12 ms·

I think Urbit solves some of the issues that remain unsolved in Scuttlebutt. When you have non-zero cost NFTs as IDs on the network you make spam a non-issue an

I think Urbit solves some of the issues that remain unsolved in Scuttlebutt. When you have non-zero cost NFTs as IDs on the network you make spam a non-issue and moderation 'easy'. Avoiding blockchain in the actual system design also gets rid of the storage-intensive protocol issue, it's my favorite approach of the attempts to pull off these decentralized systems. It's also the only one I thing could truly work at scale as a new underlying system that applications can be built on top of from those I've seen. The ability to update code across the network and the built in incentives for infrastructure nodes (stars) are really interesting. I also think the functional OS design is pretty cool.

jonstaab 5y ago
Reading the Urbit documentation now, it's melting my face.
- fossuser 5y ago
  If you spin up a comet to check it out say hi in the general chat!
squarefoot 5y ago
I never heard of Urbit, but a search returns it got funding also from Peter Thiel, which is famous (among other things) for Palantir Technologies. I'm not sure I would trust it.
- reilly3000 5y ago
  It’s founder is a radical right libertarian/monarchist. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin The system itself is built to be exclusionary, where it has a cap of 4.5 B users. I have owned a planet for a few years now and would love to part with it, but haven’t mad much luck on OpenSea.
  - fossuser 5y ago
    That cap can be increased if necessary it’s just a default, the reason to have non-zero cost ids to combat spam and accrue reputation makes sense. I don’t agree with CY’s NRX politics (or much of Thiel’s for that matter - I think he was influenced by CY), but that’s unrelated to the merits of the tech and CY left the project in 2019.
  - xfhgjxcfgh 5y ago
    >The system itself is built to be exclusionary, where it has a cap of 4.5 B users. 2^32 is exclusionary? I don't see an easy way to make planets more inclusive. You could replace planets with moons (2^64 max users), then usernames need to be twice as long. Would you make the network architecture use nine-bit "syllables" (2^(9*4) max users)? Things wouldn't run so well on our 64-bit hardware.

jonstaab 5y ago

Reading the Urbit documentation now, it's melting my face.

fossuser 5y ago
If you spin up a comet to check it out say hi in the general chat!

squarefoot 5y ago

I never heard of Urbit, but a search returns it got funding also from Peter Thiel, which is famous (among other things) for Palantir Technologies. I'm not sure I would trust it.

reilly3000 5y ago
It’s founder is a radical right libertarian/monarchist. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin The system itself is built to be exclusionary, where it has a cap of 4.5 B users. I have owned a planet for a few years now and would love to part with it, but haven’t mad much luck on OpenSea.
- fossuser 5y ago
  That cap can be increased if necessary it’s just a default, the reason to have non-zero cost ids to combat spam and accrue reputation makes sense. I don’t agree with CY’s NRX politics (or much of Thiel’s for that matter - I think he was influenced by CY), but that’s unrelated to the merits of the tech and CY left the project in 2019.
- xfhgjxcfgh 5y ago
  >The system itself is built to be exclusionary, where it has a cap of 4.5 B users. 2^32 is exclusionary? I don't see an easy way to make planets more inclusive. You could replace planets with moons (2^64 max users), then usernames need to be twice as long. Would you make the network architecture use nine-bit "syllables" (2^(9*4) max users)? Things wouldn't run so well on our 64-bit hardware.