Zuzalu is the illustration of the obsession of a certain elite for eternal youth. From March to May 2023, hundreds of people, mainly biotech entrepreneurs, cryptocurrency investors and scientific researchers, have invested this place on the Adriatic coast of Montenegro. No need to look for the city on a map, because it does not exist.
This pop-up city, a kind of ephemeral city, was entirely created to allow the members of this community to meet each other. Behind the name Zuzalu, invented from scratch by Chat-GPT, is actually a group of “longevists” ready to defy death, or at least old age, by investing colossal sums in biomedical research and technological projects in the frontier of science fiction. At the head of this community is Vitalik Buterin. This Russian emigrated as a child to Canada became a billionaire by creating the Ethereum protocol, which gave birth to the ether cryptocurrency, bitcoin’s great rival.
For two months, these longevists discussed biotech, medical innovation, slowing down aging, during multiple conferences or more informal moments. Ultra-healthy breakfasts, yoga sessions, swimming, sauna, in shorts and flip-flops…: the atmosphere was very relaxed, according to the photos posted on social networks. But don’t trust this atmosphere that looks like a holiday club for the ultra-rich, because it’s just a pretext. The real purpose of this two-month experiment is to find out if this community could live together and permanently.
The Longevity State
For these people, investing millions of dollars in biotechnology to extend life expectancy would be limited by laws, especially pharmaceutical industry regulations in the United States, Europe or elsewhere. “I’m pretty ultra-liberal… Who am I to stop you from trying a treatment? We are all adults, and if you understand what you are doing and the risk, then do it”Josef Christensen, Zuzalu participant and head of business development at stem cell company StemMedical, told the magazine. MIT Technology Review.
These libertarians come up against a problem, and not the least: the decision of the WHO not to recognize aging as a disease. However, such a decision would allow them to carry out multiple clinical trials with the agreement of the health authorities. To free themselves from this legal framework and carry out trials and experiments as they see fit, this community plans to found its own state. A decentralized space, financed by a community, endowed with its own currency – a cryptocurrency in this case – and which would be recognized by other nations.
The idea may seem crazy, but there are concrete examples around the world, such as Prospera, a city inaugurated in 2020 on the island of Roatan in Honduras. Prospera is one of the ZEDE (Zones of Employment and Economic Development) authorized in the 2010s by former Honduran President, Juan Orlando Hernandez. In fact, Prospera is a city-state focused on technological and medical innovation, with low taxes and its own laws with bitcoin as its currency. This paradise for libertarian cryptocurrency enthusiasts counts among its investors big names from Silicon Valley, such as Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, who also funds a foundation that fights against aging, the Methuselah Foundation.
Zuzalu members plan to start their own Prospera in Montenegro. Another possibility also germinates in their minds, that of settling in the United States. The country has a number of followers around aging and, above all, a huge number of biotechnology companies. In their minds, the State of Rhode Island would be well placed because of its proximity to Boston, a major biotech center, and its small population (about one million people). The plan would be to attract enough supporters to influence local and federal elections and, therefore, politics in this East Coast state.