please forgive my explanation because i'm still not actually sure what urbit is (and sometimes i'm not sure if the people behind urbit know either).
basically urbit is like a decentralized open source server platform and lightweight OS that theoretically can run on any system with unix and an internet connection. every user gets their own "node"/server and all interactions are handled peer-to-peer rather through a centralized server. every user gets a cryptographic ID (these cost money/crypto, but a user can theoretically get their own temp node via compiling or some shit, this is what i'm unclear about). in that way, it's kind of fediverse-adjacent.
as of now urbit is kind of like a decentralized superminimal OS for peer-to-peer communication, sharing links and documents, etc. it's a bit pretentious, but very promising.
the biggest hangup i currently have is that the project was originally founded by a bunch of NRx tech dweebs like moldbug (who was associated with the organization behind urbit until 2019) and funded by Peter Thiel. if urbit is actually truly decentralized/p2p like it claims then this isn't necessarily a security issue, but i completley understand if that's a dealbreaker for people
- from my brief cursory look at the urbit community (discord/twitter) there aren't a lot of chuds into the project, and i'm kind of interested in the prospect of reappropriating some libertarian's dream project and recontextualizing it for a leftist vision of tech's future, or some shit.
tldr: this shit - does it have potential?
a friend of a friend got recruited by them a few years ago. afaik they still work there...how did moldbug & co become unafiliated?
When I vetted it for them back in ~2017 I just remember being struck by how much of it seemed like cutesy-stupid SV-branding of unnecessary new nomenclature, and that the whole vehicle for traction felt like a gross landgrab (makes sense if it was moldbug/thiel behind it). My rec to the friend's friend was to get paid but don't count on any equity, because in order for it to be (commercially) successful it'd need to displace too many things with way more weight behind them.
in general, it's in that category of future tech that'll be useful for decentralized, post-web networked software interaction, but idk why you'd use it vs. IPFS or w/e