Behind the Investment: Urbit
Evan Fisher | 04-03-2023
“What the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years.”
– Chris Dixon
The smartest builders and thinkers I know spend their weekends, and often most of their waking hours, on Urbit.
Urbit is one of the most ambitious computing projects out there. It is building a peer-to-peer network of personal server virtual machines. The aim is to combine the user-owned, pluralistic internet of ‘Web1’ with the simplicity of user experiences offered by our modern ‘Web2’ internet. Put simply, Urbit is building what could be the OS and network of the next generation of the internet.
After several years of closely following the ecosystem, I’m excited to share that Portal has invested in Urbit and looks forward to supporting its continued growth.
Today's Internet
Although the internet was initially self-hosted, complexities of running a personal server made it too complicated to onboard non-technical users. Enter centralized platforms. In exchange for some fee (either a cash payment or ‘renting’ out your data), companies manage and abstract away the complexities of hosting to create a clean user experience. And it worked. There are over 5B users of the internet today.
But centralized hosting providers came with major tradeoffs. Ownership and privacy. With advances in cryptography and decentralized systems, we no longer need to make that sacrifice. The responsibilities currently offloaded to major centralized platforms can be managed by consensus-driven networks.
Enter Urbit
While I don’t believe ownership is enough of an incentive to drive scaled user adoption today, it does create a couple capabilities that unlock product differentiation.
Interoperability. On Urbit, data is not spread (‘rented’) across siloed platforms but instead it is owned by you. This means it is in one place and in the same language. To grant a new app use of your data you just have to permission it. This applies to all your data, not just that sitting in one silo and accessible via an API. A simple analogy: as Plaid lets users permission bank accounts to FinTech apps, on Urbit you could permission any data to any app.
Blockchain Nativity. Because Urbit is both user-owned and interoperable, it creates a unified execution environment shared between applications. Furthermore, the tie between computing identity and public keys is already a core part of the system. Add in blockchains and you can natively transfer value from your personal computer / identity to another. As we increasingly create digital value, this native compute-blockchain environment will be a pre-requisite for a clean UX.
The combination of ownership, interoperability, and blockchain nativity creates a laboratory for innovation. The result will be an explosion in the number and types of applications built. Want to build a self-hosted front-end to your favorite application, go for it. Need a Twitter clone for a topic or industry, this can be built without the need to bootstrap entirely new network effects. Looking for a messaging app that allows your friends or organization to natively self-govern and transfer money, look no further.
Ethereum’s smart contracts created a platform for entirely new forms of experimentation. Many of these ‘experiments’ (DeFi, DAOs, NFTs) are poised to create multi-billion-dollar industries on top of the Ethereum network. Similarly, Urbit creates a laboratory for entirely new forms of experiments.
Urbit's Opportunity
“What’s the upside of owning a piece of Apple, Linux, and the internet if you bought it in 1982? Honestly, who knows. Internet GDP is roughly $3T. Owning a small piece of that is a huge outcome.”
Go-to-market is in the early innings, but momentum is certainly picking up. Urbit’s first OS launched in April 2020, and over the past 3 years we’ve seen growing numbers of developers enter the ecosystem. The Urbit Foundation is now focused on continuing this momentum while also onboarding early users as the platform becomes more heavily populated with applications.
A project as ambitious as Urbit will take time to see scaled adoption, as did the PC, cloud infrastructure, and many other computing advanced. That said, with successful execution, Urbit has the potential to be one of the most transformative and valuable platforms of the coming decades.
Here at Portal, we look forward to supporting this transition. If you’re building across Urbit, get in touch via email or ~figdeg-mopren.
The smartest builders and thinkers I know spend their weekends, and often most of their waking hours, on Urbit.
Urbit is one of the most ambitious computing projects out there. It is building a peer-to-peer network of personal server virtual machines. The aim is to combine the user-owned, pluralistic internet of ‘Web1’ with the simplicity of user experiences offered by our modern ‘Web2’ internet. Put simply, Urbit is building what could be the OS and network of the next generation of the internet.
After several years of closely following the ecosystem, I’m excited to share that Portal has invested in Urbit and looks forward to supporting its continued growth.
Today's Internet
Although the internet was initially self-hosted, complexities of running a personal server made it too complicated to onboard non-technical users. Enter centralized platforms. In exchange for some fee (either a cash payment or ‘renting’ out your data), companies manage and abstract away the complexities of hosting to create a clean user experience. And it worked. There are over 5B users of the internet today.
But centralized hosting providers came with major tradeoffs. Ownership and privacy. With advances in cryptography and decentralized systems, we no longer need to make that sacrifice. The responsibilities currently offloaded to major centralized platforms can be managed by consensus-driven networks.
Enter Urbit
While I don’t believe ownership is enough of an incentive to drive scaled user adoption today, it does create a couple capabilities that unlock product differentiation.
Interoperability. On Urbit, data is not spread (‘rented’) across siloed platforms but instead it is owned by you. This means it is in one place and in the same language. To grant a new app use of your data you just have to permission it. This applies to all your data, not just that sitting in one silo and accessible via an API. A simple analogy: as Plaid lets users permission bank accounts to FinTech apps, on Urbit you could permission any data to any app.
Blockchain Nativity. Because Urbit is both user-owned and interoperable, it creates a unified execution environment shared between applications. Furthermore, the tie between computing identity and public keys is already a core part of the system. Add in blockchains and you can natively transfer value from your personal computer / identity to another. As we increasingly create digital value, this native compute-blockchain environment will be a pre-requisite for a clean UX.
The combination of ownership, interoperability, and blockchain nativity creates a laboratory for innovation. The result will be an explosion in the number and types of applications built. Want to build a self-hosted front-end to your favorite application, go for it. Need a Twitter clone for a topic or industry, this can be built without the need to bootstrap entirely new network effects. Looking for a messaging app that allows your friends or organization to natively self-govern and transfer money, look no further.
Ethereum’s smart contracts created a platform for entirely new forms of experimentation. Many of these ‘experiments’ (DeFi, DAOs, NFTs) are poised to create multi-billion-dollar industries on top of the Ethereum network. Similarly, Urbit creates a laboratory for entirely new forms of experiments.
Urbit's Opportunity
“What’s the upside of owning a piece of Apple, Linux, and the internet if you bought it in 1982? Honestly, who knows. Internet GDP is roughly $3T. Owning a small piece of that is a huge outcome.”
Go-to-market is in the early innings, but momentum is certainly picking up. Urbit’s first OS launched in April 2020, and over the past 3 years we’ve seen growing numbers of developers enter the ecosystem. The Urbit Foundation is now focused on continuing this momentum while also onboarding early users as the platform becomes more heavily populated with applications.
A project as ambitious as Urbit will take time to see scaled adoption, as did the PC, cloud infrastructure, and many other computing advanced. That said, with successful execution, Urbit has the potential to be one of the most transformative and valuable platforms of the coming decades.
Here at Portal, we look forward to supporting this transition. If you’re building across Urbit, get in touch via email or ~figdeg-mopren.