It’s hard to tell what is legit and what is vaporware. (A common problem in cryptography.) And these 26 projects, of course, aren’t the world’s first “start-ups,” and the lure of a new utopia didn’t start with Web3. In 1804, a religious fanatic named George Rapp convinced 600 believers to start a new, independent, God-fearing society in Pennsylvania. In the 1830s, religious “Shakers,” practicing both celibacy and ecstatic (shaking) dancing, formed 18 bubble communities scattered across the United States. Then 30,000 Mormons, in the 1840s, formed their own utopia in Nauvoo, Illinois.