly, this strategy ensures that Jur does not have to overspend on a slot in order to carry out the token swap or execute product delivery promptly.  Holders of $JUR will soon have the ability to migrate their tokens to the Jur Chain. The token swap dApp is now production-ready and will undergo end-to-end testing on the solo chain. We understand it's a hassle. However, keep in mind that Jur will participate in a crowdloan soon. This strategy is intended to guarantee a fast token swap independent from market dynamics.  We anticipate becoming a parachain in the near future and joining forces with other partners and projects in the space. With more than 51 societies attending the award, totaling 430K+ cumulative members, we are proud to build with our focus on our users. The Jur team has been working relentlessly towards this goal. Stay tuned for our announcement on the launch of the Jur Chain! 

Jur, the upcoming Polkadot parachain building the DAO 2.0 stack, invites founders to pitch their Startup Society ideas to notable figures from Web3, including Tim Draper (Draper Associates), Ed Hesse (Energy Web), and Trent McConaghy (Ocean Protocol) for a chance to win a share of the USD 10,000 grand prize, along with the opportunity to launch their Startup Society through a dedicated grant program. Unlike DAOs, Startup Societies are flexible founder-led forms of congregations that are value-based to let communities aggregate easily around a shared purpose. With its’ DAO 2.0 stack, Jur aims to kick off the 1-click Country ecosystem to build the future of governance, enabling Web3 communities with interoperability, growth, experimentation, and evolution into network states.  Jur invites existing online community builders, influencers, DAOs, and innovators to participate in the first cohort of the Startup Society Founders Awards. The Awards will provide a platform for founders to experiment with new societal models and offer USD 2,000 and 1,000 $JUR each to the top five Startup Society proposals.  Web3 technologies are changing the way we think about community and governance. Jur founder Alessandro Palombo states, “Jur believes that Web3 requires simpler structures to enable community building and governance. That's why we are developing an ecosystem to support Startup Societies, designed to be Web3-native communities based on shared values and simple, consensus-based decision-making. In addition, with the Startup Society Founders Awards launch, we want to encourage further innovation and experimentation in this space.”To keep the process decentralized and transparent, the evaluation process to shortlist the top 10 proposals, will be undertaken by Jur community volunteers, along with a panel of experienced advisors including Zane Austen from Balaji’s team at The Network State, amongst others. The Jur team and advisors will refine the shortlisted proposals to be presented to the judges, Tim Draper, Ed Hesse, and Trent McConaghy, who will select the five winners to present their ideas live on Demo Day. “Startup Societies offer an exciting new way for people to come together and work towards a shared purpose,” says Ed Hess, Energy Web’s founder and one of the judges for the award. He adds, “Jur is building the tools and infrastructure needed to power the next generation of Web3 native communities. I’m excited to be part of the Jur Startup Society Founders Awards and see the innovative proposals presented.”The deadline to submit your proposal is 31st March 2023. Take advantage of this opportunity to be a part of the next generation of Web3 Startups Society founders. Apply now!