On January 1st, 2023, Croatia officially joined the European Union Schengen area, which means all EU citizens may cross its borders without needing a visa. This historic step also means that Croatia needs, at some point, to define its borders exactly – and a neighboring micronation is watching. 

It’s called the Free Republic of Liberland and occupies only 2.7 square miles of no man’s land between Croatia and Serbia that’s actually a flood plain of the Danube River. In 2015, Libertarian Czech politician Vít Jedlicka declared it a sovereign country and became its first president. 

Some shrugged off Liberland as a publicity stunt. 

But Jedlicka has pushed for legal and international recognition. More than 700,000 people have applied for Liberland citizenship online, attracted by its laissez-faire ideals and “live and let live” motto – including some of the world’s best architects and artists. 

“There has been very little upgrade in the governance of the nation-states for centuries now and I think this is the next evolution,” Jedlicka told me. He believes that he is slowly building a decentralized governance model. 

For years, Liberland has been much more vibrant in the virtual world than the real world, with its online presence giving it outsized influence. There are user-generated Liberland maps on numerous cartography websites, including Google Maps. Its Github page contains Liberland’s blockchain documentation. The official website has the country’s constitution, laws, official news, application forms for citizenship and even physical passports. 

Now, it’s expanding this presence with a sleek-looking metaverse – a digital twin to experiment with the spatial distribution of the aspiring country. While still very much a work in progress, the effort is meant to be “a virtual industry synergy and networking hub for Crypto projects, crypto companies and crypto events,” according to Patrik Shumacher, an architect with Zaha Hadid Architects. The firms Mytaverse and ArchAgenda a.o are also involved.

“It is a showcase of what we want to build physically,” Jedlicka said. 

The Liberland metaverse embodies its commitment to crypto with a decentralized finance plaza, City Hall, a Defi incubator and a nonfungible token incubator. Its government has accepted Bitcoin since 2015 while its laws and constitution are written on a smart contract that runs over a variant of the Polkadot blockchain. The roadmap includes launching a virtual university in 2023, focusing on web3 and blockchain technologies 

Liberland has also issued two cryptocurrencies. Liberland Merit is a governance token that allows holders to propose referendums, which other holders may support through staking. The Liberland dollar is an inflationary currency that is meant to give stability to the ecosystem.

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Yet what’s most striking about Liberland’s metaverse is its distinguished design that sets it apart from most metaverse iterations that have appeared in the past few years.  The buildings are almost completely devoid of straight lines and carry the recognizable signature of Zaha Hadid, the world-renowned Iraqi-British architect famous for incorporating curves and spirals inspired by seashells and Arabic calligraphy. 

So how did one of the world’s top architectural firms design a fictitious city for a non-recognized nation? 

“Patrik Shumacher, Zaha Hadid’s most famous architect, joined our forces,” Jedlicka said. “It is pretty exciting to have him on board.” Other large institutions are also supporting Liberland, some of them non-publicly, he said.  

For now, digital architecture is the only method to build in Liberland as border patrols of both Serbia and Croatia limit access to the Liberland enclave. While both countries do not assume control over the land in between, they regularly arrest those who want to access it. 

But whether one-day Liberland becomes a real-life functioning country or not, Jedlicka’s efforts seem to attract many people from crypto enthusiasts to visionary architects. 

“The end goal here is to take over the world, then leave them alone,” he said with a laugh.