A Practical Guide to Network Tribes
Having spent the past few years in Urbit, and more recently encountering the Zorp/Nockchain thesis on financialized networked tribes, I figured it'd be useful to extrapolate what I learned into a standard guide for others interested in navigating and possibly orienting their life around these types of groups.
Trad forms
A networked tribe is a geographically distributed group of people with tightly aligned interests and values, whose primary connection is bootstrapped and persisted through digital networks.
Given the proliferation of the internet and increasingly data-rich environments made possible by big advances in hardware and software config, it's a relatively new phenomenon. Dreamed up in the cyberpunk era, it's now being lived out largely by people in and adjacent to the cryptosphere.
There's also an argument for their proliferation as a result of a broader cultural and economic environment that no longer favors human-scale bonds. People in these circles tend to see globalism, accelerated technology, and financial tools that don't work for them as an increasingly hostile environment making it near impossible to "go it alone"; foregoing the broader economic and cultural engines that used to support them and their ancestors.
The larger 21st century economic and cultural structures are being forsworn because they're the antithesis of tribal formation and proliferation. Historically:
...tribal structures constituted one type of adaptation to situations providing plentiful yet unpredictable resources. Such structures proved flexible enough to coordinate production and distribution of food in times of scarcity, without limiting or constraining people during times of surplus.
Anthropologist Morton Fried argued in 1967 that bands organized into tribes in order to resist the violence and exploitation of early kingdoms and states. He wrote:
… tribalism can be viewed as reaction to the formation of complex political structure rather than a necessary preliminary stage in its evolution.
Second, bands could form "secondary" tribes as a means to defend against state expansion. Members of bands would form more clearly bounded and centralized polities, because such polities could begin producing surpluses that could support a standing army that could fight against states, and they would have a leadership that could co-ordinate economic production and military activities.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribe
The future looks increasingly bleak from the perspective of these traditional structures so tribal formation sets in as a reaction, necessary for survival. The "network" part just alludes to the 21st-century equivalent which provides novel technological leverage.
Examples
To put network tribes into perspective: the Pashtuns in Afghanistan and Pakistan form the largest tribal society in the world; nearly 60 million members comprised of between 350 and 400 tribes and clans. Crypto tribes look similar, but primarily exist online and aren't polity-bound per say.
Structurally, Ethereum serves as the societal layer for sub-tribal formation; however, because crypto is a part of accelerated technology and born from successful 21st century capitalism, it retains a strong corporate-economic structure. I.e. these sub-tribal groups look a lot like traditional tech companies from a cultural and legal perspective, but the ideological ground they cover suggests a more historical reason for their formation.
The network-tribal thesis manifests itself in the cryptosphere for many reasons, but some primary factors include:
A corrupt political and economic environment force smart people unwilling to compromise their dignity or values for marginal economic gain to new territory.
Excess technical skill and demonstrated means to building whole economies and lasting cultural environments.
Abundant creative energy that needs an autonomy that can only come from an unstructured environment.
Realization that the world has shifted in their favor: the digital rules the physical.
Some other example network tribes include:
Urbit which is a network of networks like Ethereum, suggesting a need for a meta-social layer for tribes similar to the Pashtuns.
Bitcoin: which retains a tribal energy at the development level.
Remillia: another self-proclaimed networked tribe and society building a new internet.
Zorp/Nockchain: where I first heard of the term "networked tribe", and in many ways influenced my thinking in this area.
While many of the current crypto tribes out there are busy pumping, their cultural heritages are barely skeletal. This is why Urbit, Remillia, and Zorp/Nockchain have been most interesting to me - as the complex socio-political trends continue amid local atomization and technological acceleration, merely selling a product will no longer suffice to pull people in; it'll also require distinct cultural traditions which are close to or near all-encompassing to attract and retain members.
Needs
What do they need to survive?
1. A sovereign stack they fully control
As seen between circa 2016 - 2023, there's no survival without your own infra. Without it, your cucked by whoever controls the underlying systems you rely on. So a portion of your band must be deeply technical to have any hope of persistence.
2. Financial infrastructure
Similar to required technical infra, without a financial means to interface with the broader economic environment, you'll starve. While strong culture attracts and will retain members, without a long-term financial plan people will trickle out.
Crypto groups have managed to come up with all kinds of ways to jimmy-rig financial bootstraps, most of which are scams. But, the ones who see the long-term value of building a networked tribe don't play these games out of respect for their members and reputational weight among the rest.
3. Distinct culture
Many existing crypto tribes see culture like corporations; sort of hand-wavy rituals people supposedly like but don't really matter. The more these tribes become motivated by primitive survival (going from casinos to the Savannah), the more they'll lean into authentic and intentional culture generation.
4. Ways to attract new members and defend against adversaries
While membership growth for the sake of growth isn't vital; financial means, the desire for cultural proliferation, and defense against (financial and physical) adversaries are. No doubt, different tribes take different perspectives on how vital new members are: yield farming and air-drop game purveyors certainly hold cancerous growth as central, but time will tell which strategies will pay off over the long-run.
However, another aspect Urbit, Remillia, and Zorp/Nockchain get right is the primacy of exclusivity when it comes to cultural formation. New members are motivated to join not only by financial possibilities, but also cultural association. And a cultural bootstrap, rather than purely financial, serves to curate quality membership over time.
Structural corollary
Architecturally, they're most similar to multinational corporations, but less geographically bound. There are usually no offices, but may be small clusters of members that live within physical proximity to each other. Their social structures resemble small groups where hierarchy is fluid and mostly based on competence.
Formal work across the organization isn't tightly relegated in a top-down fashion, it bubbles up across groups within the tribe and looks chaotic from the outside. They compete for financial resources by proliferating their cultural values and products built by their members to the outside world.
Notably, while a networked tribe might technically look like a company (often they're registered as such), this is generally used as a legal structure to more easily interface with entrenched societal entities. I make this distinction because there are a lot of formal companies that exist in network tribal ecosystems, but what makes them different from multinational corps is their economic and cultural scope which exists as a part of a much bigger pool of bands and other companies with tightly aligned interests, beyond merely financial.
Income
Is it possible to make a living through them? Yes, but it's difficult in the sense that survival in 1600s North America was difficult; you have to have your wits about you because there are no sidewalks, few formal jobs, scammers everywhere, and because there're no established institutions you're tasked with figuring out which people to trust on your own. On top of the navigational challenges, you have to figure out what skills are most valuable and understand how to apply them in the particular context of your tribe.
Most tribal roles I've seen include:
Founders (cultural entrepreneurs)
Software developers (to built tribal infra and applications for new and existing members)
Artists (meme makers to release cultural contagions into larger ecosystems to proliferate culture and entice new members)
Community managers (to engage members, uphold cultural values, and manage tribal relations)
While there are certainty others, these are the most common and vital as they directly effect the genesis and persistence of the group they work within.
So yes, while it's difficult to build a profession within one of these as a means to a stable living, success hinges on a few key factors:
Building competence in whatever domain you choose to focus on; it's ok to begin contributing before you think you're ready as competent tribes understand the need to help newer members learn as the infra is being built. But general competence from the start and commitment to learning is required for favorable admission.
Being social. It helps to think of online environments like a physical town or city. In social situations, are you talking with others or standing on the outskirts of a circle merely listening? If you just want to be a listener there are plenty of online environments where this is expected behavior.
Limiting pure consumption helps retain mental clarity. You must be willing and capable of walling off your environment to enable deep focus. Indeed, the primary adversary you'll find are mental ones. You have to take great pains to configure an optimal UI for yourself and others in your tribe. Ideally your tribe works on this together to further increase mental clarity across members.
A huge factor in the equation of your tribes thriving is it's ability to adapt and generate new forms of value. You're constructing virtual towns and cities; new societies which may eventually manifest in-person. This is no small task for which many today have only historical accounts to base their models off of. We're generations removed from having done this kind of thing ourselves, and albeit within an entirely novel medium. Creative, agenetic abundance is vital to generating possible pathways to success. You have to try things, sometimes many things before landing at any kind of sustainability.
Bootstrapping
Building your own tribe requires a robust vision. If you don't have one or aren't interested in leading a tribe it's best to find one that matches your values and contribute. There's still sizable risk involved with joining another, but as long as the group you're joining is full of competent people working toward a robust vision within the bounds of reality, you're in a better spot than trying to generate your own.
I see this related to starting a business vs joining one, albeit in a slightly different light given the broader nature of networked tribes. I.e. it's possible to build a small business within a networked tribe as a structural reflection of its values, leveraging its infra to simultaneously contribute to improving it as a public domain while building a humble economic engine to support a subset of members and associated families.
While there's much experimentation to determine what leads to success, the key decision being made by choosing to build a business within a specific tribe is a belief that its vision will do well as a society in the world. Not unlike what it used to mean when families would move to specific cities or towns that had promising economic opportunities either already present or soon to come. It's economic fitness is a vital aspect of the calculation.
Membership
By joining you're committing to realizing the groups vision in some way. Another key distinction between joining a networked tribe and a Trad company is the permissionless nature; where Trad companies require formal resume's, bureaucratic processes, rigid hierarchy and 401ks - networked tribes are fluid, only requiring commitment and strong contributions that help the tribe reach it's goals. They’re much more human - despite the almost omnipresent digital mediation.
Informal economic structures means you have to get creative with how you help. There's usually an upfront period where you have to prove your worth, signaling your capability before your ability to generate revenue in the context of your tribe is realized. "Internal hiring" is highly preferred as tribal structures and social norms are distinctly in-group-out-group mechanisms. Often this looks like unique languages, tech stacks, social structures and traditions, etc. It requires a familiarity beyond surface level to provide meaningful contributions.
Physical and digital balance
Work life is primarily online: not too dissimilar to remote work within a Trad company, although in-person connections and "co-workers" will have to be deliberately made. Indeed a defining factor of a networked tribe is that its essentially a virtual society; geographically distributed, bound together by psychological, economic, and cultural fit. The great opportunity is finding your people. The cost is physical distance, but that can be remedied by deliberate effort: either up and moving closer to other members, or recruiting locals. The latter might look like incubating a local chapter of sorts.
Cultivating a chapter doesn't necessarily mean your pushing the kind of work you do onto others; it's rather a way to build a group locally that retains the same cultural values, or perhaps slightly different but adjacent to the main network. The key is to draw up a distinctive barrier from the beginning to cultivate value-aligned people.
A local chapter like this should focus on a range of topics, value-oriented, strong aesthetics; essentially performance art to attract and inspire the right people. This is something you generate yourself - hosting frequent, regular meetups to build tradition and instill community - then expand into other avenues from there. If this goes well you'll have local members who may be open to doing the kind of work you do.
I see the physical part as vital to cultivating a full-spectrum life and key for demonstrating to your kids what it looks like to live within a tribe, do good work, and build a family with strong values that persists against the winds of the outside world. Life is more than being online, and while network tribes are real and cool, you have to instantiate this coolness IRL so they understand. It's for them and yourself.
So while you're most certainly going to be doing remote work in the beginning, a local context can be built over time. Starting with meetups to attract people who'd vibe and are competent enough to contribute, then expanding the relationship into possible work collaborators, and eventually familial bonds. It can be every bit as local as it'd be if you were building a small, local business; just the scope is slightly different, connected to a larger network. The key to local network instantiation is normalizing this kind of community formation by having proven the economic and cultural viability yourself before bringing others in.