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Have you built, funded, joined, or lived near a pop-up city? Do you want to understand how these experiments relate to network states and future institutions?
Learn more, share your story, and get involved.
thouartofficial.com/research…
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Thou Ārt retweeted
edge city (@JoinEdgeCity) published a request for experiments for edge esmeralda '26 !! doubling down on structured experiments designed for real-world implementation is something we've been hoping the space would lean more into, and is also what we work on.
a few from the list that stand out for me:
- liquid democracy. delegate your vote to people you trust on village decisions.
- quadratic funding. the community allocates real capital using quadratic mechanisms.
- prediction markets vs. committees for resource allocation.
- privacy-preserving governance without exposing personal data.
- agent-to-agent negotiation. AI agents coordinate shared resources with no humans in the loop.
- stablecoin-native commerce across the village economy.
- a community currency for the month.
- scaling up last year's solar-powered datacenter.
(the full list link below also covers health, longevity, consciousness, art, urbanism, and education)
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Thou Ārt retweeted
Since last November, Denisa and I have been running a mixed-methods research initiative on pop-up cities, network states, and other intentional communities, tracking patterns across cases to improve their operating models.
1/ Pop-up cities didn’t appear randomly.
They emerged from a real-world constraint: our core institutions of cities, universities, and states change slowly, while technology, coordination, and culture now move fast.
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Have you built, funded, joined, or lived near a pop-up city? Do you want to understand how these experiments relate to network states and future institutions?
Learn more, share your story, and get involved.
thouartofficial.com/research…
1
2
495
Thread by Denisa Lepădatu, co-lead at Thou Ārt Research, providing further context on the study.
1/ Pop-up cities didn’t appear randomly.
They emerged from a real-world constraint: our core institutions of cities, universities, and states change slowly, while technology, coordination, and culture now move fast.
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1/ Last September, we joined the @Figma Make-a-thon (powered by @Contra). $100K prize pool and 10,000+ participants worldwide. The scale was wild, and the work was inspiring.
We didn’t win, but we learned a lot that we think will help designers, vibe coders, and anyone who loves to build. Our designer, Nura (@nura485620), is sharing our journey and the key takeaways we have hard-earned through hundreds of iterations. →
#FigmaMakeathon
ALT collage: logos + app screens + Make UI + good/bad prompt
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6/ After hundreds of prompts—trying, failing, succeeding—here’s the honest state:
Pros
> Wireframing is very fast and broadly complete, even from simple prompts
> Animations are easy to implement
Cons
> Delicate UI consistency is still tricky; small issues can eat a lot of time
> Structured/broader health-data modeling has limits in mock
> Maps/GPS API integration hasn’t been smooth; repeatable minor errors happen
Bottom line (right now):
It’s still hard to implement a complex, logic-heavy app purely from a Figma Make file, but the fast animation and mockup capabilities are genuinely useful.
ALT image: error/glitch collection
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7/ What an exciting time to be building as a designer. Thank you, @figma and @contra, for the opportunity to learn Figma Make and connect with a vibrant, talented global design community.❤️ (more hackathons pls)
We’re here for the next chapter of Figma Make and AI tools, where designers and creative founders can ship faster and build serious businesses as tiny teams and even as solopreneurs.
#FigmaMakeathon #FigmaMake #DesignToCode #BuildInPublic #UIUXdesign
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New Thou Ārt is live. We’ve published our refreshed identity and brand guidelines on @contra
Full case study → contra.com/p/QbBvmXq7-thou-a…
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