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I also did a deep dive on Urbit a few months back (shameless plug: https://blog.janissary.xyz/posts/urbit https://blog.janissary.xyz/posts/urbit), and I really

I also did a deep dive on Urbit a few months back (shameless plug: https://blog.janissary.xyz/posts/urbit https://blog.janissary.xyz/posts/urbit), and I really agree with the author for the most part. Definitely the most concerning part of Urbit, for me at least, is the obscurantism of Hoon. Much like the author says, it's totally incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't read through every bit of the (lacking imo) documentation. Even a domain-specific language with a familiar syntax would be better, since at least a first-timer could grok basic logic/structure at first glance. This only compounds the security concerns, since reviewing any Hoon code requires being a domain expert - I doubt any security/crypto researchers will want to take a few weeks to learn Hoon just to audit something as obscure as Urbit. Hoon even has a kind of Lisp-y feel to it and Lisp lends itself well to the purely functional goals of Hoon/Nock, so I don't see why they couldn't have just made Hoon a Lisp. On the whole however, I'm hesitantly optimistic about the project. Most other works aiming to address Internet centralization just seem like band-aids (federated social networks still have problems with moderation/deplatforming, self-hosting just means running it in someone else's data center, etc.), and Urbit seems to be one of the few things willing to deal with the fundamental problems from the ground up. Also, I'm kind of glad the author didn't mention Urbit's original author despite most other posts on the topic feeling the need to mention it. He's long since left the project but it seems as though it'll never be rid of his influence. At this point I just feel bad for the maintainers/users that will constantly be associated with the guy from now on.

gowld 5y ago
> He's long since left the project but it seems as though it'll never be rid of his influence. The major design concersns raised by the above comment and the OP are inseparable from the original author, because he chose an extremely idiosyncratic language and system design that eschews all known standards and practices. If people want to make the idea work, they should port it to a reputable language.
NationalPark 5y ago
Doesn't Yarvin still have a personal interest in the address space? I think if they insist on not rebranding, they need to make it clearer that they disavow his political stuff, since the project sort of started as a vanity implementation of his ideas about monarchy or whatever.
- juancampa 5y ago
  I'd like to see a list of Galaxy owners. Shouldn't that be public info? who's routing my data? who am I giving my money to?
- oneearedrabbit 5y ago
  This partially answers your question [0]: > Urbit started back in 2002 as Curtis Yarvin’s personal project. Curtis developed the original prototype for Urbit and, separately, wrote a blog on history and politics under the pen name ‘Mencius Moldbug’. > In early 2019, Curtis left the Urbit project and gave all of his voting interest (both as address space and voting shares in the company) back to Tlon. He retains a non-voting, minority interest in both the address space and the company — but is not involved in the day-to-day development or operations. > Curtis laid the foundation for Urbit by delivering its first prototype but, since 2013, it has been refined and almost entirely rewritten by a community of developers. No one working on Urbit today had anything to do with Curtis’s writing. For the most part, we couldn’t be less interested in it. > The community of people who build Urbit have widely varied ways of thinking and looking at the world, but they all share two things: the desire to build neutral infrastructure for all people and to think from first principles about hard problems. We welcome spirited debate and disagreement as a primary tool for refining our work. Successful infrastructure, we think, serves all people — no matter their background, culture, or worldview. [0] https://urbit.org/faq/ https://urbit.org/faq/
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    Wow, what a lame answer it looks like they’re being disingenuous when they describe it as a “blog on history and politics”. The whole new-feudalist/dork enlightenment stuff was also an underpinning to Urbit in the beginning as well. The whole hierarchy of spaces for example.
etcet 5y ago
I feel the need to mention that Curtis Yarvin owns "a few thousand" Urbit stars [0]. If your goal is to make Urbit succeed, you'll end up making him very powerful and wealthy in the process. [0] https://urbit.org/blog/a-founders-farewell/ https://urbit.org/blog/a-founders-farewell/
- juancampa 5y ago
  I wonder why he left. Especially after saying that Urbit was more important to him than his writing [0] [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarvin_developer_of_urbit_ama/d1dfuun/ https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarv...
  - crocodiletears 5y ago
    His affiliation with the project was an albatross around its neck. For it to succeed, he understood that he couldn't have a place in it.
- dcow 5y ago
  He handed over his private keys to TLON. AFAIU he no longer owns any Urbit real estate.
Fellshard 5y ago
The obscurantism is both part of what makes it intriguing, and what makes it utterly useless. It's intentionally anti-intuitive at many turns - for every clever name, there's dozens of arbitrary ones. 'Casks' with 'Marks' for a descriptive wrapper around a value? Clever! Doors for generators with cores and batteries? A disaster! It ends up feeling like a very compact /Forth/ fused with a Lisp. There's some ideas at its core that feel very cool once you understand them, but also lead you to have to jump through a bunch of hoops when implementing normal functionality. It's worth seeing where changed assumptions led its design, and it /is/ intriguing. But make no buts about it: the obscurantism is 100% intentional and part of the design. From what I recall, it's obscure to prevent shallow novices from being able to jump in an wreck the ecosystem. You want to learn, you have to be dedicated. I get the impulse, I really do, but this is too far in the opposite extreme.
- dcow 5y ago
  I don't think it's exclusively to create a high barrier (although I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of it). The argument was that in order to prevent the system from experiencing some of the same failure modes as existing internet systems, you had to deliberately fight the brain's desire to draw analogies between Urbit components and existing internet systems. The belief was that this was fundamentally a linguistic problem and could at some level be attacked by inventing an entirely new vocabulary. In other words, you can't just rebuild the stack with the same components used in the old broken stack or you'd just end up with a new broken stack. Not sure how correct this hypothesis is, but it's what I recall. The Urbit team/project has since walked back from this stance somewhat (or at least progressed Urbit also in the more accessible direction), probably due to criticism.
k2enemy 5y ago
Yes, exactly this. I've tried so many times to engage with Urbit but at every turn things seem intentionally inscrutable. I have a star that I've wanted to sell several times, but each time I give up after several hours of unsuccessfully trying to understand the bridge/ethereum documentation. It ends up seeming more like an art project than a new technology.
- tyui44 5y ago
  log into bridge w/metamask or whatever you use -> click on your star's name -> click 'id' in the menu that appears -> click 'transfer point' in the id menu -> input the ethereum address you want to send the star to and click 'generate and sign transaction'. did you really spend several hours trying to figure that out lmao
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    That sounds like a way to change the owner of a star, not sell it in exchange for eth What is obvious to some can be obscure for others, “metamask” is hardly a household name
  - k2enemy 5y ago
    The other reply was correct. Transferring a star is simple. I wanted to figure out how to sell it. I suppose that is also my fault of not understanding ethereum/nft terminology, not just Urbit.
    - tyui44 5y ago
      The sales process consists of you transferring ownership to an address the buyer provides you after they pay you; it's not programmatic. The fastest/simplest way to sell is probably to list your star on opensea.io, though there's also a marketplace group on urbit.
      - k2enemy 5y ago
        Thank you, that is helpful. I'm surprised that people are willing to send eth based on the promise to later transfer an address!
jolux 5y ago
As far as I know Urbit itself was an attempt to realize the author's neofeudalist/monarchist political ideas through technology. I don't think he succeeded but I have to say I'm not entirely clear on why the people who maintain it and use it are still interested in doing so, because that association seems pretty hard to shake.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  As far as I know, the author's ultimate goal was libertarianism, but believed democracy was sub-optimal for achieving it. I suspect be saw in Urbit a non-political technological means of realizing his ultimate end, which was libertarianism, and not dictatorship. On the subject of his views, my opinion is that the only way to really secure liberty is to inform the whole public of its value, and have those ideas of liberty receive a democratic sanction. That leads to a genuinely libertarian society, that if fragmented, would lead to the emergence of new libertarian micro-states, instead of collections of serfs, who without their master, immediately revert to tyranny.
  - jolux 5y ago
    > As far as I know, the author's ultimate goal was libertarianism, but believed democracy was sub-optimal for achieving it. That's a euphemistic way to say he thought his views should be forced upon other people rather than having to convince them of their correctness in the public sphere. > I suspect be saw in Urbit a non-political technological means of realizing his ultimate end, which was libertarianism, and not dictatorship. You should read more about his views. I can't in good conscience recommend his writing because it's riddled with factual errors, but he definitely went far beyond libertarianism. He sees democracy as a failure and believes that absolute rule is more stable and prosperous and even more free than liberal democracy, and he's also unquestionably a racist.
    - dcow 5y ago
      Citation needed on “unquestionably a racist”. As far as I’ve gleaned, the assertions that he’s a racist are heavily based on an encyclopedic (surface-level) interpretation that essentially boils down to: evolutionary biology is inevitably racist and therefore anybody who entertains the study is associatively a racist, James Damore, Bret Weinstein, style. The assertion is based on postmodern axioms describing what a racist ideology makes, not a western rationalist position that allows complex topics to be, well, complex.

gowld 5y ago

> He's long since left the project but it seems as though it'll never be rid of his influence. The major design concersns raised by the above comment and the OP are inseparable from the original author, because he chose an extremely idiosyncratic language and system design that eschews all known standards and practices. If people want to make the idea work, they should port it to a reputable language.

NationalPark 5y ago

Doesn't Yarvin still have a personal interest in the address space? I think if they insist on not rebranding, they need to make it clearer that they disavow his political stuff, since the project sort of started as a vanity implementation of his ideas about monarchy or whatever.

juancampa 5y ago
I'd like to see a list of Galaxy owners. Shouldn't that be public info? who's routing my data? who am I giving my money to?
oneearedrabbit 5y ago
This partially answers your question [0]: > Urbit started back in 2002 as Curtis Yarvin’s personal project. Curtis developed the original prototype for Urbit and, separately, wrote a blog on history and politics under the pen name ‘Mencius Moldbug’. > In early 2019, Curtis left the Urbit project and gave all of his voting interest (both as address space and voting shares in the company) back to Tlon. He retains a non-voting, minority interest in both the address space and the company — but is not involved in the day-to-day development or operations. > Curtis laid the foundation for Urbit by delivering its first prototype but, since 2013, it has been refined and almost entirely rewritten by a community of developers. No one working on Urbit today had anything to do with Curtis’s writing. For the most part, we couldn’t be less interested in it. > The community of people who build Urbit have widely varied ways of thinking and looking at the world, but they all share two things: the desire to build neutral infrastructure for all people and to think from first principles about hard problems. We welcome spirited debate and disagreement as a primary tool for refining our work. Successful infrastructure, we think, serves all people — no matter their background, culture, or worldview. [0] https://urbit.org/faq/ https://urbit.org/faq/
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  Wow, what a lame answer it looks like they’re being disingenuous when they describe it as a “blog on history and politics”. The whole new-feudalist/dork enlightenment stuff was also an underpinning to Urbit in the beginning as well. The whole hierarchy of spaces for example.

etcet 5y ago

I feel the need to mention that Curtis Yarvin owns "a few thousand" Urbit stars [0]. If your goal is to make Urbit succeed, you'll end up making him very powerful and wealthy in the process. [0] https://urbit.org/blog/a-founders-farewell/ https://urbit.org/blog/a-founders-farewell/

juancampa 5y ago
I wonder why he left. Especially after saying that Urbit was more important to him than his writing [0] [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarvin_developer_of_urbit_ama/d1dfuun/ https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarv...
- crocodiletears 5y ago
  His affiliation with the project was an albatross around its neck. For it to succeed, he understood that he couldn't have a place in it.
dcow 5y ago
He handed over his private keys to TLON. AFAIU he no longer owns any Urbit real estate.

Fellshard 5y ago

The obscurantism is both part of what makes it intriguing, and what makes it utterly useless. It's intentionally anti-intuitive at many turns - for every clever name, there's dozens of arbitrary ones. 'Casks' with 'Marks' for a descriptive wrapper around a value? Clever! Doors for generators with cores and batteries? A disaster! It ends up feeling like a very compact /Forth/ fused with a Lisp. There's some ideas at its core that feel very cool once you understand them, but also lead you to have to jump through a bunch of hoops when implementing normal functionality. It's worth seeing where changed assumptions led its design, and it /is/ intriguing. But make no buts about it: the obscurantism is 100% intentional and part of the design. From what I recall, it's obscure to prevent shallow novices from being able to jump in an wreck the ecosystem. You want to learn, you have to be dedicated. I get the impulse, I really do, but this is too far in the opposite extreme.

dcow 5y ago
I don't think it's exclusively to create a high barrier (although I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of it). The argument was that in order to prevent the system from experiencing some of the same failure modes as existing internet systems, you had to deliberately fight the brain's desire to draw analogies between Urbit components and existing internet systems. The belief was that this was fundamentally a linguistic problem and could at some level be attacked by inventing an entirely new vocabulary. In other words, you can't just rebuild the stack with the same components used in the old broken stack or you'd just end up with a new broken stack. Not sure how correct this hypothesis is, but it's what I recall. The Urbit team/project has since walked back from this stance somewhat (or at least progressed Urbit also in the more accessible direction), probably due to criticism.

k2enemy 5y ago

Yes, exactly this. I've tried so many times to engage with Urbit but at every turn things seem intentionally inscrutable. I have a star that I've wanted to sell several times, but each time I give up after several hours of unsuccessfully trying to understand the bridge/ethereum documentation. It ends up seeming more like an art project than a new technology.

tyui44 5y ago
log into bridge w/metamask or whatever you use -> click on your star's name -> click 'id' in the menu that appears -> click 'transfer point' in the id menu -> input the ethereum address you want to send the star to and click 'generate and sign transaction'. did you really spend several hours trying to figure that out lmao
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  That sounds like a way to change the owner of a star, not sell it in exchange for eth What is obvious to some can be obscure for others, “metamask” is hardly a household name
- k2enemy 5y ago
  The other reply was correct. Transferring a star is simple. I wanted to figure out how to sell it. I suppose that is also my fault of not understanding ethereum/nft terminology, not just Urbit.
  - tyui44 5y ago
    The sales process consists of you transferring ownership to an address the buyer provides you after they pay you; it's not programmatic. The fastest/simplest way to sell is probably to list your star on opensea.io, though there's also a marketplace group on urbit.
    - k2enemy 5y ago
      Thank you, that is helpful. I'm surprised that people are willing to send eth based on the promise to later transfer an address!

jolux 5y ago

As far as I know Urbit itself was an attempt to realize the author's neofeudalist/monarchist political ideas through technology. I don't think he succeeded but I have to say I'm not entirely clear on why the people who maintain it and use it are still interested in doing so, because that association seems pretty hard to shake.

CryptoPunk 5y ago
As far as I know, the author's ultimate goal was libertarianism, but believed democracy was sub-optimal for achieving it. I suspect be saw in Urbit a non-political technological means of realizing his ultimate end, which was libertarianism, and not dictatorship. On the subject of his views, my opinion is that the only way to really secure liberty is to inform the whole public of its value, and have those ideas of liberty receive a democratic sanction. That leads to a genuinely libertarian society, that if fragmented, would lead to the emergence of new libertarian micro-states, instead of collections of serfs, who without their master, immediately revert to tyranny.
- jolux 5y ago
  > As far as I know, the author's ultimate goal was libertarianism, but believed democracy was sub-optimal for achieving it. That's a euphemistic way to say he thought his views should be forced upon other people rather than having to convince them of their correctness in the public sphere. > I suspect be saw in Urbit a non-political technological means of realizing his ultimate end, which was libertarianism, and not dictatorship. You should read more about his views. I can't in good conscience recommend his writing because it's riddled with factual errors, but he definitely went far beyond libertarianism. He sees democracy as a failure and believes that absolute rule is more stable and prosperous and even more free than liberal democracy, and he's also unquestionably a racist.
  - dcow 5y ago
    Citation needed on “unquestionably a racist”. As far as I’ve gleaned, the assertions that he’s a racist are heavily based on an encyclopedic (surface-level) interpretation that essentially boils down to: evolutionary biology is inevitably racist and therefore anybody who entertains the study is associatively a racist, James Damore, Bret Weinstein, style. The assertion is based on postmodern axioms describing what a racist ideology makes, not a western rationalist position that allows complex topics to be, well, complex.