It’s tough to tell what’s legitimate and what’s vaporware. (A common problem in crypto.) And these 26 projects, of course, are not the world’s first “startup societies,” and the lure of a new utopia did not begin with Web3. In 1804, a religious zealot named George Rapp convinced 600 believers to start a new, independent, God-fearing society in Pennsylvania. In the 1830s, the religious “Shakers” – which practiced both celibacy and ecstatic (shaking) dancing – formed 18 bubble communities scattered throughout the United States. Then 30,000 Mormons, in the 1840s, formed their own utopia in Nauvoo, Illinois.
