A single company creating a single seastead is working on an agreement with French Polynesia.
Imagine the first person to come up with the concept of a "house". They go to the chief of the little village and negotiate a location for their new technology of 4 walls and a roof. There is an official agreement in that village for a house that is to be built. It will be amazing. All of your dreams will come true.
And then there's another guy thousands of miles away with the same idea. He doesn't even discuss it with his village chief, he just goes into the woods and builds a small house. Or even...has his friends build him a house. In exchange they get some coconuts or some meat from his last catch.
Then his friends decide to build houses near his house.
No government is needed just because a house is built. Same for seasteading. Just build it and live in it. If you want to interact with your neighbors, interact. If you don't like how your neighbor interacts with you...move your house.
It's really that simple.
Seasteading creates these images of fantasy land where all of your dreams come true. That's why I won't be talking about the project I'm working on because unless someone sees it in action the concept of seasteading comes with all sorts of baggage. People either believe it solves all problems or creates all problems. They already have an image in their head of what seasteading is. And all of those ideas are different from everyone else's ideas. But their idea is the best...because reasons.
That's almost the thing that I have been saying. But consider:
Over the years, all those people who wanted to live free on the waters have done it. A few of them have done it jointly under one kind of agreement or another. Some may even have advertised for people to join them, like Seasteading does.
Seasteading is under contract. The contract is governing law. If people join, because it looks like Seasteading has strength, there should really be strength in the contract... strength for freedom. After all, Seasteading "leaders" don't want to hurt people, do they?
How big was the USA government when the Constitution and the Amendments were ratified? Most of the people agreed with the new USA grudgingly, because it was the lesser of two evils, King George being the greater. Seasteading people aren't agreeing grudgingly. They are jumping right in. Are they doing so without understanding the basics of the contract?
The new USA government happened to be a good freedom form. Is the Seasteading contract?
Every year there is an event called ephemerisle. A bunch of people in a California bay get together and build floating structures and have a week long party.
Some structures form islands and some require that you sign a contract before you can come aboard. The contracts are usually something like "I promise not to hurt anyone, litter, steal, etc.".
Each one has a different contract.
"Seasteading" is not one thing that will be governed by one thing. You might come to my house and I have one set of rules and go to someone else's house and they have other rules. Some people may combine their houses and have an agreed upon set of rules.
I fully expect that if seasteading reaches the point where they are trying to form nations, they will have more nations than currently exist. Think alt coins but in the physical space. There may be some main ones but it will continuously be splitting off into other forms.