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Welcome to the BITNATION and Pangea FAQ and wiki!
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the goal of BITNATION?
Bitnation is building the Internet of Sovereignty. Our goal is to create a world of choices for governance service providers, that increases individual autonomy, liberty and privacy. We intend to achieve that aim through our Pangea Jurisdiction software. We aim to shift sovereignty decisively from the state back to the citizen, through competing with Nation States head-on, competing with their core Jurisdictional service, and offering a cheaper, more user friendly and secure alternative.
What is the relationship between BITNATION and Pangea?
Bitnation is a Decentralized Borderless Voluntary Nation (DBVN) - (the organization), which is building the Pangea Jurisdiction (the software). The Pangea software is a Polylegal Jurisdiction in which nations can be created and joined, citizens can make agreements and resolve disputes, and access a competitive market for governance services.
What is a DBVN?
DBVN stands for Decentralized Borderless Voluntary Nation. The term was first coined by Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof in the original Bitnation Whitepaper in 2014. It was inspired by the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) model invented by Dan Larimer and further developed by Vitalik Buterin in 2013. In short, a DBVN is a decentralized governance service provider.
What is a decentralised governance service provider?
A decentralized governance provider is, according to the DBVN definition:
- An entity providing core governance services (like security and justice) on a voluntary (opt-in) basis - as opposed to for instance nation state governments who force people to pay for and use their “services” through the threat of violence
- Pangea will provide ‘jurisdiction as a service’ on the platform, for individuals, groups and voluntary nations. Pangea can also be used to create new voluntary nations and populate them with Citizens and 3rd party governance applications.
- An entity which provides these core governance services in a human and technological resilient way using decentralized protocols, to avoid central point of failures vulnerable to attacks.
What is PAT?
PAT stands for Pangea Arbitration Token. It’s an ERC20 (standard Ethereum token) for in-app use on the Pangea Jurisdiction software. Its purpose is to power the reputation system, which serves as the i mechanism to incentivise the honouring of agreements made on Pangea.
Where can I read more about the Pangea Jurisdiction and the PAT token?
- Have a look at our Pangea 2017 Whitepaper.
- And our Constitution
How can I participate in Bitnation?
The first function on the Pangea Alpha is the be the ability to ‘create your own nation’.
Will BITNATION’s ID allow me to cross borders?
That’s unlikely in the short term, until BITNATION gains significant market adoption and it becomes the norm. However, rather than allowing you to travel, the Pangea Jurisdiction will bring the governance choices to your home (in your phone!), regardless of what country you’re born in, where you live, or what passport you hold. However the current ID is compatible with EU ID regulations and can and has been used to enable stateless people access private services.
There are many individuals, who are working as BITNATION citizens, ambassadors, and nations, to gain mass adoption of BITNATION IDs as well as documentation of property such as sailboats and automobiles.
What services does/will bitnation provide?
The main focus is, as outlined in the Pangea Whitepaper:
- The ability to create your own Nation on our Polylegal Jurisdiction
- The ability to create contracts, and resolve disputes related to your contracts, through peer-to-peer arbitration.
- 3rd Party Developers can create their own peer-to-peer governance DApps and bots on Pangea
What plans does bitnation have to prevent becoming an elite of technical programmers? After all, it requires very technical programming skills to read the code that forms the core.
Good question indeed! We’re working on making really user friendly documentation for everyone to join in the work, coders as much as non-coders - all skills are valuable to our community!
Further on, what will insure a broader community inclusion long term is our Ambassador and Embassy Networks, which is significantly more human- and community centric.
Ultimately, the aim of Bitnation is a world of voluntary nations - and we are developing software for use by anyone, without the need for any technical knowledge. That’s why our frontend is mobile chat and emoji based.
What are the Ambassador and Embassy Networks?
The Ambassador and Embassy networks were conceived as analogue versions of Pangea. A real world network of people and places where digital nomads could get advice, assistance and meet-up and hang out. There are three types of Bitnation representatives:
- Diplomatic Ambassadors: Official Bitnation positions to perform duties as Officers working as our interface with existing Nations, as well as new virtual Nations.
- Diplomatic Consuls: Also an Official position. A support to both our Ambassadors and to Nation State embassies and consulates engaging with our Citizens in the location of our Embassies and Consulates.
- Goodwill Ambassadors: Informal but officially recognised representative of Bitnation during events (such as DEVCONs). Promotes and supports Bitnation and our services and provides a point of contact for our Citizens.
Embassies and Consulates are where share their space, whether it’s an office, coffee shop or your home, and open it up for fellow citizens, hackers and crypto aficionados around the world! There are two types of places, Embassies and Consulates.
- Embassy A place where you can both live, and work (and naturally, meet)
- Consulate A place where you can work – like a shared office space or cafe, for instance – or maybe organise a meetup or a hangout.
Bitnation has over 100 embassies and consulates worldwide. You can find out more here.
What actions can legacy nation-states take to hinder bitnation adoption? What plans does bitnation have to mitigate this?
They can’t technically take down anything we build, since it’s decentralized. We’re also decentralized in terms of our human structure, through our Ambassador Network. However, governments could attack core contributors and centralized parts of the infrastructure, like the website, Git, Trello, social media channels, etc.
If governments attack any of the core contributors, we have mechanisms in place to signal such abuse, and replace those person so the operation continues, through our multisignature structure. If governments would attack the parts of our infrastructure that lives on centralized platforms currently, we have backups and mirrors of all essential channels and can restore them within hours.
I can haz passport?
No, we want to abolish the need for passports, forever. There’s however a pseudo-anonymous ID system on Pangea, which we think is significantly more valuable, because it allows you to be self-sovereign.
What plans does bitnation have to deal with security bugs? DDOS? Loss of keys? Password recovery? Spam? Etc
The main threat currently is flaws in our Smart Contract Solidity code. To that end we’re using a highly reputable third party code audit firm, ABDK consultants, to audit all of our code.
For the Pangea platform security, after the ICO, when we’re in mature Alpha or early Beta, we’ll put a significant amount of resources into bug bounties, to ensure we have rock solid security. Panthalassa, the backend protocol, will be quantum resistant.
The system has an innate sybil attack resistance as it is difficult to build up reputation quickly. We are also looking at improving ID for login and perhaps implementing a proof-of-identity protocol to prevent the creation of multiple accounts.
What happens to bitnation when there is a large power failure or network outage? Is there some way to keep it going in a disaster?
Yes, thank you for asking! Pangea works offline as well - if you have nearby peers - it creates a “digital mesh network”. Additionally, post-ICO we plan to put additional mesh hardware in Embassies in key low-tech areas that can assure internet access in a 30km radius. The more people who use the network the denser it becomes, and the less dependent upon individual internet connections. A key advantage as we scale. Eventually it could be a decentralised internet all of its own :-)
Can entities like companies, public institutions, associations through their representatives be part of Pangea or only specific individuals?
All organisations are groups of individuals. Anyone or any representatives of any organisation can use Pangea. Pangea is a platform on which individual users can create, join and leave Nations. Although Pangea is a p2p platform, it enables the creation of DBVN ‘holons’ for groups of people who wish to voluntarily associate - each DBVN has its own constitution (rules) and can set conditions for membership or citizenship. DBVNs can be voluntary nations, but also could be companies, non-profit organisations or voluntary associations - as you wish. If other people want to join these organisations, communicate with their members and officers or access their products and services, they can do so on Pangea. There is no reason why an existing organisation - say a business or charity, could not create a DBVN to do business or provide services on Pangea, and use Pangea as a virtual jurisdiction. Even existing states or special economic zones could use Pangea as their jurisdiction if they wish to evolve towards an opt-in opt-out governance model.