Consensys pushes back against regulatory ‘gaslighting’ with new sovereignty platform

The founder of Ethereum software solutions provider Consensys, Joseph Lubin, has announced the launch of a new project called Network State where people can declare their “personal sovereignty.” 

“We’re on the verge of a paradigm shift that will be heard around the world,” said the Ethereum co-founder in a post on X unveiling the new platform on Nov. 14.

Lubin continued, stating that Consensys is “on a mission to catalyze a Network State within the emerging decentralized Web3 and AI global economy.”

He added that for years, crypto companies have been “living in fear” and unable to engage in activities that “should be natural” for a Web3 company. 

“We’ve been operating in a climate of regulatory uncertainty, with gaslighting and carpet bombing from the SEC stifling our progress.”

Speaking to Cointelegraph at the Ethereum Devcon event in Bangkok, Thailand, Lubin said “We’ve been living in a gas-lit world for a long time, generously gas-lit by the SEC,” before adding: 

“It’s hard for a technology ecosystem to operate under uncertain, overreaching, regulatory uncertainty at worst, and what appeared to be a strategic and concerted attempt to either kill slow or co-opt the progress of our industry.”

The new project, sovs.xyz, has been launched on Linea, a Consensys-developed layer-2 zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) rollup. 

It enables users to attest to different types of sovereignty that matter to them in an effort to create stronger, more sustainable, and equitable communities.

“This is the beginning of a partnership with the community to build a network we all want to be a part of,” Lubin explained. “We are all in the early stages of discovering what self-sovereignty means for ourselves and our communities,” he said before adding: 

“We’ll be living more of our lives onchain, as our finances, identities, communications, art, and entertainment are increasingly mediated by open networks and decentralized protocols.”

Related: Consensys decentralized Infura launches as EigenLayer AVS

The platform appears to build upon Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s pop-up city experiment, and network states theory — a movement where online communities come together to form physical communities and seek political autonomy.

On Nov. 13, Consensys decentralized Linea with the launch of a new Swiss nonprofit association dedicated to advancing the platform’s growth and governance. 

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