The story of the first popup city, how it let a thousand societies bloom — and a door into every Zu village it inspired.
In the spring of 2023, on the Adriatic coast of Montenegro, an experiment ran for two months: bring ~200 people — from Ethereum, longevity science, rationalism, AI research and beyond — into one place, Lustica Bay, and see what happens when a community stops visiting each other's conferences and starts sharing a life.
The experiment was called Zuzalu — a playful name that carried no meaning at the time. It ran March 25 → May 25, 2023, initiated by Vitalik Buterin and a crew of co-conspirators. Residents co-built the program: hundreds of self-organized events, cold plunges, morning runs, hack weeks, a town hall culture. What came out was bigger than any single event: a living template for how a community could be.
"Bring ~200 people, from multiple communities — Ethereum, longevity, rationalism, AI — together in one place for two months, and see what happens. Zuzalu succeeded as an experiment." — Vitalik Buterin, "Let a thousand societies bloom" (Dec 2025)
Zuzalu never became a franchise. There was no Season 2 owned by the same org. Instead, the meme forked itself.
Residents and friends carried the pattern home and ran their own — popup villages, month-long residencies, permanent coliving nodes. Different names, different laws, different food: same DNA. The community stopped being a guest list and became a constellation. Vitalik spent 42 days in Chiang Mai with what he called "Zuzalu 2.0" — not a sequel by the original crew, but the idea running on its own, in another country's soil.
That is the real decentralization of Zuzalu: no center to capture, no brand police, no permission needed. If you can hold a village, the village is Zu.
Zu villages and zucities around the world — each one its own community, its own rules, its own soul. Some lasted a month. Some are still standing. All of them are family.
The first popup city. Two months, ~200 residents, the experiment that started the movement.
The first big reunion — two weeks of co-living and co-creating during Devconnect season.
The "Zuzalu 2.0" season — and then a permanent DeSoc hub. Home of the Zuzalu Library. ↓ featured below.
The Alpine fork — network-state R&D with Swiss precision; d/acc mornings and fireside dens.
The village fork — opened with a Vitalik ceremony in January 2025, rooted in local soil.
A month-long popup of builders and dreamers — opening keynote to town halls, the full mountain arc.
The Chinese node of the constellation — city-scale, community-run.
Society-scale popups at the edge of the map — the movement's wandering laboratory.
Community-owned coliving on the 400-year-old Hokkoku Kaidō — three restored houses, one venue, one mountain town. Enter the Japan pit →
The constellation is open. Hold a village, name it with love, tell the family it exists.
Every village leaves two things behind: friendships and artifacts. The Zuzalu Library at the 4Seas hub in Chiang Mai is where the movement keeps its books — a living reading room for network societies, decentralized governance, longevity, and the odd novel someone couldn't leave behind. Popup cities are temporary; a library is how a temporary city keeps its memory permanent. Travelers sleep nearby, read late, and add their own margin notes to the movement.
It's one of our favorite rooms on Earth — this site's Japan pit is run by people who stay there when they pass through Chiang Mai.
4Seas = the DeSoc (decentralized society) hub in Chiang Mai · @4seasDeSoc
A PIT is a Private or Public Transmission — the archive pattern of our ʻohana: simple static sites that keep a community's sessions, media and memory alive without platforms in the middle. There are pits for musicians, for villages, for families. ZuPit is the Zuzalu branch.
The first full pit under this roof is ZuPit / Japan — built with the ZuCity Japan community in Komoro. The complete Japan archive (sessions, media, community memory) unlocks when the community's shared drive lands. Until then: the door is open, the guide is live, and KOMORO 🗾 — our Japan waste-guide agent — is already answering questions there.