Liberland Marks First World’s Country to Debut in Metaverse

Liberland, the self-declared Balkan micronation, will be the first country in the world to be built in the metaverse.

Founded in 2015, Liberland is located between Serbia and Croatia. The 7-km2-territory, which is bigger than Vatican City or Monaco, is a disputed land and does not gain international recognition.

There are about 7,000 approved residents in Liberland despite not being formally recognized, in addition to, 700,000 more citizenship applications, which are being processed.

The micronation gained an increasing international reputation since its foundation by its current president Vit Jedlička, a former Czech MP, and his partner Jana Markovicova.

Jedlička commented in an official statement on his country’s move to the metaverse, saying: “We are building a country that can serve as a good example for other countries. The biggest improvement is that, in Liberland, taxes are voluntary, and people are rewarded when they pay them.”

In partnership with Zaha Hadid Architects, Liberland is creating a digital space for thousands of citizens to gather together without traveling to this small land.

Zaha Hadid’s Principle Architect Patrik Schumacher is considered a great supporter of the idea of building Liberland in the metaverse and presided over architectural competitions to create a vision for the self-declared micronation in the virtual world.

According to Euronews, Schumacher attempts to offer an immediate and alternative way to allow Liberland’s citizens to enter the micronation.

He believes in the power of the metaverse, dismissing that the metaverse is a game or fiction. He wrote that the metaverse’s virtual reality will be no less real than the physical reality in the world’s cities.

According to him, architects will replace graphic designers to design the digital world in light of the coming wave of VR-empowered cyberspace.

At another level, Barbados became the first sovereign country to have established an embassy in the metaverse. A year ago, the Barbadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade inked an agreement with Decentraland on establishing a digital embassy. The island country is gearing up to establish its embassy in the virtual space to legally declare real estate in its sovereign land.