Liberland: A libertarian country that plans to move to the Metaverse

(credits to Zaha Hadid Architects)

How many of you know Liberland? I would guess not many, and rightly so.

It is an unrecognized microstate bigger than Monaco and at similar size with Gibraltar lying on the western bank of the river Danube that serves as a physical boundary between Croatia and Serbia.

The dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the conflicts that followed created turmoil in the region that took years to settle. As a consequence border disputes still persist between both countries that fought a bitter war with one another.

(Danube river area of Liberland from archinect.com)

Come 2015, when Czech politician Vit Jedlička, proclaimed the country of Liberland in an area not claimed by any of the two countries along the river but disputed by both.

The microstate idea has now attracted the spotlight of one of the most important architecture firms globally, Zaha Hadid and Associates that aims to develop it in the Metaverse.

Since the actual land remains uninhabited and full of forests, the plan is to build a virtual city for the country of Liberland. The initial designs showcase a futuristic city that at the same time remains grounded in reality and doesn't look game-y. It aims to provide the sense of a real city but in the cyber domain.

(Liberland Flag courtesy of Liberland.org)

There are already 7,000 citizens of Liberland and another 700,000 pending applications, while the libertarian experiment of a micronation has its own flag, anthem, laws and currency, a crypto token called Liberland Merit.

In the Metaverse, the citizen of the microstate will be able to meet digitally in the forms of NFT avatars with physical distance not being a constrain anymore and without the risk of run-ins with the Croatian border police. Furthermore, a number of economic activities such as trading and commerce will take place in it, with NFTs and cryptocurrencies playing a prominent role in facilitating it.

Would you be interested in becoming a citizen of Liberland and visiting it digitally?