Futurology

Neal Stephenson, "The Diamond Age". Probably the post-cyberpunk novel. Within the setting the existence and status of phyles is certainly well-grounded, actually quite analogous to bog-standard cyberpunk -- instead of corporations supplanting nation states because they do manage to be more powerful there's a mixture of weak nation states and value/ideology-based tribes which constitute full societies not mere corporations, and have different power specialisations. If you have enough economical power, engineering prowess, hacking prowess, reasoning is that you can not just go toe to toe with nation states you can force concessions.

Also side note there's entities which are not nation states which are (almost) universally recognised as sovereign by proper states: The Holy See, and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. The latter is more of a protocol quirk, the Holy See actually works actively for that status by being a diplomatic powerhouse without any real-world power to back it up, opens quite a couple of diplomatic doors which would otherwise be closed. They use it to mediate and get stuff like human cloning banned on the UN level, aware that they can't actually push Catholic doctrine (most of the world wouldn't care), but need to convince.

That all said though yes the fever dreams of cryptobros have no place in reality. They're not CryptNet, they just like to larp as it.