Urbit: The Bold Pitch to Re-Decentralize the Internet, on Top of the Internet

By July 11, 2016Bitcoin Business

Urbit , the computing platform described as a “city in the cloud” by its inventors, raised more than $200,000 in four hours through a crowdsale last week. While the crypto-space has seen many spectacular crowd-sales, some more dodgy than others, Urbit has been able to excite leading venture capitalists and executives in the space, including BitGo’s Ben Davenport, 21 Inc.’s Balaji Srinivasan and Chaincode Labs’ Alex Morcos.

The platform, a product by U.S. startup Tlon, sparks curiosity, even though few outside the VC tech elite seem to have a good grasp on exactly what it proposes.

According to Tlon CTO and Urbit inventor Curtis Yarvin: “If bitcoin is digital money, Urbit is digital land.”

The Goal

The main problem Urbit intends to solve is the reliance of internet users on servers they do not control. Back in the ‘80s, the internet was designed as a peer-to-peer network but most people now just use it to connect to Facebook, Gmail, Reddit and other centralized services. This means that users are not in full control of their own data, software or identity, instead handing this over to corporate tech giants.

Tlon, instead, envisions a future where users own their own general-purpose cloud computers and socialize by connecting directly to each other. A sort of remake of the internet’s original peer-to-peer vision.

Speaking to Bitcoin Magazine , Tlon CEO Galen Wolfe-Pauly explained: “The internet has collapsed into this client-server structure ‒ basically a digital modem. Attempts to fix this have generally been focused on a re-decentralization of the whole internet itself. But we don’t think the internet can be fixed this way. The internet is here; it can’t change and it’s not going away. So instead, we want to build a new internet on top of the existing internet.” Urbit is designed to give users their […]

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