Blockchain as a State

🔎 Note on Format

Normally, BlockyResearch articles include a standard summary of the key takeaways. For this piece, we’ve chosen a different structure. That’s because we’re not summarising a project or market event, but proposing a conceptual framework: blockchains as digital states.

Rather than compressing it into bullet-points, the value here lies in walking through the metaphor step by step, mapping constitutions, governments, citizens, and foreign policies to blockchain mechanics. To keep it digestible, we’ve provided tiered entry points:

🟦 For the Curious – if you’re new to crypto and want the high-level idea. 🟨 For the Enthusiast – if you’re already comfortable with staking, governance, and forks. 🟥 For the Builder / Founder – if you’re designing systems and want to think about trade-offs and archetypes.

Introduction

What if Ethereum isn’t just a network, but a nation? What if Bitcoin is a republic, Solana a technocracy, and Cosmos a federation of city-states?

Blockchains are usually described in technical terms, protocols, validators, consensus mechanisms. But look closer, and they resemble something far more political: states in the digital realm. They have constitutions written in code, governments in the form of validators and miners, economies built around native tokens, and even foreign policies through bridges and interoperability. And like any state, they depend on their citizens, users, developers, and token holders who pledge allegiance not by birthright, but by choice.

This idea builds on two important strands of thought. In The Network State, Balaji Srinivasan imagined a future where online-first communities grow so strong they can crowdfund land, negotiate recognition, and become sovereign digital nations. Primavera De Filippi, in her essay Citizenship in the Era of Blockchain-Based Virtual Nations, explored how blockchain enables transnational “cloud communities”, voluntary polities where identity and governance exist beyond borders. Both frameworks highlight that politics is shifting from geography to networks, and that citizenship may soon be as much a matter of code as of country.

What we want to explore here is something slightly different: not blueprints for new nations, but how blockchains themselves already act as sovereign states. They compete for citizens, levy taxes through gas fees, enforce laws through consensus, and face revolutions in the form of forks. Some thrive like empires, others resemble fragile republics, and a few collapse into failed states.

If blockchains are states, then what kind of state is Bitcoin? What about Ethereum, Solana, or Cosmos? That’s where the metaphor gets fun, because each chain already carries the DNA of a political archetype.

Mapping the Blockchain-State

If we accept the premise that blockchains behave like states, the next question is: what exactly makes them state-like? The comparison isn’t just poetic, it holds up when you line their components side by side. A blockchain has rules, institutions, citizens, and an economy, just as any nation does. Its borders are drawn not on maps, but in code; its sovereignty is upheld not by armies, but by consensus.

Seen through this lens, the inner workings of a blockchain begin to look strikingly familiar:

• The Blockchain = the State – its borders are defined not by geography, but by the boundaries of consensus.
• Consensus Rules / Protocol = the Constitution – the supreme law, setting the terms for security, money supply, and governance.
• Developers & Founders = Government (Legislative/Executive) – they propose constitutional changes, draft upgrades, and often set the ideological direction of the state. In young blockchains, they can resemble founding fathers or strong executives.
• Validators / Miners = Judiciary and Law Enforcement – they enforce the constitution by validating transactions and blocks, resolving conflicts, and securing the state against attack.
• Token Holders / Users = Citizens – they participate in the economy, sometimes with voting rights, sometimes just as residents.
• dApps and Smart Contracts = Businesses and Public Institutions – from banks (DeFi) to markets (NFTs) to civic utilities, they provide services within the state.
• Forks = Revolutions or Secessions – when citizens disagree, they can split, forming a new polity with a copy of the old constitution.
• Interoperability and Bridges = Diplomatic Relations and Trade Agreements – mechanisms of cross-border commerce and migration.
• Gas Fees and Tokens = Taxes and Currency – levied to fund the blockchain’s public goods: security, computation, and execution.
• Governance Votes = Elections and Referendums – opportunities for citizens to approve amendments or reject them.
• Citizens Choosing a Blockchain = Migration — people move to whichever chain offers better rights, services, or opportunities.

Forms of Government: Dictatorships, Oligarchies, Democracies

Not all blockchain-states are governed the same way. Their form of government depends on how power is distributed – in other words, on their level of decentralisation.

• Dictatorships (Highly Centralised Chains)
  A single foundation, company, or small leadership group holds decision-making power. They can push upgrades unilaterally, control treasuries, and dictate governance outcomes. These chains are efficient but fragile: citizens enjoy stability until trust in the ruler breaks.
• Oligarchies (Moderately Decentralised Chains)
  Most blockchains operate here. Power is spread across multiple actors, but unequally. Validator cartels, token whales, or well-funded insiders dominate votes, while ordinary citizens participate symbolically. These chains are decentralised in infrastructure, but politically controlled by elites.
• Democracies (Highly Decentralised Chains)
  Rare, but possible. Some chains experiment with quadratic voting, DAOs, or one-person-one-vote systems to empower citizens. Decisions are slower, compromises are harder, but the state genuinely reflects the will of its people. True democracies in blockchain form the frontier of governance experiments.

In short: decentralisation is not just a technical feature – it defines the political regime type of the blockchain-state.

Once you see blockchains this way, the comparisons become striking. Some chains are dictatorships, run by small elites. Others are oligarchies, where whales dominate decision-making. A few try to be democracies, experimenting with quadratic voting or one-person-one-vote. Some collapse into failed states, abandoned after economic or security breakdowns. And some cluster into federations, like Cosmos zones or Polkadot parachains, while stablecoins and cross-chain protocols act as currency unions and international treaties.

This mapping doesn’t just give us a metaphor. It gives us a language. It lets us talk about blockchains not only as technologies, but as political entities, with all the struggles, compromises, and ambitions of states in the real world.

State Archetypes: How Blockchains Resemble Nations

Once we map blockchain components to state components, a natural question follows: if each blockchain is a state, then what kind of state is it? Some resemble conservative republics, others look like sprawling democracies or efficient technocracies. A few operate like protectorates or regulated city-states. By looking at their constitutions, governments, citizens, foreign policies, and legitimacy, we can begin to sketch their political archetypes.

Bitcoin: The Conservative Republic

Bitcoin is the oldest blockchain-state, built on a rigid constitution, the 21 million supply cap, proof-of-work consensus, and a deep resistance to change. Its government is judicial rather than legislative: miners enforce the rules, but developers rarely succeed in amending them. Citizens join voluntarily and often remain fiercely loyal, identifying more with Bitcoin as a principle than as a platform for experimentation. Its foreign policy is largely isolationist, preferring neutrality and independence over interoperability. The result is a state with unmatched stability and legitimacy, though at the cost of adaptability.

Ethereum: The Federal Democracy

Ethereum’s constitution is flexible, evolving through constant debate, proposals, and upgrades. Its government is participatory: developers draft laws, validators enforce them, and token holders can weigh in on governance. Its citizens are diverse, from builders and DAOs to casual users, and they migrate in and out depending on costs and opportunities. Ethereum’s foreign policy is open and diplomatic, serving as the hub for countless bridges, sidechains, and L2s. It is messy and sometimes slow, but like a democracy, its strength lies in the energy and diversity of its institutions.

Solana: The Technocracy

Solana prioritises efficiency and scale above all else. Its constitution is pragmatic and can adapt quickly under the guidance of its technical elite. The government operates like a technocracy, where concentrated leadership drives progress and makes decisive choices. Citizens value speed, low costs, and performance, often preferring results over deliberation. With its rapid growth and ambitious vision, Solana resembles modern China: a centralised, fast-moving state that has become an economic powerhouse, admired for its scale but sometimes questioned for its transparency and resilience.

Base: The Protectorate

Base is unusual: it is less an independent state than a protectorate. Its constitution is controlled by Coinbase, which acts as a sovereign guarantor. The government is centralised and corporate, with little room for bottom-up governance. Citizens are mostly mainstream users onboarded through Coinbase, enjoying the benefits of stability and compliance but with limited influence. Its foreign policy is trade-focused, positioning Base as a gateway between traditional finance and the broader blockchain ecosystem. Like Hong Kong under British rule, its power lies in being a secure entry point rather than a fully sovereign state.

MANTRA Chain: The Business Hub City-State

MANTRA has built itself as blockchain's Singapore - a pragmatic business hub where commerce takes precedence over ideology. Its constitution creates a free trade zone by default, with sophisticated compliance corridors for regulated activities. Unlike chains that chose between permissionless innovation or institutional compliance, MANTRA offers both: a permissionless core with optional regulatory frameworks for those who need them.

The state was bootstrapped by its founders, ensuring early citizens joined for belief rather than speculation. Its government operates as a hybrid - decentralized for most activities, but with clear frameworks when real-world law requires interface. Citizens are builders and institutions drawn not by promises of revolution, but by infrastructure that actually works.

With MultiVM support, MANTRA practices radical diplomatic openness - accepting citizens regardless of their blockchain origin. Like Singapore transformed from swampland to financial powerhouse through pragmatic excellence, MANTRA is building the boring infrastructure that makes everything else possible. It's not the largest blockchain-state or the most ideologically pure, but it may be the most useful - a place where tokenized assets can meet institutional capital under rule of law.

Where other chains promise disruption, MANTRA delivers functionality. In the world of blockchain-states, it aims to be indispensable rather than revolutionary.

Blockchain-State Archetypes: A Comparative Table

A Builder's Perspective: MANTRA Chain as a Blockchain-State

When JP Mullin and I started building MANTRA Chain, I thought we were creating RWA infrastructure. What we actually built was a nation.

The Founding: Bootstrap Republic

Like many blockchain-states, MANTRA Chain began as a bootstrap republic. We were the founding fathers of this RWA nation, writing our constitution in code while funding it from our own pockets. This wasn't just philosophical; it was practical. When you bootstrap a nation, every citizen who joins does so because they believe, not because they were marketed to.

Our Constitution: Free Trade Zone with Compliance Corridors

MANTRA Chain is designed as the business hub of the blockchain world. Think of it as a free trade zone - permissionless by default, with designated corridors for activities that require real-world compliance.

Most transactions flow freely. Build what you want, trade what you want, innovate without permission. But when you need to tokenize a building in Dubai or issue regulated securities, there are paths that involve "government" oversight - not because we love bureaucracy, but because legitimate business sometimes requires legitimate frameworks.

This dual nature is intentional. We're not building a surveillance state or a regulatory maze. We're building infrastructure where a DeFi protocol can operate next to a tokenized real estate fund, each following the rules appropriate to their nature.

The Economy: Breeding Ground for Scale

As a new nation-state, we're in that critical early phase - proving that business on blockchain isn't just possible but superior. Every successful tokenization, every efficient settlement, every institutional partnership adds to our legitimacy. We're the breeding ground for infinitely scalable technology, but scale means nothing without trust.

This is why we court institutions first. Not because we prefer them to retail citizens, but because their validation creates the legitimacy that makes everyone else comfortable. It's nation-building in reverse - establish diplomatic relations with the powerful to create safety for everyone.

Building Bridges: A Nation Under Construction

We're still building our bridges - technical, regulatory, and social. Each new integration is a trade route. Each partnership is a diplomatic relationship. Each successful use case is proof that this new nation deserves recognition.

The MultiVM upgrade wasn't just technical infrastructure - it was our declaration of open borders. Come with your Ethereum passport or your Cosmos credentials; we'll accommodate both. A true business hub can't be protectionist.

The Voluntary State: Philosophical Alignment as Citizenship

Here's what makes blockchain-states profound: we can't force anyone to be citizens. There's no birthright citizenship, no geographic lock-in. People choose us, stay with us, and build with us only as long as we serve them better than alternatives.

This voluntary nature makes philosophical alignment critical. Our citizens don't just hold tokens - they share a vision of what financial infrastructure should be. Efficient. Accessible. Legitimate. Boring in the best way.

We exist only as long as we serve our citizens better than anyone else. That's terrifying and liberating. Every day is a referendum on our performance. Every block is a vote of confidence.

What Kind of State Are We Building?

MANTRA is becoming the business hub of the blockchain world - not through force or monopoly, but through being the most practical place to build. We're the state that focuses on making commerce work, not on ideological purity.

We're building for the entrepreneurs who need tokenization to work today, not someday. For the institutions that require compliance without complexity. For the billions who need financial infrastructure that just works.

If Bitcoin is Switzerland and Ethereum is the United States, we're building Singapore - a pragmatic city-state that thrives by making business frictionless while maintaining necessary safeguards.

Conclusion: The Politics of Code

Seeing blockchains as states is more than a metaphor, it is a way to understand the politics of code. Every chain has a constitution, a government, citizens, and institutions. They levy taxes in the form of fees, build economies with tokens and dApps, and practice diplomacy through bridges and interoperability. Some are rigid republics, others messy democracies, efficient technocracies, or regulated city-states. A few collapse into failed states.

What unites them all is that they compete for citizens in a way no nation-state ever has. Citizenship is voluntary, exit is easy, and legitimacy must be earned daily. This dynamic makes blockchains both fragile and resilient: fragile because citizens can leave, resilient because only the chains that prove their worth survive.

The rise of blockchain-states also connects to broader shifts. Balaji Srinivasan’s vision of network states and Primavera De Filippi’s work on virtual nations both suggest that sovereignty is moving beyond geography. In this world, blockchains are not just infrastructure, they are new political entities, laboratories of governance that may one day sit alongside nations as peers.

The question, then, is not whether blockchains are states. It is what kind of states we want them to be. Do we prefer conservative republics, expansive democracies, efficient technocracies, or regulated city-states? The answers will shape not just markets, but the political economy of the digital age.

If nation-states govern land, then blockchain-states govern code. And their citizens, us are already voting with our wallets.

 Sources and Further Read

• Citizenship in the Era of Blockchain-Based Virtual Nations - Link
• The network state - Link