3 ms·

Urbit choosing to artificially limit their "address space" with an NFT sale was a bit of a gut punch tbh and I don't see how this will work out positively for t

by theK 3y ago

Urbit choosing to artificially limit their "address space" with an NFT sale was a bit of a gut punch tbh and I don't see how this will work out positively for the project in the long run.

samatman 3y ago
Urbit's address space is 128 bits wide, so scarcity is physically impossible, unless there were a need for every atom in the observable universe to have many addresses. The decision to make the bottom 32 bits valuable was a clever one, but it's lead to some misunderstanding of how things actually work. Specifically, planets (a 32 bit address) only own an additional 2^32 addresses, called moons. That leaves 2^64 of the address space "wild", these are called comets. There are plenty. If you want a four-syllable address, they're loss leaders from hosting providers, currently. Two syllables you have to pay for, and one syllable is not usually on the market. A sixteen-syllable address is and will always be free. How this is handled socially, in a hypothetical future where there are more than 4 billion active Urbit users, is a problem for that future to address.
- sureglymop 3y ago
  Why does it have to be so obscure? Why planets, moons, etc? It doesn't serve any purpose other than confusing anyone not familiar with it and making those familiar with it seem like the "all knowing" in group.
  - samatman 3y ago
    It depends on what you consider obscure, I guess. A planet is a /32, a star is a /16, a galaxy is an /8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classless_Inter-Domain_Routing#IPv4_CIDR_blocks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classless_Inter-Domain_Routing... Moons are the /0 subdomain you get with a /32 aka planet, and comets are the 64 bits of free address space left over in the 128 bits of address width. To create a comet, you make a public-private keypair where the public key hash doesn't collide with owned address space. If you miss, you spin up another keypair and keep going until you get one. That's really the whole thing. These things need names, as evidence, I present the fact that in IPv4, they have names. To my taste "slash eight" is more obscure than "galaxy", your mileage may vary.

by theK 3y ago

Urbit choosing to artificially limit their "address space" with an NFT sale was a bit of a gut punch tbh and I don't see how this will work out positively for the project in the long run.

samatman 3y ago

Urbit's address space is 128 bits wide, so scarcity is physically impossible, unless there were a need for every atom in the observable universe to have many addresses. The decision to make the bottom 32 bits valuable was a clever one, but it's lead to some misunderstanding of how things actually work. Specifically, planets (a 32 bit address) only own an additional 2^32 addresses, called moons. That leaves 2^64 of the address space "wild", these are called comets. There are plenty. If you want a four-syllable address, they're loss leaders from hosting providers, currently. Two syllables you have to pay for, and one syllable is not usually on the market. A sixteen-syllable address is and will always be free. How this is handled socially, in a hypothetical future where there are more than 4 billion active Urbit users, is a problem for that future to address.

sureglymop 3y ago
Why does it have to be so obscure? Why planets, moons, etc? It doesn't serve any purpose other than confusing anyone not familiar with it and making those familiar with it seem like the "all knowing" in group.
- samatman 3y ago
  It depends on what you consider obscure, I guess. A planet is a /32, a star is a /16, a galaxy is an /8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classless_Inter-Domain_Routing#IPv4_CIDR_blocks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classless_Inter-Domain_Routing... Moons are the /0 subdomain you get with a /32 aka planet, and comets are the 64 bits of free address space left over in the 128 bits of address width. To create a comet, you make a public-private keypair where the public key hash doesn't collide with owned address space. If you miss, you spin up another keypair and keep going until you get one. That's really the whole thing. These things need names, as evidence, I present the fact that in IPv4, they have names. To my taste "slash eight" is more obscure than "galaxy", your mileage may vary.