Edge City Lanna Recap + What's Next!
Thank you to everyone who joined us in Chiang Mai. We had an incredible time building this village together, and can't wait for what's next.
Edge City Lanna was a month-long popup village that brought together people who believe the future can be better and are actively working to make it happen. We gathered 800 people in beautiful Chiang Mai, Thailand, to create a space to live, learn, and build together — an IRL lab for experimenting with new ideas, tech, culture, and ways of living.
We started the month in a way we didn’t expect — heavy rain caused the river near our venues to flood a week before move-in date. We acted quickly to make sure everything was set. As our community arrived, it was incredible to see Edge City Lanna attendees rally around the local community and offer support by volunteering and helping get local businesses back on track. By the end of the month, we had gone from flood to flourishing, cultivating a multi-generational community of high-agency people focused on health, connections and building better technology for the future.
Our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who came and built this with us!
By the Numbers
800 people joined Edge City Lanna, with ~330 full-month attendees
30 kids made it multi-generational
~1,000 events organized by attendees
150 unique session hosts
200 hackers in the final week
90 projects submitted to the hackathon focusing on human flourishing
3 deep-dive residencies
Experiments & Highlights
As always, we want our villages to be places for experimentation of early-stage technologies, including the social technologies that connect us. We’re just at the beginning of the Edge City journey, and we’re already starting to see examples of early projects that could have a huge impact on society in the future. A few highlights from this month:
Cursive used programmable cryptography to experiment with connecting community members with a fun and privacy-preserving set of experiences
Justin Drake brought together the leading minds in sequencing, leading to an extremely productive collaborative sprint
Metamask ran an experiment on the ground called Propel, a novel tool for making it easy to fund and organize community-driven initiatives
Colton and Nico created the "The Future I Want" video for the hackathon, capturing our vision
Mari Crook spearheaded the Kids & Education program that explored innovative approaches to learning and shared tools to help attendees, creating a transformative experience.
RadicalxChange ran the ∈dges community currency experiment, creating a novel type of economy within the village
Justin Melillo from MONA and his fellow artists in the artist residency created entire new worlds as part of their worldbuilding focus, which he then moved to the DevCon venue
The Concept Clinic experiment brought a team of interdisciplinary practitioners, exploring new modalities for collective healing and personal growth
The hackathon winners GoodRates, WhoUp, and Proof of Financing demonstrated the cool things you can build at a longer-term hack program, alongside 90 other projects!
+ many more!
Community Life
There were many highlights from the month related to community building. Some of our favorite moments:
Getting everyone at the village onboard with daily health practices (a minimum of 30 min a day of activity), from morning workouts to evening meditations. A huge thank you to the Health & Wellbeing leaders who created such an incredible program: Natalie Kuhn, Ethan Hill, Zoe Loefstok, Lucy Qiu, and Sophie.
Community meals at Chef's Together were a daily gathering point
Adventure days exploring caves, local temples and markets
24/7 workspace at Alt_PingRiver enabled continuous collaboration
Running a decentralized dinner experience in the final week (this will be something we expand in future villages)
Month-long Residencies
This time at Edge City Lanna, we experimented with the concept of residencies, which were focused groups of 15-40 people all with expertise on a specific topic and programming, but were interweaved into the popup village. We loved this format and we’ll do it again (let us know if you’re interested in running your own residency at a 2025 popup village).
We hosted three unique residencies:
Deshittification Technology
Led by Althea Allen, this was a residency for top builders who are using zero-knowledge and programmable cryptography as technologies for human connection and coordination. ‘Deshittifying’ technology means treating human experiences as valuable in themselves, not as a means to an end.
Art on the Edge
Under Justin Melillo's guidance, this residency brought together leading creators to imagine and build the future through art. Merging AI, spatial computing, and brain-computer interfaces, we explored how these elements can elevate the human experience. Together, we envisioned how technology, creativity, and well-being can converge to enhance the human experience.
Feÿtopia
Feÿtopia, a vibrant collective of artists, entrepreneurs, and technologists who typically reside at Chateau de Feÿ in France, joined us to experiment with innovative ways of living and working. Led by Lou de K and Aleksandra Smilek, they explored how creativity and technology can come together to shape a more intentional and connected future.
Program Highlights
We had an amazing set of programs throughout the month, including:
Biotech Week, organized by Cathy Tie, looked at practical applications of Biotech and the implications for the future (plus live gene-editing plants!)
Longevity & Health Week, organized by Kamil Pabis, Sebastien Brunemeier, and Denisa Lepădatu introduced the science behind longevity biotech and biohacking, accompanied by trends and insights in the respective emerging industries
Cities of Tomorrow, led by Chance McAllister, explored the intersection of governance, cities, and diplomacy through the lens of popup cities
Stablecoin week with Kaili Wang included workshops about the critical importance of stablecoins at a time when the technology is ready for mass adoption, and the importance of thinking about recoverability and privacy for this tech to truly scale
Network Nations week with Primavera de Fillipi, focused on the future of emergent political communities
AI & Neuro track explored the rich overlaps in these fields, led by Warren Winter and NiMA Asghari
Interop Day led by Raffi Saphire and Luca Donno, ran a day-long workshop with L2 leaders to discuss Ethereum alignment.
Sequencing Week with Justin Drake brought together 70 researchers and builders and making rapid progress in the field.
Protocol Worlds workshops, led by Tim Beiko, Venkatesh Rao, and Timber Schroff, where they developed the “tensions game” throughout the month to help people improve their decision making in complex systems
Governance Games with Prediction Markets & Futarchy, ran by Vaughn and the Butter team, to help rethink governance mechanisms
D/ACC Workshops with LoBa and Vitalik, explored how technology can create a brighter future while maintaining human values, furthering the philosophy Vitalik shared around defensive/ decentralized acceleration
Content highlights
We are still seeing people’s posts roll in (if you were at Lanna, we’d love to read your recap post!). Here were some highlights from the community:
Antoni from Flow interviews Andy Ayrey, the creator of ‘terminal of truths’, a groundbreaking AI agent project.
Vitalik introduces the idea behind D/ACC at the week we dedicated to the topic during Lanna.
One of our residents, AV, made a video titled ‘What is Edge City Lanna’ to give you a sense of the experience
Colton created a video called ‘Entshittification’ that is definitely worth checking out.
Rania Hashim, who was part of the fellowship program, wrote an amazing recap essay about her experience.
As always, we gave out a few disposable cameras to community members, and the pictures we got back did not disappoint!
See all of the photos from the event here.
+ much more to come!
Creating Together
Edge City Lanna showed what's possible when we create space for emergence. From morning cold plunges to late-night hackathons, from kids playing in community spaces to researchers sharing breakthroughs, we built a temporary city focused on human flourishing.
Special thanks to our local partners John Ho and Teddy from Alt_Coliving who helped make Chiang Mai feel like home. One of the meanings of "Lanna" is "a million rice fields" - fitting for a month of abundant growth and interconnection.
What’s next?
Writing these recap posts is an interesting process — it is part reflection and part discovery. There is so much that happens at our villages that we find out about in retrospect. If you have a memory or something you’d like to share about your time at Lanna, please send it to us! Or better yet, post about it and we’ll share it. ❤️
On a personal note, the team is feeling energized and incredibly excited for next year. It is clear that the Edge City popup village model works well. It is a transformative experience for people and creates environments for meaningful innovation and change. We also know that we are able to do these events sustainably, both financially and in terms of the energy that it takes to do them well. These will be foundational to continue growing Edge City.
That said, this is just the beginning. We will continue to iterate on the popup village format to make it a place where people can actually build bold ideas and experiments that have the potential to be transformative for society, and help us create a flourishing future.
With this in mind, we’re already planning several more villages for 2025, including Edge Esmeralda in May/June. We’ll have more announcements to share before the year ends. Stay tuned, sign up to our newsletter on our site, and follow us to stay in touch for what's next.
With love,
The Edge City team ❤️
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