[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":9},["ShallowReactive",2],{"person-bio-ben-silone":3},{"bio":4},[5,6,7,8],"Ben Silone is the CEO and co-founder of Arktide, a seasteading venture building affordable, concrete-hulled modular floating homes designed to be joined into larger floating communities. He previously worked on international-development and communications projects, including disaster relief abroad.","Arktide was founded in 2021 and launched its first prototype, the Coquina, in Florida in 2023: a floating home of about a hundred square metres on a platform roughly ten metres square, engineered for waves of up to five metres so that it can sit in coastal water or further out. The hull uses high-strength concrete and geopolymers rather than steel or fibreglass, chosen for a projected life of over a century and for resistance to salt water, and the homes run off-grid on solar power with rainwater capture and wastewater recycling. Aquaculture infrastructure sits under the base, so a platform can raise fish and shellfish while people live on it.","The company also works on ocean thermal energy and has entered the Carbon Removal XPRIZE.","The point of the design is reproducibility. A seastead only becomes a community if the units are cheap enough to build in numbers and standard enough to join together, which is the question Silone brought to the seasteading panel at the Free Cities Summit in 2025.",1788062490049]