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While the Urbit tech stack is clearly insane (some say it’s on purpose), The urbit identity layer is interesting and useful. You basically buy your username as

While the Urbit tech stack is clearly insane (some say it’s on purpose), The urbit identity layer is interesting and useful. You basically buy your username as a NFT, and that username is bound to signing keys, ip address and ethereum wallet. This makes it quite practical as an identity for chat / social network. This identity is on the eth blockchain and thus nobody can steal it / ban you, which is a unique value proposition. I hope one day saner apps will adopt similar concepts, or reuse the urbit identity layer for identity purposes

wmf 5y ago
Or you could buy a domain.
- Spivak 5y ago
  I'm sure someone will talk about your registrar potentially banning you but since your identity is tied to your public IP address that could already happen.
  - fvdessen 5y ago
    Indeed the direct link to an IP address is currently a weak point in terms of privacy, but it could potentially link to an onion address instead to solve that issue. The point is that your identity is on a globally available and immutable blockchain instead of someone's db you must trust
bruiseralmighty 5y ago
This is also the most compelling aspect of it to me as well. Domains being essentially free allows for too much easy spamming of internet users. Raising the cost of an identity online really helps solve a lot of the bad actor problems.
- Spivak 5y ago
  I mean if that's the only value. Facebook, but only for people who pay $100/yr, would be an easy way to create a high signal-noise social network and unfortunately it isn't.
  - majewsky 5y ago
    $100/yr does not seem to be stopping people from putting malicious apps on the iOS app store.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  It also means you lock out the global poor.
- q3k 5y ago
  > Domains being essentially free allows for too much easy spamming of internet users. My experience with spam [1] is that 90% of the non-trivially-filtered-kind comes from either taken over 'mainstream' email provider accounts (eg. gmail, yahoo, ...) or from exploited websites that can send email (eg. a wordpress or prestashop instance). Obviously dedicated 'spam' domains tend to get blocked _very_ fast on a multitutde of RBLs. It's the domains shared between spam and non-spam users that are the real problem. Making domains more expensive probably won't help fighting spam. It will, however, increase the barrier to having an online identity to people who can't blow a couple months' rent on an urbit identity. On the other hand, being able to register domain names without _any_ identity checks and oversight from legally responsible registrar entities could possibly increase abuse in some other ways. [1] - I help run a mail server for a hackerspace.
geofft 5y ago
Have you never lost a private key? I definitely lost the private key to my original PGP key. And I wouldn't say "nobody can ban you" - quite the opposite, in fact: with Urbit every major network node gets to make its own choice about banning, and the system encourages that. And the obvious end state is for a setup like Mastodon (or, frankly, Twitter blocks) where nodes collaborate on identifying spammers, griefers, and other bad actors because nobody wants to do full-time moderation work for their own personal experience on the network. That means your permanent identity can easily be banned across large swaths of the network. (I think that's actually totally fine, I just don't think it's true to say that nobody can ban you.)
- Mediterraneo10 5y ago
  > Have you never lost a private key? I definitely lost the private key to my original PGP key. For nearly twenty years now, PGP tutorials have often explained the importance of printing out a copy of your private key in a special OCR-readable font, and putting that in a safe place. Then you won't risk losing your private key even if all the devices it was stored on perish.
- fvdessen 5y ago
  > And I wouldn't say "nobody can ban you" [...] And the obvious end state is for a setup like Mastodon It is indeed quite similar to mastodon in the sense that other instances can ban you. The difference is that in mastodon your identity is usually located on an instance, and if that instance bans you, you lose your identity. In Urbit every identity has its own instance so your personal contact list will still be able to reach you. Of course requiring everybody to run its own instance adds quite some friction for user onboarding, but that is an issue with the urbit network, not with the identity layer. You could imagine having your identity and linking it to a hosted instance, and later switch instance if the needs arise. This is what I like about the idea of having your identity as a NFT, but clearly the way urbit currently uses it does not exploit the full potential of the idea. As for losing your keys, if such a system would become widespread, most people would chose to have their keys hosted on a third party service, and only people who really care about maintaining full ownership would keep the keys to themselves.
crocodiletears 5y ago
I agree. I see so much potential in the identity and network layer, but have yet to be convinced that the rest of the platform will survive.

wmf 5y ago

Or you could buy a domain.

Spivak 5y ago
I'm sure someone will talk about your registrar potentially banning you but since your identity is tied to your public IP address that could already happen.
- fvdessen 5y ago
  Indeed the direct link to an IP address is currently a weak point in terms of privacy, but it could potentially link to an onion address instead to solve that issue. The point is that your identity is on a globally available and immutable blockchain instead of someone's db you must trust

bruiseralmighty 5y ago

This is also the most compelling aspect of it to me as well. Domains being essentially free allows for too much easy spamming of internet users. Raising the cost of an identity online really helps solve a lot of the bad actor problems.

Spivak 5y ago
I mean if that's the only value. Facebook, but only for people who pay $100/yr, would be an easy way to create a high signal-noise social network and unfortunately it isn't.
- majewsky 5y ago
  $100/yr does not seem to be stopping people from putting malicious apps on the iOS app store.
meheleventyone 5y ago
It also means you lock out the global poor.
q3k 5y ago
> Domains being essentially free allows for too much easy spamming of internet users. My experience with spam [1] is that 90% of the non-trivially-filtered-kind comes from either taken over 'mainstream' email provider accounts (eg. gmail, yahoo, ...) or from exploited websites that can send email (eg. a wordpress or prestashop instance). Obviously dedicated 'spam' domains tend to get blocked _very_ fast on a multitutde of RBLs. It's the domains shared between spam and non-spam users that are the real problem. Making domains more expensive probably won't help fighting spam. It will, however, increase the barrier to having an online identity to people who can't blow a couple months' rent on an urbit identity. On the other hand, being able to register domain names without _any_ identity checks and oversight from legally responsible registrar entities could possibly increase abuse in some other ways. [1] - I help run a mail server for a hackerspace.

geofft 5y ago

Have you never lost a private key? I definitely lost the private key to my original PGP key. And I wouldn't say "nobody can ban you" - quite the opposite, in fact: with Urbit every major network node gets to make its own choice about banning, and the system encourages that. And the obvious end state is for a setup like Mastodon (or, frankly, Twitter blocks) where nodes collaborate on identifying spammers, griefers, and other bad actors because nobody wants to do full-time moderation work for their own personal experience on the network. That means your permanent identity can easily be banned across large swaths of the network. (I think that's actually totally fine, I just don't think it's true to say that nobody can ban you.)

Mediterraneo10 5y ago
> Have you never lost a private key? I definitely lost the private key to my original PGP key. For nearly twenty years now, PGP tutorials have often explained the importance of printing out a copy of your private key in a special OCR-readable font, and putting that in a safe place. Then you won't risk losing your private key even if all the devices it was stored on perish.
fvdessen 5y ago
> And I wouldn't say "nobody can ban you" [...] And the obvious end state is for a setup like Mastodon It is indeed quite similar to mastodon in the sense that other instances can ban you. The difference is that in mastodon your identity is usually located on an instance, and if that instance bans you, you lose your identity. In Urbit every identity has its own instance so your personal contact list will still be able to reach you. Of course requiring everybody to run its own instance adds quite some friction for user onboarding, but that is an issue with the urbit network, not with the identity layer. You could imagine having your identity and linking it to a hosted instance, and later switch instance if the needs arise. This is what I like about the idea of having your identity as a NFT, but clearly the way urbit currently uses it does not exploit the full potential of the idea. As for losing your keys, if such a system would become widespread, most people would chose to have their keys hosted on a third party service, and only people who really care about maintaining full ownership would keep the keys to themselves.

crocodiletears 5y ago

I agree. I see so much potential in the identity and network layer, but have yet to be convinced that the rest of the platform will survive.