First Edition • May 2025

The Digital Community Manifesto

Digital Rights, Game Theory, and Governance of Scalable Blockchains for Use in Network States

A comprehensive guide to building truly decentralized communities that resist censorship, protect digital rights, and enable self-sovereign network states.

What You'll Learn

Build the Future of Communities

This book provides a battle-tested framework for building and defending decentralized communities that truly serve their members.

No Pre-Mines, No ICOs

Learn why fair token distribution is essential for true decentralization

Censorship Resistance

Understand the technical and social mechanisms that protect free speech

Network States

Discover how digital communities can evolve into self-sovereign entities

Regenerative Economies

Design token systems that nurture lasting social value.

About This Book

Imagine a community that runs its own economy, speaks freely without censorship, and builds systems no government or corporation can control.The Digital Community Manifesto is your guide to making that vision real.

This isn’t about hype coins or trading schemes. It’s about creating digital spaces that are free, transparent, and owned by the people who use them. Written by the builders behind one of the only truly decentralized social blockchains, this book reveals how communities can achieve real digital freedom and resilience.

Meet the Authors

Pioneers of Decentralized Communities

@theycallmedan and @starkerz are pioneers in building open, community-driven blockchain ecosystems. As key contributors to the Hive Blockchain, they helped shape one of the world's most resilient and self-sustaining digital communities — a real-world example of decentralized innovation in action.

Dan

@theycallmedan

Blockchain Pioneer & Community Builder

As a key contributor to the Hive Blockchain, Dan helped shape one of the world's most resilient and self-sustaining digital communities. Drawing from years of experience at the intersection of technology, governance, and community design, he explores how digital societies can evolve beyond traditional structures.

Starkerz

@starkerz

Blockchain Pioneer & Ecosystem Designer

A pioneer in building open, community-driven blockchain ecosystems, Starkerz is a key contributor to the Hive Blockchain who helped shape one of the world's most resilient and self-sustaining digital communities. With years of experience at the intersection of technology, governance, and community design, they explore how digital societies can evolve beyond traditional structures.

Their Mission

Drawing from years of experience at the intersection of technology, governance, and community design, they explore how digital societies can evolve beyond traditional structures. Their mission is to inspire a new generation of builders to create transparent, user-owned systems that unlock collaboration, creativity, and innovation on a global scale.

Preview

Read a Sample

Explore the first chapters and see what this book has to offer

Chapter 1

Pre-Word

The legacy economic system only responds to legitimate parallel competition that treats people better. Introduction This book (and accompanying audiobook) forms a go-to reference for understanding and achieving true decentralisation in social community blockchains and digital Network States. We believe in a model with: - No Pre-Mines - No ICO's (Initial Coin Offerings) - No Companies or CEOs - No Early Venture Capital Instead, the community should guide the technology and governance, maintaining the neutrality of the base layer for itself, ensuring freedom and participation for everyone. We will explore the game theory of network attacks, attack vectors, how to defend against attacks, guiding principles for decentralisation, a realistic vision for the future, and the best technical stacks for censorship resistance and governance. Why Document This Now? The community forming what has become the back bone of the Hive Blockchain has endured years of conflict, evolution, and successful defence against multiple takeover attempts yet it remains decentralised. The ability to remain decentralised over almost a decade at the time of publishing, means there is noteworthy knowledge to be gained and lessons to be learned from dissecting how Hive's community achieved this resilience. Our ultimate aim is to document the "how and why" of proper and principled decentralisation, including the deeper implications for human freedom. In a world often controlled by entrenched power structures hostile to genuine decentralised, and therefore neutral systems, this knowledge is recorded immutably, and preserved under the account @networkstate on the Hive Blockchain.