Introducing Praxis Credits (PRAX)

We’re excited to announce Praxis Credits (PRAX), a measure of contribution to the development of Praxis. In this post, we’ll discuss why we are introducing PRAX and how to contribute.

What is PRAX?

PRAX is a measure of a stakeholder’s contribution to the development of Praxis: the movement, the city, and the network.

Why is Praxis building cities?

Our mission is to accelerate technological progress to create a vital future for humanity; to this end, we are developing new cities.

Cities are large, contiguous human settlements; they require space and rules, which enable the development of their culture and economy. Cities drive technological progress when their rules enable experiments, permit free exchange, and encourage a culture of risk-taking.

How do you start a city?

To start a city, you have to get space and the right to make rules. Governments largely control both. Governments benefit from new city developments when they drive economic growth. To concretize future benefit, economic and cultural capital from residents and companies needs to be measurable, and financial capital must be formed on this basis.

Once established, a city’s rate of population growth is bottlenecked by the speed of capital coordination (human, cultural, financial), and the speed of physical construction. As we have developed technologies to improve coordination and accelerate construction, cities have developed faster and grown larger.

While ancient cities took centuries to grow and stabilize at hundreds of thousands of residents, cities post- industrial revolution scaled to millions in decades. The industrial age offered new communication and financial technologies (e.g. telegraphs and telephones; the growth of joint-stock companies and stock exchanges), as well as mass manufacturing, which unlocked coordination and construction efficiencies that enabled cities to 100x their growth rate.

Today, we have new technologies for human and financial capital coordination: the internet and crypto. The internet has enabled people across the globe to connect around common interests and rapidly scale social movements; crypto unlocks new ways to pool resources to fund them.

We have the tools to coordinate groups 10x the scale of industrial cities 10x faster towards common ends, and to coalesce the capital to fund new cities’ development. These insights and others birthed Balaji Srinivasan’s concept of The Network State. We’re bringing this vision into reality.

Why is Praxis building PRAX?

Since raising two years ago from Paradigm, Balaji Srinivasan, Bedrock, Apollo Projects (Max & Sam Altman), Pacman, Robot Ventures, Joe Lonsdale, Winklevoss Capital, Shervin Pishevar, Pronomos Capital, and more, we have been on the ground collaborating with governments.

We built a team including former heads of state, veteran city builders (developed 3 US cities >100k residents), and learned precisely what is needed to get rule changes that unlock technological progress in areas including energy (nuclear), AI, crypto, manufacturing, and more. Then, we negotiated initial terms with governments.

But to finalize meaningful rule changes, we need to (1) demonstrate the economic and cultural capital of our community, and (2) coalesce financial capital on that basis.

The Praxis community is zealous about contributing to the development of the city. It contains the most talented people in the world – founders, engineers, researchers, artists – based in 69 countries and 268 cities. Thousands have committed deposits towards moving. But we are somewhat disorganized, and far from realizing the potential energy of our Residents. Together, we can build worlds.

We need a simple mechanism that reveals the latent economic and cultural capital of our community, amplifies existing zeal, and maximizes its impact on the development of Praxis.

PRAX solves this. PRAX is a measure of a stakeholder's contribution to the development of Praxis, calculated on the basis of the quality of attempt and completion of specified actions targeted at furthering the project. The revealed economic and cultural capital will convey to capital markets the scale and quality of demand for Praxis, unlocking the scalable financial commitments¹ needed to unlock rule changes from Host Governments.

Simply: proven demand unlocks capital; capital unlocks rule changes that accelerate tech progress. This is how we build the city of the future.

How do stakeholders earn PRAX?

You earn PRAX by doing Commits. Commits are specified actions that contribute to the development of Praxis: the movement, the city, and (eventually) the network. Commits demonstrate and grow the economic and cultural capital of Praxis.
You also earn PRAX by referring citizens and companies that apply to the Steel Visa and BOP. If successful, you earn PRAX.

Initially, only stakeholders (Residents, BOPs, and applicants to both) are eligible. You can apply to become eligible.

Commits fall into two categories:

1. Building the Economy and Culture of Praxis²:
   1. Building businesses on/in Praxis
   2. Construction in Praxis
   3. Moving to Praxis
   4. Building the movement
   5. Art
2. Building Praxis Infrastructure³:
   1. Governance
   2. Policy
   3. Physical Infrastructure
   4. Social Infrastructure
   5. Institutions

List of Commits:

A list of initial Commits, and instructions on how to submit, are accessible here.

In the meantime, you can apply for a Steel Visa or to Build on Praxis (BOP) to become eligible.

Conclusion

We are a community building the city of the future. This marks the beginning of the next phase of our plan.

We are excited to share more updates on PRAX soon.

Notes:

¹ As we’ve seen with Blast’s pre-launch TVL mechanic, new technology uniquely enables scaling deposits to demonstrate capital commitment. Blast could start a city if their TVL was Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).

² Blockchains are like cities. Cities are also like blockchains. Cities have a lot to learn from blockchains, which have extremely effective demand coordination mechanisms, BD, marketing, community, branding teams. NYC is like the EF: most important, but it can't change frequently because “breaking updates” disincentivize long term planning and disrupt existing structures. Singapore is like Solana: up and coming, fast, commercial, crushing. Cities should be more like Singapore or Dubai in the beginning.

³ The barrier between these categories is permeable, and raises questions analogous to those considered in the debates over fat vs. thin protocols, i.e. how much physical infra (e.g. energy) and social (e.g. education / healthcare) do cities take on vs letting the market provide solutions. We should probably build the roads. The schools are a maybe. Certainly not the supermarkets.