A group of Gen Z TikTokers has declared their own country, and the story is stranger than it sounds. What began as an imaginary nation dreamed up by a teenager has evolved into a self-declared state complete with a president, a parliament, an intelligence agency, passports, and a cryptocurrency controversy.
The country calls itself the Federated States of Gapla, and it claims two small pockets of land along the Danube River sitting in the middle of a decade-long border dispute between Croatia and Serbia. The founders argue that since neither country formally claims these specific strips of land, they qualify as terra nullius, or unclaimed territory.
According to Gapla’s president, who addressed followers in a TikTok video: “We received a letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Taiwan that gave us tacit recognition. It referred to Gapla as a country and to me as the president. We also got invited to speak at the UN.”
The project has grown well beyond a social media stunt. Gapla has a functioning website with a media kit, a newsletter, and a LinkedIn page listing 11 to 50 employees. The team produced a full citizenship onboarding webinar opening with a host welcoming prospective citizens and explaining the “benefits, opportunities, and responsibilities of becoming a Gaplan citizen.” The country currently has over 1,000 registered e-residents, five municipalities, and 205 acres of claimed territory.
The government structure is surprisingly thorough. Gapla already has an executive, legislative, and judicial branch, a national assembly, a supreme court, a prime minister, ranked choice voting, proportional representation, and political parties. It also has a federal tourism service, a federal postal service, a federal news service, and something called the Intelligence Agency of the Gapland Federation. All of this exists for a country that has not yet physically settled on its land.
Then came the crypto angle. A Solana-based token called Gappa appeared and circulated within the community. According to public statements, it generated tens of thousands of dollars in fees. After the token dropped significantly in value, Gapla publicly clarified the coin was unofficial and not endorsed by the government.
Shortly after that statement, however, the official Gapla account posted a message thanking the community for generating over $30,000 in fees, noting those funds would support an expedition to Gapan territory. If the token was not affiliated with the government, the question of why the government was thanking it for funding government activities went unanswered.
The current president is Hendrick Taks, a high school exchange student who participates in robotics. He took over after the original founder resigned. Gapla describes itself as “a modern meritocratic nation built to solve the problems that exist in traditional governments,” and its website reads more like a software product roadmap than a founding document.
Whether any of it produces a recognized sovereign state remains an open question. For now, it is a country built bureaucracy-first, partially funded by a meme coin, and led by teenagers who still have algebra tests to study for.
