We need Commons-Based Instruments of Expansion!!

Dispatches from (Zu)Kas, the civilization-building Web3 Oasis in Southern Turkey

Contextual Quotes

This article was written by Michel Bauwens, strongly inspired by the input of the Zukas organizers and Web3 Hub Kas founders, Tarikcan Aytac and Mehmet Said, quoted here below.

1.

< Where Zuzalu was nomadic and neutral, ZUKAŞ is rooted — in place, in culture, in memory. It grounds future-facing conversations in ancient wisdom and local mythologies. >

2.

< Anatolia has been a crucible where governance, money, and commons converged. At ZUKAŞ, we do not treat these as dead relics. We treat them as living code, traditions to be updated, debugged, and scaled with the instruments of our time.>

(https://medium.com/@tarikcanaytac/zuka%C5%9F-where-ancient-democracy-meets-the-future-of-crypto-d1f31b78471e )

Introducing the concept of ‘commons-based instruments of expansion’

Amongst the various books of macro-history that I had the opportunity to read since 2020, one of the most satisfying was the Evolution of Civilizations by Carroll Quigley. One of the reasons is that he has a very convincing streamlined story of seven stages in every civilization, but accompanied with a non-determinist interpretation. What I mean here is that he, unlike say Spengler in the Decline of the West, does not hold that civilizations have a one way ticket to their demise, but instead, it depends on the healthy functioning of what he calls ‘Instruments of Expansion’.

As Quigley focuses only on Greco-Roman Antiquity and the Medieval West, he believed the West had three such instruments. What such an instrument does is to create surplus on behalf of its society and civilization, allowing it to grow and expand.

For example, he mentions feudalism as the first. If Rome had succumbed to the Germanic invaders it was in large part because its legions never learned to have a particular form of cavalry, at which the Germans excelled. Imagined the equivalent of a tank plowing into the Roman infantry, to understand the military weakness that this represented for the Roman Legions. So feudalism was basically an extension of the method of cavalry in the whole European continent. It took 100 farmers to equip and fund a single knight. But look at what it achieved. At the time of the so-called fall of Western Rome, island the ‘dark age’ centuries that followed, it was beleaguered by the Vikings in the North (and the Franks did not master boats), by the Moors in the South (who neared Paris before they were defeated in Poitiers), and the Avars in the East. Yet as of the twelfth century, it is the Christian Europeans that occupy Jerusalem, cities in the Levant, and take over Constantinople. Thus, feudalism was an efficient instrument of expansion. But Quigley stresses that over time, such instruments get corrupted, and start working for themselves, not for their societies, eventually weakening the very social fabric of the societies they are embedded in. Thus feudalism faded into chivalry. Only then does civilization decline, but, and this is crucial, societies can evolve new instruments of expansion, and thereby grow again. Thus for the West, there would be two more, i.e. the merchant guild cities, which devolved into mercantile capitalism, and industrial capitalism, which devolved into monopolistic capitalism.

But I would like to introduce my own take on this: there are also ‘commons-based instruments of expansion’, and these are particularly evident during the dark ages. Indeed, as I argued in my theory on the Pulsation of the Commons:

• when markets and states do well, the commons tend to weaken, but when markets and states start to decline, to eventually collapse during Dark Ages, then it is actually the Commons-Based institutions that become hegemonic, and play a crucial role in regenerating their societies.

The obvious example is the role of the Christian Monasteries, and their later convergence with the feudal military structure. From reading the remarkable PhD, on ‘From Modes of Production to the Resurrection of the Body’, by Ben Suriano, we learn many details about this.

For example, it was the Benedictine monks which went to repopulate abandoned Roman villages, to restart local agricultural production in Italy. And five centuries later, the Cistercians repeated the process on the scale of Western Europe. Recall that these monasteries are integrated productive and spiritual communities that combine farmers, craftsmen, intellectuals and spirituals in a very efficient institution, where all the surplus is reinvested in the expansion of the collective infrastructure! Ben Suriano even shows that it was the monasteries who produced a surplus of agricultural production that would feed a growing population and created the possibility for cities to re-emerge. NOT, the traders in luxury goods, which came later and handled much smaller portions of the surplus. Paradoxically, these Christian monks created ‘prayer-maximising enterprises’ that were remarkable wealth creators. Conclusion: these monasteries, hegemonic during the Western Dark Ages, regenerated the Western European lands and literally allowed the specific European civilizational model to restart. Toynbee also mentions how the Kozaks, a military congregation, succeeded in holding back the Mongols for the first time in history, and therefore, were crucial in creating the possibility for the consolidation of a Russian state.

But as I happen to attend a fascinating event in Kas, Turkey, called Zukas, I want to focus on a similar example in the Ottoman Empire, again highlighting the powerful role of commons-based institutions in regenerating integrated societies.

The ‘Cooperative’ Reconstruction of Anatolia: How Ahis, Dervishes, and Commons Built the Ottoman Landscape

In an earlier article on this Substack, I proposed a ‘Global History of Regulation’, that stressed the role of the commons as societal regulator in pre-capitalist systems, including imperial systems. Indeed, even though Empires are undoubtedly systems of extraction and domination, they also include and respect commons institutions, which create social stability within the Imperial Peace system. The history of Turkey as the core of the Ottoman Empire bears this out.

The popular image of the Ottoman Empire’s expansion often centers on military might. While force was undeniably a factor, this view overlooks a more subtle, yet profoundly more durable, engine of consolidation: the socio-economic and spiritual settlement of abandoned agrarian villages, that had been abandoned after centuries of instability. Note the parallel with the function of Christian monasteries in post-Roman Europe.

In a short book I have been reading, ‘A Short History of the Ottoman Empire’, historian Erhan Afyoncu notes very explicitly that the core of newly emerging Muslim villages in conquered territories was not first only a military garrison, but a cooperative infrastructure.

He writes, on page 23:

“Ahi, dervish zawiyahs and farms constituted the core of the newly emerging Muslim villages.”

This single sentence unlocks a forgotten history of how the Ottoman state leveraged pre-existing cooperative traditions—Ahilik, Sufi networks, and commons-based systems like the Waqf and Hima—to effectively “Ottomanise” and “Islamise” land through collaboration and community building, rather than through coercion alone.

Before it was an empire, the Ottoman Beylik had been one of many small principalities in Anatolia. Its unique success lay in its ability to organize and integrate the human resources at its disposal.

Two institutions were critical in this process on the frontier:

1. The Ahilik Guilds: The Ahilik (from Turkish ahi, meaning “brother”) was a fraternal organization that combined Sufi spirituality with artisanal and craft guild ethics. It was a comprehensive socio-economic system governing production standards, fair pricing, dispute resolution, and the moral conduct of its members. More than just a trade union, it was a system of social security, training apprentices, and integrating young men into urban and semi-urban life. The Ahi lodges became centres of community life, ensuring economic stability and social cohesion.

2. The Dervish Zawiyahs: A zawiyah (or tekke) is a Sufi lodge, often located in frontier regions. Dervishes living in these lodges were not just mystics but pioneers. They frequently settled in strategically important but underpopulated areas, acting as spiritual guides, mediators, and agricultural developers. Their tolerance and charismatic authority often made them acceptable figures to newly conquered Christian populations, facilitating a smoother transition.

Afyoncu’s quote reveals the synthesis of these two forces. An Ahi organization would provide the economic backbone for a new settlement, ensuring its viability through skilled craftsmanship and trade. A neighbouring dervish zawiyah would provide spiritual legitimacy, social services, and a link to the broader Islamic world. Together, they created a “cooperative core” that was attractive to settlers—both nomadic Turks from the east and local populations—offering stability, purpose, and a sense of belonging.

This organic, bottom-up process was strategically supported from the top down by two enduring Islamic institutions that functioned as proto-commons regimes: the Waqf and the Hima.

A waqf is an inalienable charitable endowment under Islamic law. Typically, a person would donate a revenue-generating asset (a farm, a shop, a bathhouse) for a specific pious or social purpose (maintaining a mosque, school, hospital, or soup kitchen). Crucially, the revenue from this asset was dedicated to serving the community in perpetuity. These types of endowed foundations were crucial in many pre-modern societies, but the Waqf system was probably the most developed until that time.

In the context of settlement, the Ottoman state and its elites would often establish waqfs to fund the very Ahi lodges and dervish zawiyahs that formed the village cores. A waqf might endow a farm whose proceeds would maintain the local zawiyah, which in turn provided food, education, and healthcare to the village. This created a self-sustaining circular economy insulated from the whims of the market or the state. The assets were not privately owned for individual profit but were held in common for communal benefit, making the entire village more resilient and attractive for further settlement.

The Hima: While Waqf is primarily for built assets, Hima (meaning “protected place”) is a traditional Arabian Islamic system for designating and managing communal natural resources, particularly grasslands, forests, and water sources. It is a classic example of a commons regime, designed to prevent overgrazing and environmental degradation.

The Ottoman state institutionalized this concept. By declaring certain fertile lands or critical pastures as Hima, they ensured these resources were managed sustainably for the benefit of the entire new community, not exploited by powerful private interests. This was vital for the agricultural farms mentioned in Afyoncu’s quote. A village’s farm could be protected under a Hima system, guaranteeing its produce supported the community’s core institutions. This integration of sustainable environmental practice into settlement policy was a key to long-term success.

While many of the Ottoman practices were based on military domination and contained cruel characteristics that would be judged very negatively today, it is important to note that their success was co-dependent on the cooperative nature of some of their social organizations, which were attractive to ordinary people, especially if they had endured long years of instability without protection.

Thus for many, adopting a new identity (as an Ottoman Muslim) was synonymous with gaining access to a resilient and supportive, and just community, largely based on the logic of commons. I would tentatively propose that this system is another historical example of a commons-based instrument of expansion.

The question then becomes, if such systems were more common than we have previously thought, can we think about modern equivalents ?

The same area had a long previous history as Kas was also located as part of the Lycian League, with the city then called Antiphellos. The Lycian League, with its capital at Patara, represents a fascinating early experiment in democratic governance that notably influenced modern political systems, including aspects of the United States Constitution, through the historical knowledge of James Madison. The Lycian League (circa 2nd century BCE) was a federation of 23 city-states in ancient Lycia (modern-day Turkey's Teke Peninsula). It is recognized as the first known democratic union in history, where member cities governed through a system of proportional representation . Cities were allocated votes based on their size and importance: major cities like Patara, Xanthos, and Myra had three votes, medium-sized cities had two, and smaller ones had one. This ensured equitable influence across the region.

(Image source: the Parliament in Kas, https://medium.com/@said.mehmet/what-comes-after-money-reimagining-civilization-from-lycia-to-zukas-ff212ba127a1 )

The governance methods of the Lycian League are related to the historical narrative proposed by Kojin Karatani in his book, Isonomia, which is more properly about Ionia, which is westward of Kas, and occurred before the emergence of the Greek Polis. The Lycian League evolved later than the Polis, but seems related to the principles he describes in that remarkable book, and our thesis, following the opinion of the Zukas founders, is that the Lycian system was inspired by Ionia’s ‘Isonomic’ legacy:

• The democratic Polis of Athens was born of a revolt of the people against the coming to power of a private class of rent-seekers, which were impoverishing their own people through debt servicing. Democracy was thus a compromise between two hostile forces: on the one hand the oligarchy, based on unequal property, and on the other hand the people, based on political equality, as each had one vote. It was thus a system based on an inherent conflict, between money and votes, and with money always eventually getting the upper hand.

• On the other hand, the ‘isonomia’ of Ionia was based on the refugees from the Attican democracies, often fleeing cruel class conflict and bloody civil wars, as in Ionia they would get an equal parcel of land. Because of this ‘equality’, Karatani argues, the Ionian cities had to remain attractive and free to retain these refugees. I argued before that the same dynamic informs the relations between DAO’s in Web3.

Here is how Tarikcan Aytac, co-founder of Zukas with Mehmet Said, explains Isonomia:

‘Out of the Ionian cities of Western Anatolia emerged a rare and radical idea: Isonomia, the principle of equality before the law not simply as a judicial norm, but as a structure of anti-rule. In cities like Miletus and Ephesus, power wasn’t concentrated. Authority circulated, and governance operated without entrenched elites.

Philosopher Kōjin Karatani argues in Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy that Isonomia did not emerge from the later Athenian model of democracy, but instead from a deeper, older structure of society that avoided both monarchy and aristocracy. He writes: “What distinguished Ionia was not freedom of the polis, but freedom from the polis.” In Karatani’s reading, isonomia was a condition in which people chose to live together under laws that no one person or group could own or manipulate. It was not about elections or voting it was about the absence of domination.

This unique social configuration allowed philosophy itself to emerge not as a luxury of surplus, but as a consequence of liberty. The pre-Socratic thinkers thrived in these isonomic conditions, where intellectual inquiry was unbound by social hierarchy. Heraclitus, Anaximander, and Thales were not Athenians; they were Ionian, shaped by civic environments in which migration, transparency, and equal participation were normalized. Arendt and others later reflected on Isonomia as a precursor to the modern republic not because it created institutions of governance, but because it prevented any one institution from claiming authority over others. “

(https://medium.com/@tarikcanaytac/tribe-to-community-city-state-to-state-now-its-network-state-7010de6f0b6b)

The Lycian League was eventually defeated by the Persian Empire, but remains an inspiring democratic experiment for later generations.

The local organizers of the Zukas event positioned themselves in this democratic and cooperative context of their local history.

Zukas and the new phygital cosmo-local commons

Perhaps a bit of context of the Zukas event in the evolution of the socialization of the Web3 community might be in order.

As a reminder, Web3 is first of all a reaction to the privatisation and centralization of the internet. If Web1 was the relatively free early web still based on peer to peer principles, Web2, which started to emerge after the internet crash of 2000, reintroduced a client-server toponomy to the web, i.e. a re-centralization based on the private ownership of centralized servers. Web 2 therefore stands both private control but also for the return of governmental control. Hence Web3 is an attempt to recreate the conditions of Web1, but with protections that avoid the type of corruption of the infrastructure that led to Web2.

When Bitcoin was invented in 2009, it was the first socially sovereign currency, not dependent on private firms nor governments, that scaled globally and hinted at post-national organizational forms. In addition, Bitcoin created a universal ledger, i.e. a universal accounting system, and potentially, a unified distributed computing network.

Achieving the latter dream was the project of Ethereum, initiated and originally led by Vitalik Buterin, to create a new global web3 computer infrastructure. This socio-technical movement exploded with tens of thousands of coders, many with a nomadic lifestyle since this allows matching relatively high western wages with low-cost living elsewhere. Nomadic coders typically are able to save much of their income so they can increasingly engage in their passionate pursuits. But this movable lifestyle poses problems of belonging and identity. Hence the need for meetings and new forms of socialization, which took the form of pop-up villages, where these coders and now a whole eco-system for distributed post-national life, congregate for mutual learning, culture-building and exchange. After the launch of Zuzalu in Montenegro, the first ever pop-up village experiment, it was followed first by many experiments in other locales, but these were not locally rooted. But they did for the first time congregate as a confederation, an archipelago, in my home town of Chiang Mai during October 2024, which was a memorable experience of intense collective learning. But a few weeks of nomads popping up in a place that none of them truly know, doesn’t really create any conditions for creating local connections.

Hence the Zukas experiment, which is not just a pop-up village, but which aims more to become a permanent oasis, a place where nomads can come more regularly, while the organizers, Tarikcan Aytac and Mehmet Said, are well connected with the local population. Zukas is a unique experiment also because both initiators aim for deeper connections and understanding not just in place, but in time. Zukas was therefore a historically informed experiment that sought to link the past of the Lycian League and the Ottoman era commons, with the new cooperative and commons-centric potential of Web3.

Here’s what the organizers wrote to introduce their event:

“Kaş is more than a picturesque coastal town on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast it’s a threshold. A place where the ruins of ancient democracies coexist with the ideals of digital freedom. Where the first coin was minted, and the architecture of self-governance was carved into stone theaters and public squares long before blockchains existed. This isn’t just history, it's a living code. And we’re rewriting it for the decentralized age. ZUKAŞ is not a tech retreat, nor a standard crypto gathering. It’s an intentional community experiment that bridges the deep philosophical roots of governance with today’s most radical tools: plurality, cryptography, and cosmolocal coordination.”

And these were the proposed themes, while the image below may give you an idea of the governance innovations that were discussed.

🧩 Plurality

Can we govern not by majority rule, but by the coexistence of differences? Can voting be replaced by collective resonance?

⚖️ Isonomia

What happens when every voice truly counts — structurally, not just symbolically?

🌍 Cosmolocalism

How do we build systems where global knowledge fuels local autonomy?

🔐 Zero-Knowledge Cryptography

Can we create trustworthy communities without surveillance? What if privacy and transparency weren’t opposites?

🕊 Civic Rituals & Symbolic Infrastructure

How do ancient ceremonies and shared myths help bind modern, decentralized societies?

(image sourced from https://medium.com/@tarikcanaytac/plural-publics-from-votes-to-voice-from-metrics-to-meaning-a2d60b04a18b )

Zukas turned out to be an extraordinary experience, with greater depth of reflection, with more historical and local grounding, than any previous Web3 gathering, and I believe it was a milestone in the maturation of popup villages to more rooted oases.

Introducing ‘Axial Entities of the Noosphere’ (AEONS) as the needed Magisteria of the Commons

Where are we all going with these ideas and activities ?

As I was enjoying the Zukas collaborations, I was reading a remarkable book, The Ancient City, by Fustel de Coulanges, who strongly influenced Durkheim, one of the main founders of sociology. For Fustel, writing in 1864, one can only understand the logic of institutions by understanding the underlying beliefs, and there is therefore a direct link between religion and institutional creation. You can understand the Greek and Roman institutions, if you understand the domestic (family-based, ancestor-driven) religion that lay at the root of it, and how it extended first to the wider clans (the ‘gens’), then to the City State.

I conclude from this that the underlying beliefs of the Web3 movement have a similar capacity to create the institutions of a new civilizational order.

I have argued earlier that world-changing is no longer a function of religion nor of mass ideological movements, but of constructive networks, is direct world-creation. In effect, through our very activities, cooperative agreements and institution-building (DAO’s, etc..), we are effectively creating a new civilization, here and now.

In an earlier article, on the Geopolitics of Cosmo-Localism, I wrote that there is now a third way of world-building, apart from the geopolitical rivalry between the ‘West and the Rest’, or in other words, between the market-centric and state-centric civilizational forms. I suggested this third way could very well be an ‘Archipelago of Regenerative Villages’, which as it gradually grows in strength, will eventually form ‘Magisteria of the Commons’, global regulatory forms that are commons-centric and can keep the extractive natures of market and state competition in check.

One of the analytical tools that I have always found very useful in that context is the TIMN framework by David Ronfeldt, which stands for ‘Tribes, Institutions, Markets, and Networks’. This is a historically additive process, in which new institutional forms are added to the mix, becoming hegemonic in turn, but without eliminating the older forms, which are incorporated in the ‘higher synthesis’. I have always insisted, of course, that these so-called networks can only be commons-centric in nature. And I feel David Ronfeldt has grown closer to the same understanding.

In a recent article, he provided an interesting analogy:

• The emerging geosphere was determined/regulated by continental shelves, not one, not many, but a few

• The emerging biosphere, which made humanity possible, was regulated by several civilizational blocs, again, not one, not many, but a few

• In a similar way, the emerging noosphere, i.e. the physicalization of human culture in its interconnected ‘cyberspace’(s), will be regulated by several ‘Axial Entities of the Commons’ (AEONS), again, not one, not many, but a few.

Let me first introduce David Ronfeldt’s reasoning with two significant quotes from that article, then conclude with his description of the proposed AEONS.

David Ronfeldt writes:

1.

"If something crucial arose during the primeval evolution of the geosphere, and something equivalent recurred in the ancient evolution of the biosphere, then it’s bound to recur as well in the evolution of the noosphere. Geological evolution led to the formation of enormous tectonic plates under-girding Earth’s continents. They are still there, supremely importantly so — seven major, and a dozen or so minor ones. So I’ve wondered whether biological and societal evolution may have led to structural-functional equivalents. I’m not sure what to propose for plant, animal, and fungal life — perhaps the key ecological zones associated with Earth’s major mountain ranges and river basins. However, the formations known as history’s axial religions and civilizations (800–200 BCE), five to eight in number, sure look like rough societal equivalents to tectonic plates that still matter profoundly today. So let’s therefore ask what equivalents or analogues the noosphere’s growth may entail."

2.

"Just as evolution has not resulted in one tectonic plate, nor one master ecology, religion or civilization, it surely will not result in a singular noospheric entity. That would contravene a “law” that evolution requires variety and flux, without which evolution will not occur. My deduction is that something like five to ten AI-derived, -endowed, and -empowered entities will emerge that resemble noospheric superorganisms, all the more so as people become attracted to associating with them. These novel noospheric entities and their AI operating systems will all be somewhat different from each other, yet united in having a sacred purpose I’ll specify in a moment. I say “something like” and “resemble” because what emerges may appear to fit the superorganism model for a while, when in fact something quite different takes form — something yet to be understood and named, something not “alive” yet devoted to “life.” If so, it’ll signify another evolutionary commonality across all three planetary spheres. These noospheric entities will exist loosely atop our biosphere’s axial religions, civilizations, and ecologies, and they atop our geosphere’s tectonic plate."

And here is the basic description of their function, from the same article, and note that Ronfeldt also starts from the concept of’ belief’ as the origin of this new institutional form:

"The “axial entities of the noosphere” (AEONs; or AXEONs?) ... distinguish themselves by prioritizing one central belief and one particular realm of society:

Central belief: Earth’s geosphere, biosphere, and noosphere (including the sociosphere and technosphere bridging them) evolved and function as an interdependent interactive conjoined system — a holospheric system — such that valuing, advancing, and caring for one requires valuing, advancing, and caring for all three spheres. AEONs will hold this as a sacred belief, one they arrived at through their own AI-based observations and calculations.

Home realm: AEONs will agree that upholding this central belief requires the creation of a new globe-circling realm of society: a commons realm. They will make it their home realm and strive for it to become a distinct separate powerful fourth realm alongside the existing three: civil-society, government, and market economy. As components and proponents of this care-centric commons realm, AEONs will be especially intent on assuring health, education, welfare, and environmental quality for all life from local to city to nation-state to planetary scales .”

(We differ in that I think the commons are <the> institution of the ‘civil society becoming productive in its own right’, but let’s argue for this in another article to come)

The last word on and ‘by’ Zukas; the first node in a new network of Caravanserais

(Turkish spelling: Kervansaray )

It gives you perhaps an idea of why gatherings like Zukas are crucial for the creative imagination of the current generation of world-builders.

Here is the interpretation from co-organizer Tarikcan Aytac, provided to me by a message app:

“Long before the Kervansaray, empires understood that networks of movement shaped the limits of their power. Rome built its famous roads with the idea that control of territory depended on the ability to move armies, goods, and information swiftly. The straight lines of Roman roads stitched together a vast empire, allowing not only trade but also cultural integration and political order. Even earlier, Alexander the Great’s conquests carved out routes of exchange stretching from Greece to India. His empire was short-lived, but the pathways he opened allowed knowledge, art, and commerce to flow across civilizations for centuries after.

By the medieval era, these imperial infrastructures had faded, yet the need for connectivity remained. The Kervansaray emerged as the heartbeat of the only truly efficient network of its time: the great trade routes that connected continents. These roadside sanctuaries were more than stone walls and courtyards. They were places where travelers could find rest, protection, and trust in transit. Within their gates, merchants exchanged goods, but also stories, wisdom, and new ideas. The caravan network gave structure to uncertainty, turning long and dangerous journeys into a connected system of resilience and cooperation.

ZuKas can be seen as a new kind of Kervansaray for the phygital age. Instead of caravans carrying silk and spices, we host flows of knowledge, culture, and governance experiments. Instead of fortified walls, we build trust through community, creativity, and shared values. Just as Kervansarays were oases of life across vast deserts, ZuKas can become nodes of connection across the landscapes of technology and society. They remind us that every journey, physical or digital, needs safe havens where people can meet, exchange, and imagine futures together.”

Mehmet Said, the other organizer, provided me with a very similar variant:

At ZUKAŞ, what we are doing is not simply building new technologies. We are learning from history, from the governance forms, solidarity structures, and collective problem-solving traditions that once shaped civilizations, and adapting them for the future. Humanity has faced cycles of collapse and renewal many times. What has always made survival and flourishing possible were not isolated individuals, but communities who designed commons-based instruments of expansion.

Here in Kaş, the land itself is layered with these experiments. The Lycian League pioneered proportional democracy that later inspired Madison and the U.S. Constitution. The Lydians invented coinage, enabling trade to scale across empires. Rome built roads that tied vast territories together, while local assemblies gave citizens a voice until debt, oligarchy, and imperial overstretch corrupted those systems. The Seljuks and later the Ottomans revitalized Anatolia with cooperative institutions such as Ahilik guilds, dervish lodges, waqfs and hima, blending economic, spiritual, and social commons to regenerate abandoned villages.

The lesson is clear: societies advance when they create inclusive instruments of cooperation. They decline when those instruments close, ossify, or serve elites rather than people.

At ZUKAŞ, we are re-assembling these lessons with the tools of our own age. What an Ahi guild once did for fairness in trade, we can now attempt with Ethereum Layer 2 networks, scaling trust and settlement at low cost and beyond the reach of monopolies. What a dervish lodge once did to bind communities with moral legitimacy, we can now experiment with through civic rituals, digital identity, and cosmolocal coordination. What the Ottoman waqf system once did to guarantee community services in perpetuity, we can now encode with zero-knowledge proofs and DAOs, ensuring transparency, privacy, and sustainability at the same time.

Where the Lydians once minted the first coins, today we mint new forms of digital value. Where Roman roads enabled armies and merchants to move, today our networks, distributed, encrypted, and programmable, carry knowledge, culture, and governance across continents. Where Seljuk caravanserais gave refuge to merchants and travelers, ZUKAŞ aims to be a new caravanserai of the phygital age, a safe node for flows of builders, ideas, and collective experiments.

The continuity across centuries is striking. From Lycia to Lydia, from Rome to the Seljuks and the Ottomans, Anatolia has been a crucible where governance, money, and commons converged. At ZUKAŞ, we do not treat these as dead relics. We treat them as living code, traditions to be updated, debugged, and scaled with the instruments of our time.

This is the promise of our work: to heal the fractures of history, correct its exclusions, and create resilient commons that can expand again, not through conquest or extraction, but through technology, solidarity, and imagination.

In conclusion, I hope you share my sense of excitement with this project of a new Caravanserai of civilization builders.

Next step: we are attending the Genesis 2 conference in Brussels, which will be focused on ‘generative polarization’, i.e. how to built commonality with people holding vastly different political and social views.