The Network State School has built the intellectual foundation, the community, and the credibility for network state thinking. Firma's role is singular: to be the infrastructure that turns that thinking into something students can actually build — with real capital, real tools, real legal frameworks, and a live deployment path — without extracting anything from the school that made it possible.
Before any structure is proposed, the boundaries have to be explicit. The Network State School's integrity, Balaji's intellectual ownership, and the community's trust are not negotiable assets — they are the entire reason this partnership has value. These principles are not concessions. They are the foundation.
The first version of the Network State Simulator is built in direct collaboration with the Network State School's curriculum and community. School students don't arrive to find a finished product — they help shape what it becomes. That's not just better for the school. It's better for the Simulator.
Firma engineers build the Simulator's infrastructure. But the interface, the use cases, the sandbox scenarios, and the educational flow are co-designed with a small group of Network State School students and fellows selected by the school itself. Their feedback shapes what gets built. The first public version of the Simulator is something the school's community can honestly say they helped create. That's not marketing — it's true, and it matters for adoption.
SRI provides the research data that makes the Simulator's outputs defensible rather than speculative. In the context of the school, this means students aren't running simulations against made-up numbers — they're working with actual climate data, economic models, demographic projections, and resource mapping that SRI's researchers have validated. When a student presents their network state design to an investor, the data layer has institutional credibility behind it.
A purpose-built educational tool that runs inside the school's program — not a generic product students have to adapt. The Simulator becomes a competitive advantage for the school: no other network state education program offers students a live deployment path from sandbox to on-chain with institutional data, capital access, and a regulated RWA market. Enrollment value goes up. Alumni outcomes improve. The school's credibility compounds.
Base (Coinbase) sponsors the Simulator build as infrastructure aligned with their mission: bringing more builders on-chain, in a context that has real institutional legitimacy and a direct path to economic activity. The sponsorship is framed as Base supporting the Network State School's technology infrastructure — not as Coinbase backing a Firma product. The school benefits from Base's brand. Base benefits from the school's community. Firma builds the infrastructure that makes both relationships valuable.
Once the Simulator is live, the first cohort runs through the school's program. SRI researchers are paired with student teams working on specific network state problems. Firma provides capital, infrastructure access, and agentic support. The cohort produces real network state designs — Simulator-validated, SRI-backed, investment-ready — that Firma PIF can lead capital on if the build merits it. But the students own their projects. The school owns the program. Firma owns the infrastructure. Everyone has their lane.
Cohort graduates who want to move their network state project toward real deployment have a clear path: on-chain through Firmamint, with the full Firma stack available to them. But they also have a Simulator output package they can take to any investor, any accelerator, any partner — without Firma in the room. The school's graduates leave with something real, not a certificate. Firma's role is to make them more capable, not more dependent.
The partnership only works if it's genuinely additive for everyone — not just tolerable. Here is what each party receives, stated plainly, without embellishment.
Firma is not trying to be the school, the research institution, or the bank. It is trying to be the infrastructure that makes all three more powerful than they could be alone — and to earn a place in that coalition by giving more than it takes.
There are two separate capital layers and it's important they don't get confused. Grants are small, ecosystem-level support — for student teams, SRI researchers, and build events. They come from the collective commons and from Base sponsorship. They are not the serious capital. The serious capital is Firma PIF leading a full capital round on an approved network state project — a different instrument entirely, for projects that have completed the Simulator, earned SRI validation, and are ready to deploy. Balaji's role spans both layers: small grants flow through his governance, and his firm can co-invest alongside Firma PIF, giving the school a real investment vehicle for the first time.
If Balaji has a network state he wants to build — his own project, his own vision for what a network state could be — Firma PIF will back it the same way it backs any serious founder who has completed the Simulator and is ready to deploy. Capital for the build. Infrastructure at no cost. The full Firma stack available to him.
The structure is a non-payable silent partner arrangement. No return expectation. No board seat. No equity claim. No timeline. No strings of any kind. Firma is a silent partner in the background — capital deployed, hands off, his vision entirely his own. If the project succeeds and generates collective value, that value flows back through the network the way it does for every network state on Firma. But that is a consequence of success, not a condition of support.
This is not a business arrangement. It is a gesture of gratitude. Balaji opened the intellectual space that made Firma's work possible. The network state concept — the vocabulary, the framework, the permission to think this way — came from years of his work before any of this infrastructure existed. Firma would not be building what it's building without that foundation. The least we can do is make sure he has the runway to build his own dream without worrying about returns, investors, or whether the numbers work out. We owe him that much for sparking the vision. This is Firma's way of saying so.
FIG is the right long-term currency for this ecosystem. But it isn't live yet, and using an undeployed currency in a grant program that's meant to be real creates unnecessary friction and reputational risk. USDC on Base is the right bridge currency: it's stable, it's institutional-grade, it ties Coinbase into the infrastructure meaningfully, and it means every student's first on-chain experience is production-ready from day one.
When FIG launches, the transition is announced as an upgrade — a milestone the program helped make possible — and all future grants denominate in FIG. Students and researchers who participated in the USDC phase see the transition as validation that the program they believed in is maturing. The USDC phase isn't a compromise. It's a foundation.
The Network State Simulator doesn't run on a generic chain. It runs on Firmamint — Firma's Optimism-based L2 — with a native Basemint bridge connecting directly to Base and USDC. This means every student build, every grant disbursement, every on-chain simulation, and every capital transaction runs on infrastructure Firma controls and Base validates. USDC flows seamlessly as the stable layer until FIG is ready. The bridge also opens the market to any liquidity Base's ecosystem can provide. And for Coinbase Ventures, the structure goes further: a first-of-its-kind deal that gives the tech to everyone, rewards founders permanently, and gives Ventures a non-traditional exit path that creates more capital to deploy.
Optimism gives Firma a sovereign L2 with EVM compatibility, low fees, and a proven sequencer architecture. Running the Simulator on Firmamint means every network state build is on Firma's own chain — not renting space on someone else's infrastructure. Governance, tokenomics, land rights, and IP tracking all live on rails Firma controls. Firmamint is the substrate everything else is built on.
A native bridge to Base means USDC moves between chains without third-party bridge risk, without wrapping complexity, without friction. A student receiving a grant in USDC, a Coinbase Ventures portfolio company submitting IP to the trust, a developer buying into a network state's open market — all of it flows through the same native connection. The bridge isn't a patch. It's a first-class architectural component that makes Base a genuine part of Firma's stack rather than a bolt-on integration.
The Basemint bridge opens Firmamint's network state economies to Base's full liquidity ecosystem. Network states that tokenize assets — land rights, energy production, compute capacity, natural resources — can list those assets in markets accessible to Base's user base. A network state in East Africa with solar surplus can sell energy credits to buyers anywhere in Base's ecosystem, settled instantly, with USDC as the stable intermediary until FIG absorbs that role. The bridge is a market-opening mechanism, not just a currency pipe.
Base builders with recognized projects can submit their IP to the Firma IP Trust through the Basemint bridge. Their technology becomes part of the collective — available to every network state in the ecosystem. In return, they earn usage-based economic rights every time their IP is deployed, agentically tracked and settled on Firmamint. For builders who want their work to matter beyond their own product roadmap, this is the path. The collective compounds their impact. They earn from it perpetually.
Traditional venture exits require a buyer willing to pay a premium, a public market willing to absorb the offering, or a write-down. All three paths are uncertain and slow. The collective trust offers something different: a standing buyer (Firma PIF), a non-dilutive alternative (IP contribution for collective economic rights), and a perpetual revenue stream for founders that doesn't end at exit. Coinbase Ventures gets optionality no traditional VC structure provides. Founders get something better than an acquisition check — they get a permanent stake in the ecosystem their technology helps power. And the collective gets the technology it needs to serve network states that couldn't otherwise afford enterprise infrastructure.
This is the structure that makes Base more than a sponsor. It makes Coinbase a compounding participant in the Firma Network's growth — with economic rights, deployed capital, and a portfolio of companies whose technology is embedded in every network state that runs on Firmamint.
USDC is the right stable currency for now — production-ready, trusted, globally accessible. The Basemint bridge makes it seamless. When FIG launches, the bridge doesn't close. USDC and FIG coexist on the same rails, and the market determines the liquidity mix. Coinbase and Base — already inside the ecosystem through the bridge, through Ventures' collective rights, through sponsored build events — are positioned as FIG's first major institutional bridge partner rather than a competitor it has to win over. The USDC phase built the relationship. FIG inherits it.
FIRMA is gas. USDC is the bridge currency powering a massive network liquidity pool — the stable on-ramp and off-ramp for everyone moving value in and out of the ecosystem, generating continuous fee yield for liquidity providers. FIG is the sovereign reserve currency of the Firma Network Union — not pegged to any other currency, but designed to be stable. It finds an equilibrium position based on the productive capacity of the network and holds it: backed by real assets, issued responsibly, neither inflationary nor speculative. These three currencies are not in competition. They are three distinct layers of a single monetary architecture, each doing something the others cannot.
Most liquidity pools depend on human traders making decisions. Agentic trade is continuous, 24/7, driven by actual economic need — a network state's energy surplus doesn't wait for business hours to find a buyer. The USDC pool serving Firma's agentic economy operates at machine speed, processing real economic transactions between real network states, generating fee yield that doesn't stop when markets close. For Coinbase, this is not DeFi speculation volume. It is productive economic throughput — the kind of volume that regulators understand and institutional LPs can defend.
A pool serving one network state has modest volume. A pool serving ten has significantly more. A pool serving fifty — with agentic trade running between every pair — has volume that scales geometrically, not linearly. Every new network state that joins the Firma Network Union adds trade relationships with every existing member. The USDC pool depth required to serve that volume grows with it. Coinbase's early LP position in a small pool becomes a dominant position in a massive one — without additional capital commitment, just through the growth of the ecosystem they helped build.
In a paired FIG/USDC pool, USDC liquidity providers hold a position against a currency designed to hold its value — not spike, not inflate, not collapse. FIG's stability comes from its backing: real productive assets, real trade output, real resource capacity. A USDC LP position paired against FIG earns fee yield from trade volume without the impermanent loss risk that comes from providing liquidity against a volatile asset. FIG finding and holding equilibrium is exactly what a liquidity provider wants from the other side of their position. Yield from volume. Stability from backing. No speculation required.
FIG becoming the internal currency of the Firma Network Union does not displace USDC. It elevates USDC's role. Every person or institution moving value between the Firma ecosystem and the global economy needs USDC as the bridge. Citizens off-ramping from FIG to spend in the physical world. Investors entering the ecosystem to deploy capital. Trading partners outside the union accessing FIG-denominated assets. The bridge doesn't close when FIG launches — it gets busier. USDC's position as the permanent global bridge currency for a sovereign reserve ecosystem is more valuable than any internal role it held before.
Most ecosystems ask USDC to pass through. Firma asks it to anchor a liquidity pool that serves the agentic economy of an entire union of network states — earning fee yield from real productive trade, deepening as the union grows, and becoming the permanent bridge to a sovereign reserve currency that holds its value because the network earns it.
The goal is not a one-time collaboration. It's an engine: each cohort produces builders who either deploy on Firma Network (strengthening the collective), contribute IP to the trust (growing the commons), or succeed independently (proving the school's value). Every outcome is a win for the school. The alumni network compounds. SRI's research gets tested against more real designs each cycle. Base's on-chain builder community grows. And Firma builds genuine relationships with the founders of the next generation of network states — earned through infrastructure, not negotiated through contracts.
The school built the intellectual foundation. SRI provides the research credibility. Base provides the financial infrastructure. Firma provides the deployment path. The student gets to build something real. Nobody takes what isn't theirs.