Why hundreds of people went to Montenegro for an experiment in co-living

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Hundreds of biohackers, biotech entrepreneurs, and people who believe they have a moral obligation to stop aging gathered at Lustica Bay, a luxury resort town in Montenegro, last May.

The event wasn’t a Grimes concert (although there was a Grimes concert). It was a two-month “pop-up city” called Zuzalu where like-minded individuals could discuss tech and do some biohacking, like twice-daily cold plunges.

The secretive, invite-only event was an “experiment in co-living” initiated by the inventor of ethereum, Vitalik Buterin. The Venn diagram for ultrawealthy crypto fans and people who want to live forever is pretty much a circle, and the idea of a decentralized community pops up a lot in these spaces.

• Many Zuzalu attendees and organizers want to establish “longevity states” or places without medical regulations (like those of the FDA) where residents can self-experiment with biohacking and potentially age-reversing drugs.

• Right now, it’s extremely expensive and cumbersome to study or start human trials for drugs because of hard-to-get regulatory approvals, partly because the World Health Organization doesn’t recognize aging as a disease.

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Zuzalu’s future: The event went off as well as any conference can—attendees said it was life-changing and then went home. There are no concrete plans for another one, but Zuzalu’s website lists other in-person events and offers grants for people who attended the temporary utopia.