# Federation In political science, a federation is an alliance of peer states with some degree of independence but also a shared central government that usually has ultimate authority in a specified group of important issues. There are also blockchain “federations” of entities with large token holdings that create pools for pegged coin swaps and engage in mining and other activities. Some blockchains have a private rather than public consensus mechanism and rather than letting anyone run a node, they are instead controlled by “federations” of nodes accepted into an exclusive program by a central authority. #### How is the concept of federation relevant to the Network State? In traditional government, people have sometimes chosen to follow a model where jurisdictions have a lot of local autonomy but are also strongly united under a “federal” authority. This same model may appeal to Network State citizens. We may see people choose to join their smaller aspiring nations together in a meta-Nation with very basic rules that is a federation of many sub nations with their own distinct and more specific and possibly detailed rules. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://gitbook.jur.io/wiki-network-state/dictionary/federation.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.