Free Cities Conference 2026, Day 1

The Free Cities Conference 2026 is taking place in Prospera.

I started listening to the first day’s broadcast, but I quickly grew tired of perceiving so much English speech by ear, so I waited for the broadcast to end and uploaded the entire first day into Gemini Notebook. Then I asked for the main talking points of the presentations. Here is what resulted:

1. Peter Young (Host, Opening Remarks)

  • Presentation Topic: Introduction to the “Free Cities” concept and the conference program.
  • Key Points:
    • The free city concept is based on two elements: de facto or legal autonomy (a special zone expanding upon the SEZ idea) and the protection of individual rights (life, liberty, property), allowing people to freely build businesses and partnerships.
    • Four types of projects are presented at the conference: intentional communities (Veritas Villages), systeding (Arcpad, Liber Arcs), migration movements (Free State Project in New Hampshire), and next-generation SEZs (Morazán, Prospera).
    • The first day’s program focuses on specific projects and systeding; the second day is dedicated to macro-problems (including debates on intellectual property); the third day is for decentralized networking.
    • Decentralized governance is the future, capable of radically improving quality of life and defeating poverty through the competition of systems.

2. Titus Gebel

  • Presentation Topic: Stepping into the future.
  • Key Points:
    • The future of society will be determined by three spheres: government as a service (GSP) and meritocracy, permissionless innovation, and beautiful architecture.
    • Government as a service: a provider protects life, liberty, and property for a fixed fee based on a contract (without forced taxes, DEI, ESG, and interference in citizens’ affairs), with independent arbitration.
    • It is necessary to respect the sovereignty of the host state — this relieves the project of concerns regarding foreign policy and defense, provides automatic integration into the banking system, and allows arbitration decisions to be enforced abroad.
    • Architectural principles of Tibolis: walkability (pedestrian accessibility of all objects within 5–10 minutes to stimulate personal interaction), mixed use (mixed use), and beauty as productive capital (including the reduction of visual noise from advertising).

3. Eric Brimman

  • Presentation topic: Developing the Prospera model to create prosperity.
  • Key points:
    • The legitimacy of libertarian ideas in practice is proven only by how much they actually improve the lives and well-being of specific people.
    • The MAYA concept (Most Advanced Yet Acceptable): innovations must remain within the bounds of what is possible in the existing world (within the framework of the host country’s sovereignty), otherwise the accumulation of too many innovations will lead to automatic failure.
    • Political lessons: projects inevitably exist within a political field. Prospera made a mistake by not working in the early stages to win political and social legitimacy at all levels of the host country’s society. Paper agreements do not work on their own without a social license, although they do require a solid legal foundation.
    • St. John’s Bay: a new semi-private city based on Prospera for young entrepreneurial families. It will be complemented by the Satu mainland industrial park following the successful “Hong Kong — Shenzhen” model (the island as a hub for talent and finance, the mainland as a base for low-cost production).
    • Co-creation: a rejection of centralized planning in favor of co-investors who receive real land ownership and shares.

4. Patrick Hebert

  • Presentation topic: Building self-sufficient Veritas Villages communities in Latin America.
  • Key points:
    • The FIRST philosophy: Freedom, Independence, Resiliency, Sustainability, Transparency.
    • While Canada and Europe are sliding into authoritarianism and high taxes, Latin America is gradually moving away from socialism toward the market.
    • Absolute autonomy: 100% off-grid premium homes powered by solar energy. In Panama, the “Green Cities” law was lobbied for, allowing homes not to connect to the state power grid. Own chlorine-free water from deep wells, own farms, gardens, and fish ponds.
    • Bitcoin integration: up to 20% of land is purchased with BTC. Corporate reserves are held in bitcoins, and employees receive part of their salary in them. Residents mine BTC using excess solar energy to fully cover HOA expenses and reduce the cost of living to zero.
    • Governance: The HOA operates entirely on the blockchain using quadratic voting for conflict-free dispute resolution.

5. Mikuel Thorup

  • Presentation topic: A century mindset and a millennium family.
  • Key points:
    • It is impossible to plan life in detail 1,000 years in advance, but it is possible to grow a family capable of adapting to changes in laws, languages, and states. A century mindset spanning three generations is needed.
    • Transferring wealth is not yet a legacy. Assets passed to unprepared heirs without the development of a sense of responsibility lead to the rapid liquidation of capital.
    • A family must develop 8 types of capital: economic, physical, intellectual, social, reputational, emotional, cultural, and spiritual.
    • Pronatalism and upbringing: it is important to create large families and instill in children the desire to have children of their own. Upbringing happens through modeling: Mikuel’s children sit with him at real board meetings and business gatherings.
    • Family office is the key institutional system for coordinating assets, jurisdictions, and preparing the new generation.

6. Danny Hatler

  • Presentation topic: Presentation of Los Freedom Ranking 2026.
  • Key points:
    • Traditional freedom indices (Heritage, Cato) assess only recognized states and are skewed toward the development of government regulation.
    • The new Los ranking includes 235 territories (including private cities, overseas territories, individual US states, Swiss cantons, and special economic zones).
    • Freedom is defined classically: “the right of a person to be left alone” as long as they do not harm others. Evaluation is based on 6 categories: taxes, money, economy, property, personality, and space.
    • In the ranking, Prospera takes 1st place with a score of 9.313, while mainland Honduras is in 189th place with a score of 2.13. The ranking is fully interactive and customizable based on the user’s individual values.

7. Joe Quirk

  • Presentation topic: Legalization and legal arbitrage in seasteading.
  • Key points:
    • Historic achievement: lawyer George Schmidt obtained the first Panama flag for a seastead in international waters, which opens up 2/3 of the planet for jurisdictional freedom.
    • The first profitable seastead is the floating resort Reef Resort by Mitchell Sutner in the Philippines (water hotel + high-tech self-cleaning fish farm that produces 10 times more food than it consumes).
    • Mobility as protection against corruption: when the coast guard began extorting bribes from Reef Resort, the resort simply weighed anchor and moved to an island with a friendlier mayor. In the future, states will begin to compete for floating cities, offering them favorable regulatory packages under their flags.
    • Freedom for biotech: floating platforms outside the control of the FDA are a trillion-dollar market for accelerated testing of revolutionary medical drugs and life-extension technologies.

8. Yan Bertram

  • Presentation topic: Free Cities Foundation Knowledge Base and the new portal.
  • Key points:
    • Launched Knowledge Hub — a single interconnected digital database of all foundation materials (articles, podcasts, presentations, project and speaker profiles) from the last 8 years.
    • The fight for the digital narrative: The speaker urged projects to optimize their websites for AI crawlers (LLMs), so that algorithms learn from accurate data on alternative governance rather than distorted articles from mainstream media.
    • A donor portal has been opened (available for a $5 micro-donation) featuring exclusive content and the ability to add events to a unified community calendar.

9. Nicholas Anzinger

  • Presentation topic: Five-year retrospective of Prospera’s development and biotech acceleration.
  • Key points:
    • Starting with the organization of the Build Prospera Summit in 2022, Nicholas created the venture fund Infinita VC, which invested in 34 startups (4 of which work directly with Prospera, utilizing its flexible regulation).
    • The creation of the temporary pop-up city Vitalia (2024) attracted over 500 people, including Balaji Srinivasan, Naval Ravikant, and Bryan Johnson, and made Prospera a global hub for longevity.
    • In Vitalia, biotech startups were given the opportunity to conduct rapid clinical trials (e.g., Unlimited Bio’s gene therapy).
    • Prospera’s experience was transferred to the USA: Nicholas’s team helped develop bill SB535 in Montana, which allows private oversight boards to conduct experimental treatment (expanded right-to-try).

10. Mitchell Sutner

  • Presentation topic: The infinite future of floating cities and Arcpad technology.
  • Key points:
    • Advantages of seasteading over land-based cities: permissionlessness (only a flag is needed, rather than coordinating laws with a host country); mobility; modularity (the cost of expansion decreases due to economies of scale, unlike increasingly expensive land); high food production density.
    • Jurisdictional quilting: residents of a modular floating city can physically move from a home under the Panama flag (for business) to a home under the Netherlands or USA flag, choosing the laws that suit them best.
    • Arcpad D: a completed modular construction made of fiberglass and stainless steel with a lifespan of 80–95 years. It is disassembled and delivered in a standard shipping container, assembled on-site according to instructions (following the IKEA furniture principle). Official approval from the Panama Maritime Authority has been obtained.

11. Tim Stern

  • Presentation topic: Change of power in Venezuela and the Crypto City project.
  • Key points:
    • The sudden fall of the Maduro regime in January 2026 and changes in oil laws open up colossal potential for the return of capital and explosive economic growth.
    • Crypto City on Margarita Island: a special economic zone covering 40 hectares with a tax-free regime. Development is carried out in terraces (300 houses) to ensure an ocean view for every resident.
    • Management via DAO: residents vote on the admission of new neighbors based on their resumes. The community uses a blockchain-based DAO for collective funding of projects in Venezuela (a diamond mine, a nursing home for the parents of expats, a state lottery on Margarita).

12. Mason

  • Presentation topic: Atlas Yachts floating home.
  • Key points:
    • Mobility provides freedom (like a queen in chess).
    • Atlas Yacht (formerly Libra Arcs) is a full-fledged solar-powered “floating condominium” for permanent family living, not a status pleasure craft.
    • It is equipped with a huge solar roof, a reverse osmosis desalination system, and Starlink, making the owner completely independent of external power grids and water pipelines.
    • Open-source model: vessel blueprints are made publicly available so that buyers can build them at any shipyard, as well as repair and customize their home independently.
    • The model range consists of 4 types of vessels (from 39 to 79 feet) at the price of a regular condominium ($275k–$950k), but without property tax and utility payments.

13. Patri Friedman

  • Presentation topic: Questions and Answers (Ask Me Anything).
  • Key points:
    • The most promising project of the Pronomos fund right now is the Alpha City holding in Africa (working in 7 countries to create special jurisdictions: geothermal AI data centers, universities, agriculture).
    • Incentive alignment model: the host country’s government becomes a minority shareholder in the project, receiving a direct benefit from its success.
    • The “cold start” problem: infrastructure in a new location is very expensive, and attracting people is difficult. African projects solve this through the gratuitous allocation of vast land areas by governments, which immediately strengthens the company’s balance sheet.
    • A free city is primarily a commercial product and a business. Systemic freedom is more important than the personal ideology of the residents; therefore, it is not necessary to hire only libertarians—it is better to attract the best professionals (urbanists, engineers).

14. Telmon

  • Presentation topic: Edge City as an incubator for society and network cities.
  • Key points:
    • Edge City runs month-long pop-up villages for scientists, philosophers, and tech entrepreneurs (12,000 participants in 3 years).
    • Community principles: health by default (workouts, healthy food), interdisciplinarity, co-creation (95% of activities are created by the participants themselves), and intergenerational continuity (children’s camps).
    • Month-long pop-up camps are “version 0.1” for testing long-term partnerships with permanent smart cities and SEZs (such as Gelyphu Mindful City in Bhutan or Esmeralda in California).
    • An experiment called Agent Village is being conducted: every resident receives an AI agent with the context of the entire city, which helps coordinate meetings, create schedules, and manage the shared budget.

15. Billy Tetrude and Stacia Wilson

  • Presentation topic: How to build a “freestead” in Texas.
  • Key points:
    • Freestead uses existing legislation to create a free city without the need to request special statuses, international treaties, or SEZs from governments.
    • Freestead toolkit: mandatory arbitration (creates alternative courts and legal norms); tax redirection (land rent payments based on the Georgist system instead of property tax); private roads (allow for removing cars, narrowing streets, and distributing utility costs at the block level); absence of rigid regulations (in unincorporated areas); resident screening (to form a high-trust society).
    • Stacia Wilson emphasized the importance of forming clear, filtering value-constraints (e.g., “take personal responsibility for everything in life”) as early as the marketing stage, so that undesirable people filter themselves out.

16. Oliver Porter

  • Presentation topic: The contractual municipal model of the city of Sandy Springs.
  • Key points:
    • The residents of Sandy Springs (100 thousand people) for years paid a huge share of taxes into the county budget, receiving terrible municipal services in return. After gaining autonomy in 2005, the city applied a corporate approach.
    • Fully contractual city: at launch, Sandy Springs had only two employees on staff. Absolutely all city services (road repair, cleaning, administration) were purchased on a competitive basis from private corporations.
    • Results: over 10 years, taxes did not increase by a single cent, the quality of services entered the top 10% in the country, and a surplus of $40 million was accumulated with absolutely zero long-term debt and pension obligations. Using this model, 12 more cities were later created in Georgia.

17. Massimo Mazzone

  • Presentation topic: Philosophical roots of entrepreneurial communities and Ciudad Morazán.
  • Key points:
    • The social contract in traditional states is coercive. An alternative is private proprietary cities (entrepreneurial communities / entriccom), operating on a shopping mall model (one landowner provides security and infrastructure services in exchange for rent). This eliminates collective choice and political disputes—those dissatisfied simply leave.
    • Ciudad Morazán operates under the ZEDE law of Honduras: a free economic zone (0% VAT, customs duties, and taxes to the state, except for 12% contributions to national needs such as the army), a flat income tax of 5%, its own police force without the right to use violence (operating under a contract with residents), and a total absence of government jurisdiction in labor and education law.
    • Unlike Prospera, Morazán targets not wealthy libertarians, but local factory workers (maquilas). The real estate rental model (without sale) protects the project from evolving into a totalitarian democracy.

18. Joyce

  • Presentation topic: The “Live and Let Live” movement (3L).
  • Key points:
    • The movement was founded by Marc Victor and proposes a formula for conflict resolution: “Did a person, group, or government commit aggression?”. If society cannot unambiguously agree, the issue is resolved at the most local level of the community.
    • Application in Morazán: private police have no right to use force, issue fines, or lock people in prisons. They monitor the residents’ contract. Rule-breakers receive warnings, and for persistent violations, the administration simply does not renew the lease, and the person leaves without violence.

I think the conference provided a convenient snapshot of the current state of affairs: to what extent libertarians, having decent resources and not being under sanctions, have managed to make progress in the promotion of charter cities, what difficulties they encountered, and what conclusions they drew.

Naturally, Russian libertarians, being relatively poor and severely deprived of their rights—above all, to any self-governance initiatives worldwide—are unlikely to be able to reproduce any of this for themselves. For us, it would be a blessing to ensure a level of interaction in the mode of “living among ourselves relatively peacefully, not attracting the close interest of the state, and having established some kind of internal market.” The knowledge that one should not chase all innovations at once on one small site is somewhat redundant for us, although not without interest.

Nevertheless, an individual Russian libertarian could well try to join a charter city project in a private capacity; perhaps there is a need somewhere for ordinary citizens, and not just fat investors who are not considered affiliated with special services.

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