The Liberland Blockchain Team is happy to announce that they have received a grant from Web3 Foundation, and that they have successfully completed the first milestone. The topic of the grant was the setup of the minimally viable version of the Liberland Blockchain: the first public blockchain to run a state government.
What is Liberland?
Liberland is building a nation settled in a no man’s land between Croatia and Serbia. This land was initially reserved for future bilateral agreements between neighboring countries. That agreement never took place, and after 20 years, the land was functionally abandoned. Consequently, it reverted to a Terra Nullius status.
Addressing this issue, Vít Jedlička, the first and current president, proclaimed Liberland on 13th April 2015, the birthday of Thomas Jefferson. He chose the date to signify the intended direction in which the new country was envisioned to develop:
Rational, minimal laws;
Protection of property;
Accent on individual liberty; and
Equality, human rights, and human dignity.
The Liberland Blockchain
Liberland will be the first country to run its government on a public blockchain, which the team has chosen to build on Substrate/Polkadot. You can connect to the testnet or check out the code onGitHub.
The team’s decision to build on the Substrate framework was based on its ease of use and reuse of the pallet system, which had ready-made solutions the team would have otherwise had to build themselves.
Check out the Web3 foundation on their website, Medium or Twitter.
On 13th April 2023, the eighth anniversary of Liberland’s founding, the Liberland Blockchain will launch its mainnet.
Division of Power
In a DAO, the power of democracy in the system would directly derive from ownership of the token that the validators and nominators use. Such a concentration of power is not desirable, as, in effect, we would ensure with mathematical certainty that those best poised to become officials in Liberland would also be those who count the votes.
To counter this, the team has separated the validator power from the governance power. So the two-tokens concept was born: the governance token, Liberland Merit (LLM), and the native token, Liberland Dollar (LLD).
Assets-based Politics
LLM is a token created using the Substrate Assets Pallet with an asset id of 1. The democracy pallet and the elections pallet had to be modified to allow using an asset for on-chain politics. The developers have set up an 'LLM' pallet to enable the integration.
It contains the new logic for:
Political staking (Politipooling) - only politipooled LLM can be used for politics. Politpooling locks your tokens, and only 10 percent of the locked supply can be released per year (monthly).
Democracy mathematics in referenda and democracy had to be ported to work with assets, i.e., using ‘total politipooled’ instead of ‘total issuance’ for calculations.
Algorithmic, predictable funding of the government - vaults preminted LLM is periodically released to the treasury.
Funding flow from elected and appointed officials using treasury assets to projects and individuals in politipooled and liquid form.
Citizenship on the Blockchain
Citizenship is handled via the identity pallet. A citizen account is an account with an identity containing “additional.citizen: 1” property judged “KnownGood” by the “Ministry of Interior” identity registrar.
Only Citizens with 5000 politpooled LLM have the full political rights associated with citizenship in Liberland. Consequently, there is a “citizenship check” and a “politpool5000 check,” handled by the LLM pallet, which prevents anyone who isn’t a citizen with at least 5000 politpooled LLM from accessing political functions, such as voting in elections and proposing referenda.
Office Pallet
To facilitate executive functions in the government, we developed the Office PalletOffice Pallet. This pallet allows multiple ‘clerks’, that can be added or removed (hired or fired) to perform actions on the blockchain that would have otherwise been locked to a single origin only.
For example, the official identity registrar granting citizenships on-chain is the Ministry of Interior, which can have many clerks. Any clerk can dispatch approved calls using the Ministry of Interior origin.
In the future, this will be expanded to allow both elected and appointed clerks/government officials.
This will allow the more advanced governmental and executive functions to be implemented in the future, having to do with, i.e., the judiciary.
The pallet has been built in a way that is ready to use for any project in the Substrate ecosystem that wants it.
Liberland Dollar
Liberland Dollar is intended to be the second government accounting token of Liberland after Bitcoin (BTC) - the digital silver to BTC's digital gold.
Its primary purpose will be twofold, namely:
For purchasing goods and services (mainly off-chain), hence, the medium to record market values of primarily real-world articles; and
For validators and nominators to stake, thereby securing the chain and gaining rewards, which will also be distributed in LLD.
Future Plans
E-Governance
The Liberland Blockchain Team is building an on-chain e-governance system similar in function to the e-governance of Estonia or the Netherlands. The team begins implementation with on-chain registries subject to Milestone 2 of the grant:
Company Registry,
Land Registry, and
Assets Registry.
Judiciary
Liberland will have a judiciary on the blockchain. Combining traditional courtroom situations with professionals and well-understood process roles with blockchain principles, the team plans on building a unique solution currently absent from Web3, with massive potential benefits such as allowing traditional contracts (i.e., build a house) to move on-chain
Advancing Web3
Liberland never wanted to create a solution applicable only to Liberland. The team wishes to set up a system others can use directly in their projects. They can be states, companies, entrepreneurs, or cooperative intentional communities and network states.
Besides Liberland politics, the Liberland Blockchain is conceived as a public blockchain where you can expect DApps of various kinds and uses. It is launching with a solid technology base, one of the industry's standards.
What DApps can we expect? That is up to you, dear reader. You are welcome to contact us at [email protected] if you have any questions or ask for coordination as a possible partner or builder.
Do you want to learn more about Liberland, or perhaps wish to become a citizen? Please send us an email to [email protected]. You can also book your visit to Liberland during the upcoming anniversary and be present at the launch event. Get your ticket at https://anniversary.ll.land.
https://liberland.org/en/news/430-liberland-blockchain-awarded-web3-foundation-w3f-grant
Liberland Blockchain Team 13 March 2023