Network School

Balaji Srinivasan published The Network State in 2022, arguing that like-minded communities should first gather on the internet and then materialize as physical societies; he held the first Network State Conference in 2023 and opened the school in 2024. Speakers at the first conference included Glenn Greenwald, Vitalik Buterin, Anatoly Yakovenko, Garry Tan, the Winklevoss twins and Tyler Cowen, and it drew more than 3,000 registrations.⁠[1][2][3]

On August 16, 2024, Balaji announced Network School on his personal blog, located on an island near Singapore, beginning with a 90-day popup from September 23 to December 23 after the Network State Conference, with rent of $1,000 a month with roommates or $2,000 solo. He said he wanted to expand opportunity for the world’s undiscovered talent (“dark talent”) and had the resources to endow this new “Internet-first” institution.⁠[4][4][4][4]

Under his design, the program had four parts — “learn, burn, earn, and fun”: members would solve daily problems to earn non-transferable NFT learning credentials, work out with trainers and receive meals based on Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint protocol, compete for daily crypto bounties and meet visiting investors and technologists. Recruits included writers and creators, trainers and athletes, and founders and engineers capable of remote work.⁠[4][4][4][4][4]

The first cohort opened on September 23, 2024, in Forest City, Johor, Malaysia, in a hotel inside the largely empty development. It received more than 4,000 applications from over 80 countries for 128 slots; the campus offered accommodation, a gym, coworking space, an auditorium and a cafe. Guest speakers included Vitalik Buterin, Bryan Johnson, Ryan Petersen, Haseeb Qureshi, Eli Ben-SassonEli Ben-SassonEli Ben-Sasson is an Israeli computer scientist and entrepreneur, a co-inventor of the STARK, FRI and Zerocash protocols and one of the founding scientists of Zcash. Formerly a professor of computer science at the Technion, he left academia in 2018 to co-found the blockchain scaling company StarkWare, where he is now chief executive officer and chairman, and he serves on the board of the Starknet Foundation.Open the full entry and Jesse Pollak.⁠[5][5][6][7][7][7][7]

Balaji later judged that fitness, fun and community building were the greatest successes, while daily tutorials and bounties struggled to serve both hardcore engineers and casual participants: pitching them too easy or too hard lost one group or the other.⁠[7][7]

The second cohort began on March 1, 2025, with capacity doubled to 256 members for a year-long term. Balaji laid out five stages: the first cohort as an experiment, the second as “society-as-a-service,” a third building a permanent nearby campus for thousands of members, a fourth open-sourcing the campus template to replicate it worldwide, and a fifth funding members to start their own communities. He said a paid waitlist would prove demand and help fund land purchases.⁠[7][7][7][7][7][7]

In May 2025, Network School launched its longtermer program, shifting from a temporary popup to a permanent presence. Longtermers join for 12 months and receive a furnished apartment, visa support and a personalized fitness program, among other benefits.⁠[8][9]

On October 3, 2025, Network School held Network State Conference 2025 at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, with speakers including government representatives from Singapore, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and El Salvador as well as Vitalik Buterin, Richard Teng, Brian ArmstrongBrian ArmstrongBrian Armstrong is an American entrepreneur and the co-founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of the crypto asset trading platform Coinbase. He founded Coinbase in 2012, led the company to a direct listing on Nasdaq in 2021, and holds a majority of its voting power through a dual-class share structure; he also founded the scientific collaboration platform ResearchHub and co-founded the longevity research company NewLimit.Open the full entry, Ben HorowitzBen HorowitzBen Horowitz is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist and business author who co-founded Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) with Marc Andreessen in 2009. He previously led Loudcloud’s transition into Opsware and its 2007 sale to Hewlett-Packard. His writing and investing address startup management, organizational culture and the relationship between technology and cultural industries.Open the full entry, Arthur HayesArthur HayesArthur Hayes is a cryptocurrency entrepreneur and investor who co-founded the cryptocurrency derivatives exchange BitMEX in 2014 and served as its longtime CEO; as of October 2026, he is Chief Investment Officer of Maelstrom, his family office. In 2022, he pleaded guilty to one count of violating the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act over BitMEX’s failure to establish an anti-money laundering program and was sentenced to probation; in March 2025, he was pardoned by U.S. President Donald Trump.Open the full entry, Zooko Wilcox and Olaf Carlson-Wee, and more than 8,000 registrations. The 2024 conference had drawn more than 6,000 registrations.⁠[1][1][3][3][3]

In April 2026, Network School began operating as a platform for outside activities, hosting a Zcash hackathon, a SolanaSolanaSolana is a proof-of-stake (PoS) public blockchain designed for high throughput and low latency, with SOL as its native token; it was developed by Solana Labs and launched Mainnet Beta in March 2020. It is known for design choices such as its Proof of History clock and parallel execution, suffered several network-wide outages in its early years, and became one of the crypto industry’s focal points in events including the FTX collapse, U.S. SEC lawsuits, and the listing of Solana ETFs.Open the full entry popup and several teams. On April 17, Malaysian Digital Minister Gobind Singh Deo visited the campus and then posted that what he saw reaffirmed Malaysia’s position as a rising destination for global tech talent; the post was later removed. Balaji also met Gobind and other officials to discuss cooperation on visas and the digital economy and floated the idea of fast-track visas for members.⁠[8][10][10][10]

On July 10, 2026, the day before the Johor state election, an anonymous social media account accused Network School of harboring illegal immigrants. Johor Chief Minister Onn Hafiz Ghazi then urged the home ministry, immigration, police and customs to investigate whether Israeli nationals, who are barred from entering Malaysia, were living on the campus using second passports. Authorities inspected the campus on July 14, and the Immigration Department checked 266 foreigners from 40 countries, finding that all held valid documents according to current records.⁠[11][12][11][11][11]

On July 17, Balaji announced that all of Network School’s new investment plans in Malaysia were suspended until it received assurances that such incidents would not recur. Calling the allegations baseless, he said Network School had invested more than RM100 million in Forest City without government funds and asked to meet Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to discuss a memorandum of understanding; he added that if Malaysia no longer welcomed the investment, the capital would be moved to other countries.⁠[11][11][11][11][11]

On July 18, Balaji posted that reports of the campus closing were fake news, saying the company had received two notices: one requiring changes to the wording on a signboard, and one noting that its coworking space spanned two adjoining units of which only one held a valid licence. On July 21, the Iskandar Puteri City Council revoked the business licence of operator NSO Malaysia Sdn Bhd, citing breaches of licensing conditions and unauthorized use of the premises, and ordered all activities at its Forest City premises to cease from July 22; the council said it had inspected and audited the two premises on July 12, 14, 19 and 20. The same day, the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) announced it was revoking the company’s Malaysia Digital status.⁠[13][13][13][13][13][13]

Authorities said the passport investigation had found no evidence of wrongdoing and remained ongoing. Some participants had complained about mold in their rooms, limited nightlife and a lack of women; Balaji responded that the humidity problems were being addressed and that members came to work, train and build businesses rather than to party.⁠[6][6][6]

Hours after the Forest City campus was ordered shut, Balaji posted a video of himself in Kazakhstan signing an agreement to open a new campus there and said several countries had offered to host the project. On July 22, he announced that Network School had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Republic of Kazakhstan for a new campus offering expedited visas, streamlined redomiciliation and active talent recruitment. Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development said the memorandum was signed by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister Zhaslan Madiyev and Balaji, covering AI education programs, startup support, joint research and international conferences.⁠[6][13][14][14]

On July 27, Kazakh Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov met Balaji to discuss building an international innovation hub in the Akmola Region with later expansion to Alatau City, as well as a concept for a technology town, “Network City,” to be developed with local authorities in the village of Burabay; a memorandum with the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development on establishing Network School was signed at the meeting. The Kazakh side stressed that Network School projects are implemented with private funds and no state financing.⁠[15][15][15][15]

On September 2, 2026, Network School’s Kazakhstan campus was officially launched at Alem.ai, co-hosted by Superteam Kazakhstan with Kazakhstan’s Ministry of AI and Digital Development and Astana Hub. The new campus is on the fifth floor of the Astana Hub building in Astana. It introduced an exam-to-employment track: applicants pass an online exam and then a proctored exam on campus, and top performers are referred to partner companies for remote jobs; the campus also offers daytime childcare and tutoring for members with children.⁠[5][16][16][16][16]

On October 9, 2026, Network School held Network State Conference 2026 on level 5 of the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre in Singapore, right after Token2049, with in-person tickets at $99 and free remote attendance. Speakers included Vitalik Buterin, Zooko Wilcox, Curtis Yarvin, Eric Weinstein, Mike Maples, Illia Polosukhin, Haseeb Qureshi, David HoffmanDavid HoffmanDavid Hoffman is a co-owner and podcast co-host of the American crypto media outlet Bankless, which he runs together with Ryan Sean Adams; the two also co-founded the venture capital fund Bankless Ventures.Open the full entry, Chad Cascarilla, Olaf Carlson-Wee and Richard Teng, with addresses by Kazakhstan’s Deputy Prime Minister Zhaslan Madiyev, Minister of Science and Higher Education Sayasat Nurbek and Alatau City Authority Deputy CEO Bayan Konirbayev.⁠[3][3][3][3][3]

The conference said Zcash, as a cornerstone of financial privacy, had featured at every edition and this year expanded into a morning Zcash Zummit session, whose speakers and affiliations were: Zooko Wilcox (Shielded LabsShielded LabsShielded Labs is a nonprofit Zcash support organization based in Switzerland, established as a Swiss association in December 2022. It operates mainly on donations and has never received Zcash Development Fund money or block rewards. It leads protocol proposals including the Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM) and Crosslink, a hybrid proof-of-work and proof-of-stake consensus, and after a researcher it engaged discovered the Orchard counterfeiting vulnerability in 2026, it proposed and advanced the Ironwood upgrade together with other development teams.Open the full entry), Sean BoweSean BoweSean Bowe is a cryptographic engineer and researcher, a cofounder and the first engineer of Zcash, who spent years at the Electric Coin Company designing and implementing Zcash’s zero-knowledge proof cryptography and in 2019 introduced Halo, a recursive proof system that needs no trusted setup. Since 2025 he has led Project Tachyon, a Zcash scaling effort, helped lead the 2026 Ironwood upgrade, and maintains the Zakura Zcash full node.Open the full entry (Tachyon), Eli Ben-Sasson (StarkWareStarkWareStarkWare is a blockchain technology company headquartered in Netanya, Israel, founded in 2018 by STARK proof co-inventor Eli Ben-Sasson and others. It uses zero-knowledge proofs to provide scaling, privacy and quantum-resistance solutions for Ethereum and other blockchains, has developed the StarkEx scaling engine, the Cairo programming language and the Stone and S-two provers, and leads development of the layer-2 network Starknet; its last funding round, in 2022, valued it at $8 billion.Open the full entry), Josh SwihartJosh SwihartJosh Swihart is a technology executive and the founder and CEO of Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL). He joined the Electric Coin Company (ECC), Zcash’s developer, in 2018, succeeded Zooko Wilcox as CEO in December 2023 and led the launch of the Zashi wallet; in January 2026 he and the entire ECC team left after a conflict with the board of its parent organization and formed ZODL, with Zashi renamed Zodl.Open the full entry (ZodlZodlZodl refers both to Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL), a company developing the Zcash protocol and wallets, and to its Zcash mobile wallet of the same name (formerly Zashi). ZODL was founded in January 2026 by former Electric Coin Company CEO Josh Swihart, with the entire former ECC engineering and product team joining it; it continues core Zcash protocol development and did much of the work on the 2026 emergency fix of the Orchard vulnerability and the Ironwood upgrade.Open the full entry), Dev OjhaDev OjhaDev Ojha is a cryptographic engineer, an early member of the Cosmos team, and a co-founder of the decentralized exchange Osmosis; since 2026 he has led Valar Group, which focuses on Zcash protocol research and development, and co-maintains the Zcash full-node software Zakura with Sean Bowe.Open the full entry (Zakura), Maxime Desalle (Winklevoss Capital), Josh LeeJosh LeeJosh Lee (online handle dogemos) is a crypto wallet developer based in Seoul, South Korea. He is a co-founder of Chainapsis (later operating as KPLR), the company behind the Cosmos ecosystem wallet Keplr, and also helped found the decentralized exchange Osmosis; in 2026 he led his team in launching the Zcash wallet Vizor.Open the full entry (Vizor), Evan ForbesEvan ForbesEvan Forbes is a blockchain consensus and networking engineer who was the consensus team lead and a founding engineer of the modular blockchain Celestia; since 2026 he has worked at Valar Group on Zcash consensus scaling and peer-to-peer networking, and with Dev Ojha completed testing on shortening Zcash’s block time.Open the full entry (Valar GroupValar GroupValar Group is a cryptography research and engineering team focused on developing the Zcash protocol, led by Osmosis co-founder Dev Ojha and staffed largely by engineers from Osmosis and Celestia; in 2026 it took part in the Ironwood network upgrade, released the full-node software Zakura with Project Tachyon, and built Zcash’s private coinholder voting chain.Open the full entry) and Tom Howard (Zcash Labs).⁠[3][17][17]

Network School describes itself as “society-as-a-service”: membership covers housing, three meals a day, a gym, fitness classes, 24/7 coworking and community events, with fees starting at about $1,500 a month and stays ranging from one month to a year. As of October 2026, its directory page listed more than 2,000 members across 16 cohorts.⁠[16][16][6][8][8]

Network School: Official website: https://ns.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[18]

X: Public account: https://x.com/ns (opens in a new window)⁠[18]