Urbit is a

decentralized Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group. Conce ...

personal server platform. The platform seeks to deconstruct the client-server model in favour of a federated network of personal servers in a

peer-to-peer network Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer ...

with a consistent digital identity.

Overview

The Urbit

software stack In computing, a solution stack or software stack is a set of software subsystems or components needed to create a complete platform such that no additional software is needed to support applications. Applications are said to "run on" or "run on t ...

consists of a set of

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming l ...

s ("Hoon," a high-level

functional programming In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm where programs are constructed by applying and composing functions. It is a declarative programming paradigm in which function definitions are trees of expressions that ...

language, and "Nock," its low-level compiled language); a single-function

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

built on those languages ("Arvo"); a personal address space, built on the

Ethereum Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether ( Abbreviation: ETH; sign: Ξ) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market cap ...

blockchain A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger technology (DLT) that consists of growing lists of records, called ''blocks'', that are securely linked together using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, ...

, for each instance of the operating system to participate in a decentralized network ("Azimuth"); and the decentralized network itself, an encrypted, peer-to-peer

protocol Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics), a formal agreement between nation states * Protocol (diplomacy), the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state * Etiquette, a code of personal behavior Science and technology ...

running on top of the

User Datagram Protocol In computer networking, the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is one of the core communication protocols of the Internet protocol suite used to send messages (transported as datagrams in packets) to other hosts on an Internet Protocol (IP) networ ...

. The Urbit

routing Routing is the process of selecting a path for traffic in a network or between or across multiple networks. Broadly, routing is performed in many types of networks, including circuit-switched networks, such as the public switched telephone netw ...

system consists approximately of 255 "galaxies", 65,000 "stars", 4 billion "planets" and 4.3 trillion "moons", which respectively function similarly to

DNS The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to ...

s, ISPs,

personal computers A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...

and devices that connect to them. Co-founder Galen Wolfe-Pauly claims that Urbit can have an all-purpose functionality akin to

WeChat WeChat () is a Chinese instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018, with over 1 billion monthly active users. WeChat has be ...

, albeit with the end user retaining data ownership.

Platform

Background

The Urbit platform was conceived of in 2002 by neo-reactionary thinker

Curtis Yarvin Curtis Guy Yarvin (born 1973), also known by the pen name Mencius Moldbug, is an American blogger, software engineer, and Internet entrepreneur. He is known, along with fellow theorist Nick Land, for founding the anti-egalitarian and anti-demo ...

. The company has received

seed A seed is an embryonic plant enclosed in a protective outer covering, along with a food reserve. The formation of the seed is a part of the process of reproduction in seed plants, the spermatophytes, including the gymnosperm and angiosper ...

funding from various investors since its inception, most notably

Peter Thiel Peter Andreas Thiel (; born 11 October 1967) is a German-American billionaire entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Fac ...

, whose

Founders Fund Founders Fund is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm. Formed in 2005, Founders Fund had more than $11 billion in aggregate capital under management as of 2022. The firm invests across all stages and sectors, including aerospace, artificia ...

, with

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

firm

Andreessen Horowitz Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Andreessen H ...

invested $1.1 million in the Tlon Corporation to help build out Urbit further. The platform has been described as "complicated for even the most seasoned of functional programmers".

OS1

Urbit OS1 launched in April 2020. This consisted of a group messaging app, a

message board An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...

, a note-taking system, and several simple apps such as a

clock A clock or a timepiece is a device used to measure and indicate time. The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month and t ...

and a weather meter.

Politics and controversy

In 2015, Yarvin's invitation to the Strange Loop conference was rescinded; the conference organizer said Yarvin's "mere inclusion and/or presence would overshadow the content of his talk." In 2016 after Urbit founder Curtis Yarvin was invited to the

conference LambdaConf, five speakers and three sponsors withdrew their participation due to their stated opposition to Yarvin's political views. The source code and design sketches for the project alluded to some of Yarvin's views, including initially classifying users as "lords," "dukes," and "earls." Yarvin and Tlon rejected any ideological associations with the project. Tlon CEO Galen Wolfe-Pauly said that "the principles of Urbit are very palatable ... we're interested in giving people their freedom." Andrea O'Sullivan of

libertarian Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's e ...

magazine ''

Reason Reason is the capacity of Consciousness, consciously applying logic by Logical consequence, drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activ ...

'' commented that "when you parse through the underlying values that guide the system, a rather libertarian ethos begins to emerge". After seven years of working on the Urbit project, Yarvin departed Tlon in 2019.

References

External links

* {{official website, https://urbit.org
Tlon.io
- Corporate website Blockchains Computing platforms Internet technology companies of the United States