Urbit is a decentralized personal server platform based on functional programming in a peer-to-peer network. The design seeks to give users control over their own computing.
The Urbit platform was created by neoreactionary political blogger Curtis Yarvin. The first code release was in 2010. The Urbit network was launched in 2013. The first user version was launched in April 2020.
As of 2022, the main software in an Urbit installation is a "bare-bones" text-based message board.
Functionality
Urbit OS1 launched in April 2020. The Point described Urbit as a "bare-bones messaging server" and compared it to 1990s Usenet.
Tlon, the company founded by Yarvin to build Urbit, has received seed funding from various investors since its inception, most notably Peter Thiel, whose Founders Fund, with venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz invested $1.1 million. The Urbit community talks up its association with and funding from Thiel, who has also backed Urbit public events.
The Point estimated Urbit's active user base as of September 2022 at "a few thousand."
Technical details
The Urbit software stack consists of a set of programming languages ("Hoon," a high-level functional programming language, and "Nock," its low-level compiled language); a single-function operating system built on those languages ("Arvo"); a runtime implementation of that operating system ("Vere"), public key infrastructure, built on the Ethereum blockchain ("Azimuth"), for each Urbit instance to participate in a decentralized network; and the decentralized network itself, an encrypted, peer-to-peer protocol.[non-primary source needed]
The 128-bit Urbit identity space consists of 256 "galaxies", 65,280 "stars" (255 for each galaxy), and 4,294,901,760 "planets" (65,535 for each star) and comets under those.
Yarvin called Urbit "functional programming from scratch" in 2010. The Register described Urbit as having "reinvented some very Lisp-like technology." Reason described Urbit as "complicated for even the most seasoned of functional programmers".
Politics and controversy
In 2015, Yarvin's invitation to the Strange Loop programming conference was rescinded; the conference organizer said Yarvin's "mere inclusion and/or presence would overshadow the content of his talk."
In 2016, after Yarvin was invited to the functional programming conference LambdaConf, five speakers and three sponsors withdrew their participation. In 2023, Urbit Foundation was invited to the May, 2024 LamdaConf in Estes Park, Colorado.[1]
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 described the structure of the Urbit address space in 2010 as "digital feudalism."
In a 2019 blog post, Yarvin said Urbit "is not designed as a political structure". Josh Lehman, Executive Director of the Urbit Foundation, denied in 2022 that Urbit was "digital feudalism."
Andrea O'Sullivan of libertarian magazine Reasondescribed Urbit in 2016 as having a "libertarian vision".
Yarvin departed Tlon in 2019. Lehman said that the "hardest part" of his work at Tlon had been to distance Urbit from Yarvin.
External links
- Official website
- Tlon.io - Corporate website