Building a Digital Nation: A Liberland Blockchain Infrastructure Case Study

About Liberland

The Free Republic of Liberland is a sovereign state located on the west bank of the Danube River between Croatia and Serbia. With an approximate area of 7 km², it is the third smallest sovereign state, after Vatican City and Monaco. Inhabiting terra nullius ("no man's land") since 1991, it became the Free Republic of Liberland on April 13, 2015. The country prides itself on its libertarian principles, aiming to run transparently via on-chain democracy and legislation.

Liberland is structured as a constitutional republic with elements of direct democracy, featuring two Vice Presidents and five Ministers. The official language is English, and the state has its own currency, the Liberland merit. The country's motto, "To live and let live", encapsulates its philosophical underpinnings.

Business Needs and Market Situation

Neti, a reputable blockchain development company, was approached by Liberland, a unique client with an already in-progress project. Liberland had one developer on board who left shortly after Neti joined, leaving Neti to take over the complete development of the project. 

The initial team comprised one developer from Neti and one lead from the client's side. By June, an additional Neti developer was incorporated into the team. The initial challenge was to take over a codebase with limited documentation and testing and upgrade it to meet external grant requirements. 

Goals

Liberland's overarching goal was to establish a robust standalone blockchain that met their unique requirements. It was essential for them to address the poor quality of the existing codebase and the high risk of regression, which had led the Web3 Foundation to deem it ineligible for a grant due to quality issues.

Technology

Neti stepped in with comprehensive solutions to these issues. Using a tech stack of Rust, Substrate, SQLite, Tokio, and Solidity, they identified shortcomings in both the high-level architecture and implementation details. Neti proposed substantial refactoring of the codebase, writing external technical documentation, and introducing a culture of writing & running automated tests.

Results

The result of the implemented solutions was nothing short of spectacular. The grant milestone delivery was approved by the Web3 Foundation, and the client received funding that enabled further development. The codebase was transformed into a solid foundation for future modifications. 

Neti's contributions played a key role in successfully launching the mainnet network in April. They essentially became a multipurpose team, adapting to whatever was needed at the time, whether it was DevOps, SysAdmin, Frontend Development, Technical Writing, or User Support.

Future Developments

Looking forward, Liberland plans to bridge from their network to Ethereum, allowing trading of Liberland currencies on DEXes. They are also aiming to implement on-chain judiciary processes.

Customer Feedback

Liberland, while faced with a unique challenge, chose Neti over the competition due to their adaptability, expertise, and commitment to improving the codebase. Despite not having a defined delivery time or specific deliverables, the continuous development model employed by Neti proved successful in meeting Liberland's specific needs.

The Neti team is particularly proud of successfully fulfilling the requirements of the Web3 Foundation grant deliverables. In the end, while the task of creating a libertarian country via on-chain democracy and legislation is a complex one, Neti was instrumental in driving the blockchain aspect of the project to fruition.