Urbit is a

decentralized Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those related to planning and decision-making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group and gi ...

personal server platform based on

functional programming In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm where programs are constructed by Function application, applying and Function composition (computer science), composing Function (computer science), functions. It is a declarat ...

in a peer-to-peer network. The Urbit platform was created by

alt-right The alt-right (abbreviated from alternative right) is a Far-right politics, far-right, White nationalism, white nationalist movement. A largely Internet activism, online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the United States during the late ...

political blogger Curtis Yarvin. The first code release was in 2010. The Urbit network was launched in 2013. The first user version (called OS1) was launched in April 2020. In 2022, the main software in an Urbit installation was a "bare-bones" text-based message board.

Functionality

'' The Point'' described Urbit OS1 as a "bare-bones messaging server" and compared it to 1990s era

Usenet Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...

. Tlon, the company founded by Yarvin to build Urbit, named after the short story " Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by

Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo ( ; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish literature, Spanish-language and international literatur ...

, has received

seed In botany, a seed is a plant structure containing an embryo and stored nutrients in a protective coat called a ''testa''. More generally, the term "seed" means anything that can be Sowing, sown, which may include seed and husk or tuber. Seeds ...

funding from various investors since its inception, most notably

Peter Thiel Peter Andreas Thiel (; born 11 October 1967) is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Facebook. According ...

, whose

Founders Fund Founders Fund is an American venture capital fund formed in 2005 and based in San Francisco. The fund has roughly $17 billion in total assets under management as of 2025. Founders Fund was the first institutional investor in Space Exploration T ...

, with

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

firm

Andreessen Horowitz AH Capital Management, LLC (commonly known as Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z) is an American privately held venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of M ...

invested $1.1 million. The Urbit community talks up its association with and funding from Thiel, who has also backed Urbit public events. ''The Point'' estimated Urbit's active user base as of September 2022 at "a few thousand".

Technical details

The Urbit

software stack In computing, a solution stack or software stack is a set of software subsystems or components needed to create a complete platform such that no additional software is needed to support applications. Applications are said to "run on" or "run on ...

consists of a set of

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

s ("Hoon", a high-level

language, and "Nock", its low-level compiled language); a single-function

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

built on those languages ("Arvo"); a runtime implementation of that operating system ("Vere"), public key infrastructure, built on the

Ethereum Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether (abbreviation: ETH) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capitalization. It is open-s ...

blockchain The blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of Record (computer science), records (''blocks'') that are securely linked together via Cryptographic hash function, cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of th ...

("Azimuth"), for each Urbit instance to participate in a decentralized network; and the decentralized network itself, an encrypted, peer-to-peer protocol. The 128-bit Urbit identity space consists of 256 "galaxies", 65,280 "stars" (255 for each galaxy), 4,294,901,760 "planets" (65,535 for each star), and comets under those. Yarvin called Urbit "functional programming from scratch" in 2010. ''

The Register ''The Register'' (often also called El Reg) is a British Technology journalism, technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee (journalist), Mike Magee and John Lettice. The online newspaper's Nameplate_(publishing), masthead Logo, s ...

'' described Urbit as having "reinvented some very

Lisp Lisp (historically LISP, an abbreviation of "list processing") is a family of programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized Polish notation#Explanation, prefix notation. Originally specified in the late 1950s, ...

-like technology". ''

Reason Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing valid conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, religion, scien ...

'' described Urbit as "complicated for even the most seasoned of functional programmers".

Politics and controversy

In 2015, Yarvin's invitation to discuss Urbit at the Strange Loop programming conference was rescinded; the conference organizer said Yarvin's "mere inclusion and/or presence would overshadow the content of his talk". In 2016, after Yarvin was invited to the functional programming conference LambdaConf to discuss Urbit, five speakers and three sponsors withdrew their participation. Their stated reasons were Yarvin's claim that white people are genetically endowed with higher IQs than black people and his support of slavery. The source code and design sketches for the project alluded to some of Yarvin's views, including initially classifying users as "lords", "dukes", and "earls". Yarvin described this structure of Urbit in 2010 as "digital

feudalism Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in Middle Ages, medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of struc ...

". In a 2019 blog post, Yarvin said Urbit "is not designed as a political structure". Josh Lehman, Executive Director of the Urbit Foundation, denied in 2022 that Urbit was "digital feudalism". Andrea O'Sullivan of

libertarian Libertarianism (from ; or from ) is a political philosophy that holds freedom, personal sovereignty, and liberty as primary values. Many libertarians believe that the concept of freedom is in accord with the Non-Aggression Principle, according ...

magazine ''

'' described Urbit in 2016 as having a "libertarian vision". Yarvin departed Tlon in 2019. Lehman said that the "hardest part" of his work at Tlon had been to distance Urbit from Yarvin. Yarvin returned to Urbit in 2024. In April 2024, the Urbit Foundation board fired Lehman, and Yarvin returned to a leadership role at Urbit with no formal title.

Notes

References

External links

* {{official website, https://urbit.org Blockchains Computing platforms Internet technology companies of the United States