Why would you invest in some bullshit e-currency get rich quick scheme when you could invest in the coming decentralization of the internet?
I bought 2 urbit stars for $375 each a long time ago and they are now worth about 20 ETH each. But seriously, you only need to own one to get rich. You'll own 65,000 user licenses and be able to provide network services to milk them for money forever.
Even if you're a poorfag who cannot afford to invest in a star, you'll want to consider buying some planets for your friends & family.
Seriously, urbit is going to replace >facebook >twitter >other social media >smart home interfaces >google docs and basically the rest of the internet.
Urbit is a challenging project to describe because, rather than a single product, it’s an entire system. Often when I talk about one of the individual elements of the system, someone will tell me that another company is already building that — and they’re usually right. What sets Urbit apart is that we’re building all these elements at once to work together seamlessly.
For that reason, this overview is long. I wanted to explain, at a very high level, as much of the system as possible, to share an image of the entire forest rather than spending too much time on any of the trees.
My own path to Urbit was not predictable, so it turns out I’m a useful ambassador to describe what the heck we’re doing to my fellow normies.
I refer to myself as a normie because I’m a lawyer by training, not the typical code-savvy early Urbit adopter. I ran a law firm and, after retiring, founded a podcast and magazine about relationship dynamics. During that time I came to believe that humanity was in desperate need of better ways to relate. I didn’t know how, but I knew that my podcast about romance wasn’t going to move the needle. I began to look for a bigger project. I wanted something I truly could invest myself in; something that could have a real impact on this problem.
That’s when a friend introduced me to Urbit. Saying it was the most credible project he’d seen in years, he described it as “an open-source decentralized internet project,” and that it “would give control of computing back to regular people.” That sparked my interest, but I didn’t totally understand it. After looking over the website and watching a couple of obscure descriptive videos on YouTube my response was threefold:
This is huge — if it actually works, it’s the future. This is real — It’s got working code, dozens of engineers, and a very unorthodox solution. I don’t truly understand this — I can’t read the code, and I can barely comprehend the paradigm shift.
Joshua Barnes
What is Urbit? Let’s take this one step at a time and start with the most basic definition:
Urbit is a peer-to-peer internet being built from scratch to be more private, secure, and durable than the current internet.
At its most basic level, an Urbit is:
A super-private computer, combined with an ID, which is connected peer-to-peer with other Urbit computers. Taking that a half-step deeper, each Urbit user gets a permanent identity, which allows them to access their personal computer in the cloud, and then talk to directly with other Urbit computers (i.e. other people) on the network, all without using an intermediary.
When I say “computer” I’m not talking about a physical device, but rather the software that computes. Urbit is a virtual computer, not a hardware device. Today that means you can access your Urbit computer from anywhere, on just about any device with a web browser. Eventually you won’t even need the web browser.
By “intermediary” I’m talking about all those centralized servers that we use every day to do our computing. Servers owned by Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Slack, Amazon, Nest, Apple, and so on. All of these companies and products keep close tabs on our activity and use that information to sell us things and influence our opinions. Everything we do online is watched and recorded.
Jace Morris
What it’s for Fundamentally, Urbit is neutral open-source infrastructure, so it can be for many things. From our highest level perspective Urbit is computing for real communities and normal people, not for corporations. To make that real, Urbit focuses on delivering a computing experience that is secure, private, durable, and calm.
For me, Urbit’s core purpose is to give us all back our privacy and our autonomy. It’s time for humanity to control its tools rather than the other way around.
Key elements One potential barrier to understanding Urbit is that we’re building out multiple layers of this new internet simultaneously, and each has its own explanations and value propositions. Remember, what sets Urbit apart is that we’re building of all these elements at once to work together as a system.
I’ll try to explain the most important of these without straying too deep into the technical weeds.
Peer-to-peer networking is a really big deal. On the current internet, essentially all of our communications and activities go through centralized servers owned by corporations (Facebook, Google, etc.) — and those corporations can’t help but use all that information to make money. They’re capitalists, after all, and so we get constant privacy violations and interfaces built for maximum dopamine addiction.
In an Urbit world, all those communications go directly between users (i.e. peer-to-peer) with nobody in the middle. That means there’s no data capture by any megacorp, less intrusion into your life online, and communications go back to the semi-private one-to-one or small group format that is most comfortable for humans. It’s more like real life.
2. Your own server
Servers are complicated. Too complicated. Have you ever tried to use a command line? Exactly. It’s a terrible way to work, and that’s just a hint at how complex servers are to operate. To hide that complexity, we let corporations run our servers for us — they can afford teams of engineers. The problem is that today most of our computing is handled by these corporate servers — and that means we’re giving up control because of complexity.
As an example, every time you use Siri, your message is sent to Apple’s servers, where it is processed, and the response is sent back to you (which is admittedly amazing). Unfortunately that’s why it never works if you’re offline, and it’s also why Apple knows what you’re saying to Siri. And this applies to all the apps we use: The actual computing happens on corporate servers. The problem is that we consumers aren’t in control and, again, the corporate entities watch, record, and gate-keep all of our activity.
Fundamentally, Urbit is a super simple server. That means Urbit can run those computations and hold all that data for you, eliminating the need for a corporate intermediary.
Juan Gonzalez
I'd buy land on the moon before I ever buy digital land
Owen Mitchell
3. Permanent, personal ownership of your digital identity and all your data
Urbit IDs are permanently ownable. Once you take possession of your Urbit ID, no central authority can ever take it away from you. Sure, if you start spamming people on the network you might get blocked by other users, but none of them can prevent you from using your ID or accessing your Urbit computer. Compare that to the current internet where Facebook owns your Facebook profile, etc. At any time and for any reason, those services can arbitrarily shut off your access, and you have little to no recourse — all that data, all those followers, and all that reputation is wiped out instantly. Your Urbit, on the other hand is yours permanently, so long as you know your secret key.
A secure decentralized identity system like the one we’ve built leads to some very interesting use cases that are otherwise insurmountable. For example: decentralized Uber, decentralized delivery services, and a solid solution to the problem of fake reviews.
It’s worth noting that this problem has never been solved before. All of our communication channels on the internet today rely on someone else to authenticate our identity. Urbit is — to my knowledge — the first practical application of a decentralized ID system that actually works.
4.An incentive for good behavior
On the Urbit network, identities are finite, and they accrue reputation. Compare that to the current internet where identity is infinite (anyone can create as many email addresses or social media profiles as they want, essentially for free) and so spam, scams, and DoS attacks (“denial-of-service”: when many disposable identities ‘attack’ a server at the same time) are rampant. On the Urbit network, there are just over 4 billion total IDs. Scarcity creates value. That scarcity, combined with reputation accrual, means there's an incentive for good behavior.
Jordan Morgan
5. Tools anyone can learn and use
Urbit is a system that anyone with patience can understand completely from top to bottom, from the integers of byte code to the complete OS and everything in between. Urbit in its entirety is just over 50,000 lines of code. That is tiny. Compare that to Linux, which is tens of millions of lines of code, and you start to see how important this is for efficiency. In our current computing system, nobody can understand the entire thing completely, and that means there are innumerable security holes. With Urbit, while it may demand something of you, any reasonably intelligent developer can grasp the whole thing. That makes it more efficient, more durable, and much more secure.
6. Lessons from the last half century
In many ways, Urbit is an attempt to apply lessons learned from the failures of 20th century computer development. From an engineer’s perspective, Urbit solves a series of problems which cause extraordinary amounts of complexity and waste.
Urbit is deterministic. Normal operating systems don’t work this way. Normal modern operating systems actually get varying results when they compute things. This is a deep problem that causes programmers countless hours of frustration. The most common implication of this that you’ve probably experienced is having to reboot your computer — either because it’s locked up, or because it simply won’t do something that it was totally doing a second ago. What’s annoying to a regular user, though, is absolutely crazy-making to developers.
This determinism makes programming on an Urbit immensely more efficient than other environments.
Urbit applies this and a whole list of other lessons from the past half-century of systems software to increase reliability and security in everything from file storage to networking to user-facing apps. All this adds up to more security and reliability and less service-lock-in with Urbit than with our current systems.
Asher White
7. Private, human-sized, and efficient
Because Urbit isn’t centralized or owned by any one company, there’s no incentive for it to dominate your life. Your Urbit isn’t designed to spy on you, get you addicted to clicking its buttons, manipulate your emotions to gain attention, or nudge you to buy something. Your Urbit is a simple, customizable, permanent place for you to do all your computer-based tasks with your friends in absolute privacy.
This is so much the case, in fact, that it presents a bit of a problem for Tlon. We don’t know how many people use Urbit every day, who they talk to, or what they’re doing. While we think this is how things should be, it puts us in a bind when a VC wants to know about our user base; we can only make educated guesses. That said, we think this is the right problem to have.
What all this adds up to is that the Urbit network is immensely more resource efficient, secure, easier to customize, and smaller in size than any other computing system in the world. If you care about data security, privacy, durability, or even just elegance, Urbit has the best design going.
Eli Howard
>Urbit vs Reddit >Urbit vs. Facebook, Twitter, etc. >Urbit vs. Nest >Urbit vs. Google Docs >Urbit for your protected health information
Urbit is a computing environment that allows humans to do everything they want on computers, but in communities of their choosing, in a way that feels direct and natural, and in a way that allows true personal freedom. Urbit is calm, secure, and private in its most fundamental architecture. No spying corporations. No manipulative politicians.
