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Understanding Urbit


Few software projects today share either the contemporary relevance or fringe mystique of the Urbit Operating and Identity System. As a highly secure personal server, Urbit aims to deliver on many of the ideas pioneered by the Cypherpunks, and, after nearly 20 years in development the platform has begun a phased launch. Urbit gives us persistent digital identity, a new benchmark for secure computing, and maybe even an open source response to more modern social computing platforms like WeChat and Kakaotalk. 

Mar 26, 2020

Christian Langalis is the resident bitcoin ambassador to the Urbit team. His motto is sound money requires sound computing and this well describes his role is to develop Bitcoin infrastructure for the Urbit ecosystem. 

Christian’s interest in Urbit derives from a desire for a sound foundation on which Bitcoin can operate. He makes the argument that for all its potential, bitcoin cannot offer the benefits of sound money (sound being a term that requires specific definition in this case) without a sound computing platform on which to operate. Unix sysadmins have access to this today, but that leaves the future unevenly distributed.

More than just a piece of Bitcoin infrastructure, Christian sees Urbit as a response to the shift toward unowned software and data caused the popularity of Software as a Service and content streaming platforms. He also sees the platform as an opportunity for individuals to access the full power of server computing, instead having to rent individual functionalities from subscription based services. 

Christian views data harvesting, and the pursuit of user attention as deep personal abuses in a way that recalls Galen’s reference to Stockholm Syndrome in episode 1

urbit.org/install/

Urbit.live