Urbit

Urbit is a decentralized 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 with a consistent digital identity.

Overview
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 personal address space, built on the Ethereum blockchain, 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 running on top of the User Datagram Protocol.

Platform
The Urbit platform was conceived and first developed in 2002 by Curtis Yarvin. It is an open-source project being developed by the Tlon Corporation, which Yarvin founded with John Burnham, a Thiel Fellow, in 2013; Burnham left the company in 2014 and was sued for fraud by Yarvin. The company 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 in 2013. The platform is known for being complicated and obscure. It is also controversial due to the anti-democratic political opinions of its creator, Curtis Yarvin, and his association with the Dark Enlightenment.

Politics and controversy 
Yarvin's public statements on race and slavery have led to controversy at public events and conferences related to Urbit. At the functional programming conference LambdaConf in 2016, Yarvin's speaking engagement resulted in five other speakers and three sponsors withdrawing their participation. Yarvin had previously had his invitation to the 2015 Strange Loop conference rescinded, with the conference's organizer noting that "his mere inclusion and/or presence would overshadow the content of his talk".

The source code and design sketches for the project have made various allusions that correspond to Yarvin's views, including initially classifying users as "lords," "dukes," and "earls." Yarvin and Tlon reject any ideological associations for the project, with Tlon CEO Galen Wolfe-Pauly responding that "the principles of Urbit are very palatable ... we're interested in giving people their freedom." Andrea O'Sullivan of libertarian magazine Reason commented that "when you parse through the underlying values that guide the system, a rather libertarian ethos begins to emerge."

After seventeen years of working on the Urbit project, Yarvin departed Tlon in 2019.

References

External links 

 
 Tlon.io - Corporate website

Category:Blockchains
Category:Computing platforms
Category:Internet technology companies of the United States