May 21, 2025 • 48 mins
In this episode, I review the state of Urbit and my history with this ambitious project to rebuild the internet. I explain why I stepped back, detailing what's happened with the network in the past few years, including the challenges faced by startups attempting to build on the platform and the surprising return of founder Curtis Yarvin. I take an honest look at how my initial timeline expectations were off, and other mistakes I made.
This period taught me a lot about technology, market sentiment, and cognition. I share how the experience has shaped my current thinking, as well as my current work with Zorp, a startup from the Urbit ecosystem now building Nockchain. I discuss the attraction of zero-knowledge proofs and why I've adopted a more patient attitude in my relationship with radical technology projects, now preferring to work behind the scenes if I really believe in something.
This is my first update on what I've been doing with Nockchain over the past year, helping to build their audience.
01:21 Discovering Urbit
02:44 Involvement with Urbit
04:44 Challenges and Reflections
05:38 The Independent Scholar
06:57 Urbit's Market Dynamics
15:31 Urbit Startups and Setbacks
22:49 The Rise and Fall of Urbit
23:38 Orbit's Struggles and My Realizations
24:54 Current State and Future Potential of Urbit
31:42 The Promise of Zero Knowledge Proofs
35:18 Introducing Nock Chain
38:31 Reflections and Lessons Learned
45:05 The Launch of Nock Chain
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Justin Murphy (00:00):
I learned a lot, I think, the past few years
about technology projects andabout markets and sentiment and
the difficulties of assessingthings and expectations and
timelines. I think I kind ofdecided at a certain point, if I
believe in something, I shouldwork quietly on it behind the
scenes and not necessarily bangthe drum publicly. I had kids a
(00:21):
couple years ago, I frankly havefallen off, to be totally
honest. I think I'm back ontrack now. Everything's pretty
much ramping back up to a 100%in terms of my writing and my
content and all of that.
This is really cool. I genuinelylike this and wanna hang out
with these people. Like, theseare my people as an entrepreneur
and a creator and someone whowants to live and create and
build at the speed of cuttingedge technology. There is a time
(00:44):
and place for hard work behindthe scenes. There are periods
where quiet and patience andsteady work without fanfare are
the appropriate mode.
What's going on everybody? Iwanna talk to you today about
Urbit. Urbit is the radicaltechnology project to basically
create a whole new Internet.This is a project that I got
(01:06):
very interested in a few yearsback. And for about a year or
two, I was talking about it aton.
I was really excited by it, andI wanted to help it. I wanted to
help it grow, and I became goodfriends with a lot of people in
that ecosystem, and just kind ofgot really into it. Then at a
certain point, I stopped talkingabout it. I think some people
maybe wonder about why that is.And also, people are probably
(01:28):
just curious about what's goingon with the network.
It's gone through quite a lot ofinteresting ups and downs in the
past few years. It's been apretty crazy story, actually. So
I just feel like it's time forme to reflect a little bit on
Urbit. And partially, I want toshare with you what's been going
on with it in the past fewyears. I've just been close to
(01:48):
it all, and I can tell thatstory in an honest way that's
interesting for people to hearabout and learn about.
But also, I learned a lot, Ithink, in the past few years
about technology projects, andabout markets, and sentiment,
and the difficulties ofassessing things, and
expectations, and timelines, andthings like this. So I feel like
(02:09):
it's a really interesting set ofexperiences to reflect on. I
think I've learned a lot, and Iwanna use this as an opportunity
to share where Urban has beensince I first started talking
about it in the past few years.But also to kind of note some
surprises in my own mind, andhow I've updated my own mental
model about urbit in its owncase, but also about radical
(02:31):
technology projects like urbitmore generally. What I find most
interesting and exciting rightnow, as it happens, I've been
quietly working pretty closelywith a startup that came out of
the Urbit ecosystem.
This is the Zorp Corporation,radical technology project. Very
similar mission, similar vision,I would say. And it's a lot of
the Urbit people, so it's thesame kind of DNA. But it's a
(02:52):
very different model that theyhave in mind, and what they're
trying to build is fundamentallydistinct and different. I've
actually been working with them.
I'm pretty much on the team atthis point. I've been running
their content operations quietlyfor the past year. I haven't
talked about that at all,actually, because, well, for
certain reasons that have to dowith how I've learned and
certain updates I've made to myown mental model of how media
(03:14):
and technology really shouldinteract. I think I kind of
decided at a certain point, if Ibelieve in something, I should
work quietly on it behind thescenes and not necessarily bang
the drum publicly. Not thatthere's anything wrong with
that.
I think if you believe insomething, you should do that
also. I just, in my own personalcase, I think I got very excited
about Urbit, and I was bangingthe drum a ton. And I don't
(03:37):
regret that at all. I mean, Istill really like Urbit. I'm
super proud to, you know, beassociated with Urbit.
A lot of people associate mewith Urbit. I still think it's
very possible and maybe evenprobable that Urbit, you know,
takes over the world someday. Ithink I've updated my model of
that in in a few crucial ways,which I do want to kind of
reflect on with you and sharewith you. But my basic view
(03:57):
remains the same. I'm just anenthusiastic guy.
I get really into things. Andwhen I get carried away, like to
have fun with it and go hard andtalk about it and whatever. So
that's fine. But I definitely,looking back on it, I think I
was a little overexcited oncertain things. Miscalculated on
certain things.
The interesting thing aboutmarkets and startups is that
(04:17):
these are empirical realities.There's a history. You can track
your thesis, and you canevaluate whether you were right
or wrong, and how you were rightor wrong based on what actually
happens. And in the case ofUrbit, really interesting things
actually happen. So you have tokind of do that work of going
back over and thinking, what didI think at this point?
And how was I right or wrong?And so I haven't talked about
Urban in a few years. And so,well, I I mean, I haven't talked
(04:40):
about much in a few years,frankly. I had kids a couple
years ago, and I frankly havefallen off, to be totally
honest. I I think I'm back ontrack now.
Everything's pretty much rampingback up to a 100% in terms of my
writing and my content and allof that. But I fell off. I'm not
gonna not gonna mince wordsabout that. And so I stopped
talking about a lot of things.Just about everything, to be
fair, for a couple years, whileI kind of learned how to have
(05:01):
small children.
Anyway, I'm back up for air now.I want to kind of do a full
accounting of where everything'sbeen in the past few years. Hey,
everybody. Real quick. I finallyfinished writing my latest book,
The Independent Scholar, andit's the best thing I've
written, the most importantthing I've written because it
compiles everything I've learnedover the past five years
figuring out this new lifestyleslash business model of mine
(05:22):
working full time as anindependent scholar outside of
institutions and on theInternet.
Since I left academia five yearsago, I've been experimenting
like crazy, testing alldifferent kinds of things. I've
done books and courses andsubscriptions, and I've tried it
all. I've tested every model,and I've learned so much. I've
made so many mistakes, but I'vealso done things well. And I've
(05:44):
earned a few $100,000 doing allthese different things.
Now I've really got the modeldown, the ideal model. I've
narrowed it down to what worksthe best and what's most
reproducible for most people.Just a super practical focused
book, what works and whatdoesn't work in the most concise
and practical format possible.So buy it. Order it now online
at otherlife.co/scholar.
(06:07):
You can also just search for theindependent scholar book. Maybe
add Justin Murphy in there ifyou want to find it more easily.
Otherlife.co/scholar. Go by TheIndependent Scholar, the ideal
model. Everything I've learnedover the past five years working
full time as an independentscholar.
Thank you. I'm very proud of it.Otherlife.co/scholar. So when I
(06:29):
first seriously learned aboutUrbit, when I really studied it
and grokked it, I judged it tobe a underrated project, which
was being kind of systematicallyunderpriced for specifiable
reasons. I wrote a long essayback at this time about why I
(06:50):
thought that was happening andthe examples of that that I was
seeing.
At the same time, I was meetinga lot of the people in this
ecosystem, and they were supercool, just really smart people
who I genuinely really like.They were just like me in a lot
of ways. And I would be remissto not point out that there's
also this kind of high energy,somewhat euphoric crypto market
(07:13):
happening in the background. Andat the time, I think I did not
appreciate how much that wascoloring my perceptions. But in
retrospect, I think that willend up being one of the bigger
lessons I take away from thosecouple of years.
Basically, there were a lot ofrandom people making tons of
money by just being a part ofsome random ecosystem, some
(07:37):
blockchain this or token that.And most of which was nonsense.
Like, was genuinely a lot of itwas total BS. And I'm looking at
that, and remember, I'm freshout of academia. I had just left
my career, which I was sort ofensconced in for my entire adult
life.
I've never been exposed tomarkets in my entire life. So
(07:59):
I'm coming out of that. I'mnavigating the world. I'm
looking to see what'sinteresting. It just so happens
that the world is in this kindof crazy period where a bunch of
random people are creating allkinds of weird technologies,
dubious technologies, many ofwhich seem to be literally
nothing.
They're getting all thisattention. They're getting all
these users. In some cases,they're making all this money.
(08:22):
And I can see that a lot of itis just nonsense. And then I
come across Urbit and I'm like,okay, no one's really talking
about this yet.
This seems actually really smartand interesting and cool. And
I'm meeting the people andthey're genuinely really smart.
I found an underpriced gem. AndI was like, this is really cool.
(08:43):
And if all of that other stuffis finding success and spreading
like wildfire, and people aremaking money and building cool
things and things are takingoff, and a lot of that is crap,
and I found this thing that'slike underrated, underpriced,
and actually genuinely reallycool, well, I could just help
this thing find its proper leveland get it more understood by
(09:06):
people.
And we bring on more users. Andthe cool thing about crypto and
that whole promise ofpermissionless economies is
precisely that you can findsomething early, and you can get
involved, and you can get yourhands dirty. And at the same
time, you can kind of put yourmoney where your mouth is, and
help bring things into theworld, and get exposure at the
same time. And you know, it'sfunny. I mean, I remember being
(09:27):
quite inspired by MichaelSaylor.
I have no pretensions to beingsome kind of big businessman or
anything like that. But justit's an interesting example.
This guy loaded up on Bitcoinand then just went around the
world being a really goodarticulate proponent of Bitcoin,
and did very well for himselfdoing this. And at least so far,
we'll see how that pans out. ButI just thought this was very
(09:50):
cool, and admirable, and he'ssharp, he's intelligent, and
he's a hustler.
And I remember thinking like,man, that's really inspiring and
interesting. If you'reinterested in social science.
Right? And if you're interestedin having a unique model of the
world that you think is maybeone or 2% more correct than the
(10:11):
conventional model, well thenyou should be able to bet on
that. Right?
And you should be able to makeinteresting things happen that
other people can't. Right? Andso that was very much the
background here. The backgroundkind of conditions, the things
that I'm seeing and feeling whenI encounter Urbit. And so that
was what made me feel inspired.
And I was like, this is anunderpriced gem. This is really
(10:33):
cool. I genuinely like this andwanna hang out with these
people. Like, these are mypeople, whether this project
succeeds or not. And I have anewsletter and a and a, you
know, YouTube and podcast.
So I'm just gonna throw myweight behind this, and let's
try to make this thing real. Theother thing that was also that
it did seem to me objectively,and it seemed to many people in
the ecosystem at the time thatUrban was on the cusp of of
(10:55):
breaking out. For many reasons,it had just shipped. The network
had just shipped. So what seemedto be some pretty significant
kind of paradigm changingupgrades in the form of, for
instance, the app ecosystem.
So for the first time in Urbit'slike ten year history at the
time, anyone could build anUrbit app and ship it to the
(11:15):
network, and everyone else couldfind it, and download it, and
use it, and people could findeach other on those apps. This
is pretty cool. And inprinciple, it worked. Like that
was shipped, and that wasdelivered at right around the
time that I'm kind of reallygetting into it. So I'm like,
wow, this is genuinely reallyamazing and impressive.
All we really need is morepeople to use this network, and
then we need startups to buildon it, and then capital will
(11:37):
flow into this space, and thenmore people will find out about
it, and it'll become moreuseful, and then more people
will be wanna be on it, and stayon it. And so it, you know, it
was very plausible at the timeto see Urbit as on the brink of
a flywheel. So all of theseconsiderations are in the
background and feeding into myperception and evaluation of
Urbit. And my decision to throwmy weight behind it and make it
(11:58):
something I was sharing aboutit, analyzing it, and talking
about it. And I tried to buildon it as well, like my own
community and stuff like that.
I'm not a software engineer oranything, but even software
actually. Commissioned somesoftware on there, did these
different interestingexperiments, because this is
what was so cool about it, isthe promise of kind of
decentralized, kind of communitybased software development and
things like this. So I wasreally doing all this. Oh, and
(12:19):
by the way, people have asked methis here and there over the
years. I was never being paid byUrbit.
First of all, Urbit isn't Urbitis just the name of this
decentralized ecosystem. Urbitis not an entity per se. So
there was no one who could payme to talk about Urbit. I came
across it totally on my own, gotpassionate about it totally on
my own, and started writing andtalking about it because I
thought I found something reallycool, I wanted to talk about it.
(12:41):
And I thought I understoodsomething better than other
people that people had notcaught onto yet.
So I found that naturallymotivating and interesting to
share and develop my ideasaround it. I was given a few
stars at some point, like a fewjunctures. I was given stars,
like as a gift from the UrbanFoundation or whoever, because
that's what all ecosystems do tokind of just reward valuable
(13:02):
contributors, basically. Butthose were just retroactive
grants, and they never totaledto too much. I mean, in the
world of urban investors, I'mlike, I assure you, nothing.
I just have a handful of starsto this day. And I did buy a few
myself as well. Oh, this is anunderpriced gem. I'm gonna try
to throw my weight behind it. Ibought a few at that point.
But remember, I never had anymoney. I was an academic. So I
(13:24):
had I think I bought a couple ofstars when I first got into it
myself. Then later after, youknow, becoming like a pretty
valuable contributor, I mean, Idid a lot of stuff. Like, I, you
know, brought a lot of peopleonto the network, and really
helped a lot of peopleunderstand it.
You go into an Urban Meetuptoday, and a good fraction of
the people there will say thatthey found out about it through
me. So it makes sense that theygifted me some stars. Anyway, I
(13:46):
was never paid by Urbit. Youcan't be paid by Urbit. I did,
at then another point, starteddoing some consulting for like,
Urbit Startups.
And that moment of UrbanStartups is its own story that I
wanna get into next. So at acertain point, I was hired by a
company here or there to helpwith their internal stuff, like
messaging, marketing, and thatkind of stuff. Even that was
only a handful of months,really. And those startups did
(14:10):
not work out. And that's a keypart of the story, which we'll
get to in a minute.
But just wanted to respond tothat, because a couple of people
had asked me this when I metthem over the years. And that
made me actually realize like,wow, I actually really did help
Urban a lot by talking about itso much, Because That people
actually thought I was likebeing paid. I must have been
doing a good job. Oh, and by theway, I still own the
(14:30):
overwhelming majority of all thestars that I've ever owned. So I
never made any money on Urbanaddress space.
I've I've held them all, and Istill hold them. I think I've
sold a couple here and there,but very, very few. The address
space went quite high in valueat a certain point in the kind
of bull run of the cryptomarket, and then totally went
(14:52):
down. The address space has beenreally destroyed in the past few
years. So let's try tounderstand why that is.
What happened? What went wrong?Let's go to the startup period,
we'll call it. There was aperiod where three or four
startups raised money to buildcompanies on top of Urban. These
(15:15):
were a few different projects.
One was a layer two blockchainproject, Lookbar. One was a
consumer social product,Hollium. One was originally a
kind of consumer creatorproject, Terrell. They were
going to do kind of like aSubstack type product on Urbit
(15:35):
and Payment Rails. I'm deep intoUrbit at this time.
As I said, I was sort of, youknow, doing a little bit of
advising or consulting withinsome of these companies. And
what I got to kind of seefirsthand, personally, was that
basically, in every case, eachcompany eventually determined
(15:56):
that they could not do what theywanted to do on Urbit. And each
project eventually defected, anddecided to go a separate way.
Because of limitations of thecore Urbit network. I think in
some cases, the issues had to dowith speed, speed of one kind or
(16:17):
another being an insufficient.
I think in other cases, the overthe air updates, I think were
pretty brutal, if I recallcorrectly. I mean, experienced
this firsthand myself multipletimes, just as being the host of
a active group, and running someof my own ships, and and even
just with the limited things Iwas maintaining on Urbit. The
(16:37):
over the air updates are whenthe whole network basically
upgrades itself, and theseupdates have to propagate
through the system. In an idealworld, that all just happens
behind the scenes, andeverything just works the next
day. In practice, virtuallyeverything would break, is my
memory of it.
At least a handful of times.Like, I'm not sure about how
(16:59):
that system is doing right now,but there was a year or so where
every time there was an over theair update, basically, it was
just a nightmare for anyonemaintaining serious applications
on the network. And I think thatwas not planned. That I think
people were not expecting it tobe that rough, and I think that
was one example of one of theunderlying issues. I think a lot
(17:25):
of us were too optimistic aboutthe state of the underlying
network.
And one of the most interestingdevelopments since then is that
the founder, the inventor ofUrbit, Curtis Jargon, who you
might know from other contexts,as a writer, he's on my podcast
a while back, interestingthinker and writer in his own
respect. He stepped back intothe project, and he is now the
(17:48):
leader of Urbit. So this is veryinteresting. I don't think
anyone was expecting this. Hehad officially and completely
withdrawn from the thing that hecreated, and he was brought back
through investors, decided thatsomething drastic had to be
done, and you had to bring thefounder back to right the ship.
That happened only within thepast year. If you listen to what
(18:10):
he has said since coming back, Ithink he's made it pretty clear
that everyone got ahead of theirskis, and that the network was
not sufficiently developed andnot sufficiently advanced and
hardened, and that it wasperhaps too soon to have
startups trying to raise moneyand build on this thing. Of
(18:31):
course, that's easier to say inretrospect after that appears to
have been the case. But I thinkhe's right there. I think it is
just an ineluctable inferencethat that moment where we all
thought that there were going tobe startups building on Urbit,
and bringing new capital, andbringing more users, and
(18:51):
improving the experience at anaccelerating rate.
That moment, I think thatexpectation was just
miscalculated, I think. Nowthere's another key variable in
all of this, which is the cryptomarket. And at one point in this
cycle, the Urban address space,the kind of investable asset
that trades on the market wentup quite high. Like if I
(19:15):
remember correctly, I think anUrban Star was worth like
something like $20,000 or more,maybe. Now it's like closer to
like 1,000 or something likethat.
The reason that this matters isthat the value of the asset has
a huge psychological effect oneverything, basically. Urbit was
actually one of the firstserious projects to use NFTs, to
(19:38):
actually be built on NFTs. TheUrbit identity system is built
on Ethereum, and it was done soway before it was cool, way
before the trendy appreciationof NFT assets that happened a
few years back. It was waybefore that that the decision
was made to put the identitysystem on Ethereum functionally
as NFTs. And so again, back atthat time when I'm coming across
(19:59):
this stuff for the first time,I'm like, this is so much proof
that this really is a kind ofvisionary project, like five
steps ahead of everything else.
It sort of understood NFTsbefore they were even cool. I
was like, this is all incrediblesetup. And when the world
realizes how promising thisproject is, these assets are
(20:22):
going to go through the roof.That's going to make more people
pay attention. That's going togive developers more money to
play with.
That's going to bring in moreinvestors. That's going to bring
in more startups trying to dostuff, and it would be this kind
of, you know, positive feedbackloop. And so, when the startup
part of that feedback loopfailed, it was followed by
(20:45):
gradually descent of the valueof the address space. That alone
doesn't necessarily tell youanything about the value or the
promise of the product.Especially because the
implementation of the identitysystem was established before we
had very sophisticated mentalmodels of tokenomics.
(21:06):
It was not designed in a way tomake the price go up. Nothing
about Urbit was designed to makethe price go up. In the way that
nowadays, with all of thelessons learned through, you
know, a few crypto cycles now,you can design token projects in
very clever and sophisticatedways that almost guarantee the
price goes up in certain ways.You can be very strategic and
(21:28):
clever about that, and if youexecute properly, you can launch
absolutely crap products thathave no original engineering,
that have no vision at all, thatdo nothing really. And if the
tokenomics are engineeredcorrectly, a bunch of people can
make a lot of money doingthrough this kind of tokenomic
engineering.
All of Urbit and its NFT layerwas built and designed before
(21:51):
there was any strategiccalculation around tokenomics.
And so this came to really hurtUrbit because it is just the
fact that emotions and marketvalues are strong variables in
this whole game of gettingusers, and winning hearts and
minds, and then winning morecapital, and getting that
(22:12):
flywheel going. And so despitelacking tokenomics, the Urban
Atro space pumps up quite wellat one point. Stars are worth
like more than $20,000 each.That's obviously really
exciting.
But then when that goes down, Ithink it goes down more brutally
than almost any other cryptoproject. So that now, right now,
(22:36):
I think you can actually makethe case that Urbit is once
again the most undervaluedcrypto project out there. I
actually think that's evenpossibly more true now because
it's been sort of overlypunished by its failure to make
good on its initial hype cycle.And so once the startups decided
(23:00):
that they could not build onUrbit, and then the address
space gradually declined toreally painfully low level. I
think that's when I kind ofpersonally was like, okay.
However strong and promisingthis project might be, it's
clearly not going to blow up inthe short term, which is what I
(23:22):
wanted to happen. And that wasmy mental model of the world at
that time, to be clear. That wasmy thesis explicitly. It was
now's the perfect time. Thisthing could really work.
It's awesome and underrated.Let's get attention on it. Let's
get capital flowing into thespace. Let's get startups
building on it, and let's getusers to grow. And if we do all
of those things right now, thenI think this could take over the
(23:44):
world.
Like now. Starting now.Obviously, that would be a
process to take over the world,but it could really kick off
starting right now. Once thestartups quit, and the address
space deflated, I think at thatpoint, it was clear that my
thesis was wrong, and that wasnot going to happen in the short
term. This says nothing aboutUrbet's ability to succeed in
(24:05):
the long term or even the mediumterm, especially now that Curtis
is back at you know, that's abig variable.
Who knows what could happenmoving forward? I wouldn't I'm
not counting Urbet out at all.I'm just updating on the past up
till this point, and trying tobe honest and and and
transparent about what mythinking was and what actually
happened. Now, what'sinteresting about this whole
(24:26):
story is that in many ways sincethat time, urbit has actually
made great strides. So I shouldpoint out that urbit now has a
really good iPhone app thatanyone can get, and anyone can
get on the network on theirphone in a very normal,
traditional social media websitetype experience.
And they can get their ownpersonal server running on on
(24:49):
the internet, and they can bechatting and talking with a kind
of Signal like or Telegram likeexperience on their phone pretty
quickly and easily. And it'spretty fast. It works pretty
smoothly. It's not quite signalor telegram in terms of speed
and reliability, but it isactually surprisingly close, and
much, much better than it waseven when I got really into
(25:09):
Urbit. So all of these littlesubtle ways, Urban continues to
actually improve objectively.
And with Curtis taking back thereins, there's really no telling
what could happen with goodleadership and with a new
direction. And it's really anopportunity to recreate a whole
new narrative and bootstrap awhole new period of growth and
(25:30):
perception around Urbit. So itcould just be the case that
Urbit is going to requireanother twenty years. It's not
crazy to think that. If you lookat something like Linux, you
know, from the beginning to itseventual success and domination,
it was at least twenty years.
Some great projects do just takea very long time. It's obviously
(25:52):
not a traditional startup. Itsstructure is not that of a
startup. Its vision is not thatreally of a startup. And what
it's trying to do is reallytruly so bold that, in
retrospect, maybe it just makessense that it needs to take a
ton of time.
And I was just foolish forthinking that it could be done
so quickly. So, that's the mainway that I've updated my mental
model about urbit, frankly. Toput it simply, is I actually
(26:15):
don't think my judgment orevaluation of the project was
fundamentally wrong in any wayexcept the timeline. I think I
was overly optimistic about thetimeline. I was euphoric, in
part due to a market environmentthat I was utterly naive to and
green towards.
I had never been in a bullmarket. I had never owned any
assets at all, basically, letalone owning a couple assets
(26:38):
that were appreciating rapidly.Here I'm just talking about like
a little bit of Bitcoin, alittle bit of Ethereum at that
time. I'm watching the numberson my little ledger wallet grow
really fast. And it was thefirst time I've ever seen that
happen on my computer in any ofmy accounts in my life.
I did not realize how much thatwas affecting my perception of
(26:58):
everything, basically. So that'sthe lesson that I learned. Those
are the main lessons that I'vetaken away from it all. In that
context, there's just not reallyanything for me to do with Urbit
right now, or there's no realway for me. I can't really
recruit developers through mymedia, which I was doing
actually, like pretty well even.
To this day, I mean, are highranking Urbit engineers in the
(27:20):
ecosystem who found out about itthrough me, and got into it
through me. I can't really dothat kind of contribution right
now, because it seemsobjectively like it's not ready
yet. And I still host acommunity on urbit, but again,
it's taking a very long time forUrbit to just have a user
(27:41):
experience that is even on parwith a simple chat app like
Signal or Telegram. So, youknow, as an entrepreneur and a
creator, and someone who, youknow, wants to live and create
and build at the speed ofcutting edge technology, I was
really down to get my handsdirty and work with Urbit and
(28:02):
build things on Urbit when Isaw, in my mind, a clear
trajectory to doing thatcollaboratively with the
ecosystem in a way that couldbootstrap it into the Urbit
takeover. Like, so long as Icould see even a plausible model
to bet on the Urbit takeover,was down to get my hands dirty
and try things and try to buildthings, and even bring people on
(28:25):
and try to build my owncommunity structures there.
But at this moment, it's hard tosee how ERBT has that kind of
takeoff opportunity in the shortterm. I can't really justify to
myself or to other people, youknow, why they should jump
through these other hoops to getonto this system When I can't
(28:48):
really do that much on thesystem yet, it still does have
these issues. I mean, when I wastrying to build my community on
Urbit, I'm not even talkingabout some fancy software
engineering project, but justtrying to host and grow a
community and do differentthings on there, like courses
and meetings for my ownbusiness. It was pretty painful.
(29:08):
Like, there was just constantlittle hang ups, basically.
And it was kind of death by athousand paper cuts. Like the
OTAs, for instance, were prettybrutal on me. Like there were
whole days, whole weeks even,where like, you know, I'm an
entrepreneur. I'm not likerolling in the dough or
anything. And I'm personallytrying to solve pretty technical
(29:28):
challenges.
I just couldn't really make itwork economically and personally
to really keep using it for myown serious work. And so that's
why I haven't really talkedabout it. Because I haven't
wanted to you know, I still loveUrban, and still love all the
people. And I never wanted it toseem like I was, you know,
bringing it down or beingnegative or whatever when, you
(29:51):
know, people were working reallyhard to keep things moving. But
now it's just a natural momentright now where the address
space could not be lower in themarket.
Curtis has just taken over, andthere was a major leadership
reshuffling. So everything'sbeen reset. There are rumors
circulating about a few other,you know, positive developments,
(30:15):
which I won't confirm or denybecause I have nothing to do
with them. Basically, manypossible ways in which the whole
project gets reset andrelaunched and revivified, but
right now is a natural kind ofresetting period. So it's a good
time, I think, to come up forair and share all of these
stories and reflections.
(30:36):
So then it was about a year ago,a little bit more than a year
ago now, that I was approachedby one of my Urbit friends,
Logan Allen, who was building astartup as well. He actually was
one of the co founders ofTerrell, the company that was
initially going to do kind ofsub stack plus payment rails
operation on Urbit. They raisedmoney to do that. And somewhere
(31:00):
along that process, he had somereally harebrained realizations
about the value of Urbit'sprogramming language, the lower
level language of NOC, themachine code language, the
instruction set, as they callit. He had some crazy
realizations that this wasreally uniquely good for zero
(31:22):
knowledge proofs.
And zero knowledge proofs, in myestimation, represent one of the
most singular and specificvectors of transformative
sovereignty technology outthere. It's sort of it's
obviously within the field ofcryptography, but it's sort of
better to even think about it assomething different than crypto.
(31:44):
It's a very specific scientificand technical discovery, this
concept of zero knowledgeproofs, how to do them, how to
make them, and what they meanand how they work. This is a
kind of discovery withincryptography that could very
well end up being as significantas what we now call crypto more
generally, or let's saydistributed ledgers, like
(32:04):
Bitcoin or whatnot. So this isnot a video all about zero
knowledge proofs, but you'reprobably familiar with the basic
intuition.
A zero knowledge proof basicallylets you prove something without
actually revealing theunderlying information. You
could, for instance, prove thatyou have a certain amount of
money in your bank accountwithout giving anyone the actual
numbers in your bank account.You could also prove that an
(32:26):
entire software program that youbuilt does what it says it does,
and it doesn't do anything else.You could prove this in a very
tiny little piece of data. Soyou can actually prove something
about a huge mass of data, witha proof that is only very, very
tiny.
The size of the proof is more orless constant, no matter how
(32:49):
much data you're kind ofcompressing. It increases a very
tiny bit, with huge increases ofdata. And so it has this
extraordinary kind ofcompression value, but also this
extraordinary political andsociological value as well. It
pretty much turns upside downeverything that we currently
(33:09):
assume about sharing data on theInternet. What's most
interesting about zero knowledgeproofs is that no one has really
built a fundamentallycivilization changing economic
engine around these things.
Like Bitcoin, for instance, isthis ingenious contraption. It's
this sociotechnical game thatorganizes some cryptographic
(33:35):
primitives in such an ingeniousway that a self perpetuating and
self enforcing monetary assetemerges as a result, and kind of
bootstraps its own value. Gavecrypto an economic engine that
actually made it spread out intothe world. It actually changed
(33:55):
the nature of how we think aboutmoney, and how people store
their money. And that's nowhaving continuing ripples into
financial institutions morebroadly, which are still playing
out.
They're only beginning to playout. So zero knowledge proofs
are relatively new. They've onlybeen around for a decade or two.
I think Naval Ravikant tweetednot too long ago that the future
(34:19):
of human freedom depends on zeroknowledge proofs. So this idea
is already in the ether, but wedon't yet know how this
technology is going to bemobilized.
How is it actually going toenter into our everyday
computing systems, and intoinstitutional data transmission
(34:40):
pipelines of various sorts? Thatis actually very hard to see,
and I don't think many peoplehave a very strong thesis as to
how to do that. Logan comes tome more than a year ago now, and
says that they're going to justbuild a new blockchain from
scratch, And it's going to beengineered to pretty much do to
(35:03):
zero knowledge proving whatBitcoin did for money, is one
way to think about it. And thequestion is, can you create an
economic game, a protocol thatgame theoretically mobilizes
different parties, such asminers, to actually just produce
way more zero knowledge proofs,and to competitively do it, to
(35:24):
optimize their hardware to doit, and to indirectly create
around it a whole larger economyof zero knowledge proving. And
if you could build such a game,if you could build this protocol
that gets a large number ofpeople competitively optimizing
hardware to do zero knowledgeproving, well then, guess what?
(35:47):
Maybe then, you could startplugging computers into that.
People could start buildingsoftware that leverages zero
knowledge proofs. Maybe they'reposting those proofs to that
blockchain. Maybe they're usingthat blockchain in the long run
as a kind of communicationmedium, basically. And anything
you want to interact with thepublic world, you compress into
(36:08):
zero knowledge proofs, post itto the chain, and other parties
will be able to do with it onlywhat they are entitled to do
with it.
Now, this is all more abstractand long term. I'm just painting
a picture. But in the shortterm, what is more concrete and
specific is Bitcoin, of course,is a proof of work chain. This
means you have to expendelectricity energy to do
(36:28):
computational puzzles in orderto successfully mine Bitcoin,
and this is how the chainachieves consensus and security.
But the question has been, canyou do this with zero knowledge
proofs?
Can you merge, basically, orblend zero knowledge proving
with proof of work? I got tospeak personally with a leading,
I mean, top of the linecryptography researcher not too
(36:51):
long ago, and he told me that ZKPowell is pretty much the holy
grail right now. And this ispretty much what Logan came to
me, saying that he thinks he hasa way to do this using knock.
And that if it can be done withknock, it might actually be
better and faster than a lot ofthe current state of the art
technologies for ZK proving. Andso it's very difficult to put a
(37:15):
probability on these outcomes.
Right? Startups areintrinsically risky and
uncertain. But Logan came to mewith this proposition more than
a year ago, and he asked me if Iwould help out with the
messaging and the branding andthe content strategy and the
publishing. And over the pastyear, we actually managed to
build a pretty sizable audience,including a lot of fairly elite
(37:36):
opinion makers and players inthe space. And over all that
time, they worked on theproduct, and it now looks like
they're getting ready to launcha totally novel blockchain, a
zero knowledge proof of workblockchain.
And I haven't really talkedabout it too much for really two
reasons. One is just that I'veactually been working pretty
hard with them and for them. Andso now that I'm a slow middle
(37:58):
aged father, I have beenstruggling to do much else,
frankly. The other reason is, Iwould say a lesson that I
learned from my years workingclosely within the urban
ecosystem, which is just thatI'm a little bit more measured,
I think, around radicaltechnology projects. Like,
they're intrinsically risky,intrinsically difficult, and
(38:19):
everyone knows that moststartups fail.
It's just a basic statisticalfact. And I just don't want to
be a hype man for anything,really. Which is not to say I'm
not willing to put my name onthings. I certainly am. I just
think that there is a time andplace for hard work behind the
scenes.
There are periods where quiet,and patience, and steady work
(38:42):
without fanfare are theappropriate mode. And then there
are times where you turn on themedia, and you bang the drum,
and you go to war in the public.And as I said, I have no regrets
about my time banging the drumfor Urbit. I mean, I still think
Urbit is super cool. So I reallydon't regret it, but I
definitely have to admit that Iwas overzealous.
(39:03):
My sense of the timeline wasbadly calibrated. Then you have
to be measured, and you can'tjust go around promoting. I
mean, when you look at SiliconValley culture, it is one of the
worst things about that world.In some ways, the American
technology sector is becoming akind of counter institution to
the East Coast academicinstitutions in certain ways.
(39:28):
They're kind of a new patron ofarts and letters.
They have their own kind ofintellectual organs emerging.
There's a very interestinglarger story there to be told
that hasn't really been toldyet. But one of the biggest
drawbacks of that new pull ofcultural power is that everyone
is always talking their book.And VCs and founders are often
(39:51):
very smart people, but theoverwhelming majority of all
words emitted by this largercollection of individuals is
almost always hot air. It'salmost all hot air.
I mean, the smartest VCs inAmerican technology are some of
the smartest people in theworld. Some incredibly sharp,
courageous, and bold thinkers.But the bottom 90% of VCs and
(40:15):
founders who are doing any kindof public thought leadership are
many of the most flimsy andmotivated public figures in the
world. Almost statistically, isthe case because we know that,
you know, 95% of startups fail.You know, I do think that more
and more writers and thinkersand kind of post academics, such
(40:40):
as myself, will find interestinghomes for themselves
sociologically and economically.
And many of those homes will bemuch better in every way than a
lot of the homes thatcontemporary institutional
academics have, is verydifficult. And the way to do
that has not yet been determinedby anyone. That playbook has not
been figured out. It's verylive, and very new, and it's
(41:04):
very riddled with risks, andtemptations. And I think this is
one of the biggest, which isjust that it's very tempting and
very easy on some level tobecome a kind of professional
spokesman or hype man for anynumber of projects.
You could do this one projectafter another. Each one fails.
Keep going to the next one.Like, if you're articulate and
(41:25):
smart, you can absolutely, youknow, get jobs doing this kind
of stuff where you're just kindof hired to promote things and
hype things. And when one thingfails, you go on to the next
one.
And if your calling in life isto be a thoughtful, honest
writer and thinker, and you havethis long term creative project
to study the world, but also tofind alpha, and to exploit that
(41:46):
alpha, and to throw your weightbehind things that you believe
in when you believe in them, Youalso want to be honest, and
authentic, and trustworthy atall times. You better be really
careful. You know what I mean?This is like a new type of
personality, a new type of role,and these are new types of
synthetic, creative, andeconomic partnerships, and
(42:08):
collaborations that are nowarising and emerging. And there
are many examples of this kindof thing.
You can point to many, but it'sstill very unthoughtful and
unconscious in many ways. It'sbeing figured out
experimentally. And I am justsaying that in my own
experiments so far. If I'minterested in a project, and I
personally believe it's worthpaying attention to, and it's
(42:31):
worth working on, and it couldactually be really big, and the
people doing it are legit, andhonest, and hardworking, and I
can see the promise and thepotential, and I judge it to be
worth your time or attention,then I should spend my own time
and effort and attentionprivately for a long time before
I'm hyping it or telling otherpeople about it or representing
(42:53):
it in any way. And that's kindof the mistake I made with
urbit.
And that's my own mistake.That's not urbit's mistake.
That's me. Like, I got into it.I got passionate and
enthusiastic.
And then I just sort of wenthard in the paint, trying to get
new users, trying to tell peopleabout this thing, trying to help
it blow up. But if I spent ayear trying to build a startup
on it first, then I probablywould have been humbled. And
(43:17):
then I might not have gotten soeuphoric. And then I might not
have miscalculated the timelinesand my expectations in the ways
that I think I did miscalculatethem. So, that's why I've been
working quietly with Zorp.
And I'm super proud of my rolemy humble role in the company. I
think we've written somethingmore like more than 50 blog
posts or something once a week,every week, for more than a
(43:40):
year. And I wrote all ofSomething like 30 or 40 of them
are actually just totallyoriginal creative essays in
philosophy and history andanthropology that I just cooked
up myself, basically, incollaboration with Logan and in
conversation with him over manythings. Some of them are more
motivated by some of his ideashe shared with me. Some of them
are of my own creation, SuiGeneris.
(44:02):
But obviously, Logan and I seethings similarly, and we have a
lot of shared references. So hejust gave me full freedom,
basically, to build aperspective around technology,
and our kind of shared values.And for many of them, just let
me go wild. And we've actuallybuilt an audience, and I'm it's
pretty cool. Like, to have donethat anonymously, I did that
(44:23):
from scratch organically.
We actually built a little cultfollowing, and, you know, we had
a party a few months back inAustin, and a lot of people came
out. So it was pretty specialexperience to be able to do that
from scratch without my name,you know? And now they're
getting ready to launch, andit's super exciting. It's nerve
racking because they're hopingto launch imminently. If they
(44:45):
launch and this thing if thismachine works, it's a really
crazy achievement andaccomplishment.
I'm not close enough to theengineering to understand any of
the details, but as far as Iknow, this thing is coming
together. And I mean, if theybring into the world a zero
knowledge proof of workblockchain from scratch, there's
really no telling what thatcould eventually grow into. The
(45:06):
long term implications of thatare every bit as vertiginous,
and exhilarating as the longterm promises of Erbit. And in
many ways, these are the samepromises. The long term vision
and goals are very much thesame.
It's just a very difficultquestion about how to get there,
and what kinds of machines andgames does one have to build, in
(45:29):
what order to actually bringthat vision into the world
concretely. I have no ideawhat's gonna happen. I'm
obviously bullish and excited,and I wouldn't be working with
them so closely for so long if Iwasn't. But that's basically
where I'm sitting right now, andwhat I'm seeing in this current
state of radical sovereigntytechnology. Whether it's Erbit,
(45:50):
or it's Nocturne, or maybe theyboth win, or maybe they, in some
ways, become symbiotic in waysthat can't be fully foreseen.
These are questions that anyonecan guess about. But I've tried
to share with you how I seethings, how things have unfolded
in my eyes, the judgments andthe theses I've had at different
junctures, and what I've learnedfrom my experiences in this
(46:12):
space, and thinking prettycarefully about these issues as
deeply as I can, you know, forseveral years now. Nocturne is a
permissionless protocol thatanyone can mine. It's being
launched as a fair launch. Sothat means there is no pre
mined.
Meaning, every single token thatis ever minted into existence on
(46:33):
the NOK chain will be given tominers who competitively use
their computational power tosolve the proof of work puzzles
on chain. And everyone in theworld has a chance to start
mining on the very same day. Andso it is truly this kind of
crazy, wide open,permissionless, and extremely
(46:55):
fair game that is being put intothe world by Zorp. And what
happens is anyone's guess. It'sone of the reasons it's so
interesting and wild is we don'tknow what's gonna happen.
Maybe no one's gonna mine. Maybea ton of people are gonna mine.
Maybe the thing will work. Maybethe thing will break. Obviously,
I'm bullish and super excited.
I wouldn't have given so mucheffort and time to it over the
(47:15):
past year and a half if Iwasn't. But it's just an
intrinsically risky, crazy game.It's one of the reasons why it's
so exciting. And I think also,frankly, it's one of the reasons
why we have a genuinely loyal,active audience base of people
who pay attention to us everyday, and care about what we're
doing, and care about what wesay, is because this is a wild
and unpredictable game. It'srisky and hard, and it's
(47:37):
ultimately an experiment thatwill be decided by empirical
reality.
So, yeah. You can actually mineon Mac minis. We have no idea
what is ultimately going to bethe best hardware that's going
to be settled by competition onthe network. But, at least for
when we launch, I'm told by theteam that, and it's in the FAQs,
that anyone with the Mac minican take a stab at mining and
(48:00):
getting NOx from the NOC chainfrom the day that it launches.
And everyone in the world has anequal shot at doing that at the
same time.
So, you can't really say thatabout many blockchains. In
addition to the reasons why thisfeels like a good time to come
up for air and reflect on Erbit,it also is a good time to come
up for air and reflect on whatI've been doing for the past
year with Nocturne. Now thatthey're getting ready to launch,
(48:22):
I'm quite proud to share alittle bit about what they've
been doing, what I've been doingwith them. And from here, it's
anyone's guess. Alright, I'llkeep you posted.
I'll let you know how things go.Thanks for listening everyone.
Subscribe to the channel,subscribe to the podcast, the
newsletter, whichever one youwant. Thanks, everyone. I
appreciate you.
I learned a lot, I think, the past few years
about technology projects andabout markets and sentiment and
the difficulties of assessingthings and expectations and
timelines. I think I kind ofdecided at a certain point, if I
believe in something, I shouldwork quietly on it behind the
scenes and not necessarily bangthe drum publicly. I had kids a
(00:21):
couple years ago, I frankly havefallen off, to be totally
honest. I think I'm back ontrack now. Everything's pretty
much ramping back up to a 100%in terms of my writing and my
content and all of that.
This is really cool. I genuinelylike this and wanna hang out
with these people. Like, theseare my people as an entrepreneur
and a creator and someone whowants to live and create and
build at the speed of cuttingedge technology. There is a time
(00:44):
and place for hard work behindthe scenes. There are periods
where quiet and patience andsteady work without fanfare are
the appropriate mode.
What's going on everybody? Iwanna talk to you today about
Urbit. Urbit is the radicaltechnology project to basically
create a whole new Internet.This is a project that I got
(01:06):
very interested in a few yearsback. And for about a year or
two, I was talking about it aton.
I was really excited by it, andI wanted to help it. I wanted to
help it grow, and I became goodfriends with a lot of people in
that ecosystem, and just kind ofgot really into it. Then at a
certain point, I stopped talkingabout it. I think some people
maybe wonder about why that is.And also, people are probably
(01:28):
just curious about what's goingon with the network.
It's gone through quite a lot ofinteresting ups and downs in the
past few years. It's been apretty crazy story, actually. So
I just feel like it's time forme to reflect a little bit on
Urbit. And partially, I want toshare with you what's been going
on with it in the past fewyears. I've just been close to
(01:48):
it all, and I can tell thatstory in an honest way that's
interesting for people to hearabout and learn about.
But also, I learned a lot, Ithink, in the past few years
about technology projects, andabout markets, and sentiment,
and the difficulties ofassessing things, and
expectations, and timelines, andthings like this. So I feel like
(02:09):
it's a really interesting set ofexperiences to reflect on. I
think I've learned a lot, and Iwanna use this as an opportunity
to share where Urban has beensince I first started talking
about it in the past few years.But also to kind of note some
surprises in my own mind, andhow I've updated my own mental
model about urbit in its owncase, but also about radical
(02:31):
technology projects like urbitmore generally. What I find most
interesting and exciting rightnow, as it happens, I've been
quietly working pretty closelywith a startup that came out of
the Urbit ecosystem.
This is the Zorp Corporation,radical technology project. Very
similar mission, similar vision,I would say. And it's a lot of
the Urbit people, so it's thesame kind of DNA. But it's a
(02:52):
very different model that theyhave in mind, and what they're
trying to build is fundamentallydistinct and different. I've
actually been working with them.
I'm pretty much on the team atthis point. I've been running
their content operations quietlyfor the past year. I haven't
talked about that at all,actually, because, well, for
certain reasons that have to dowith how I've learned and
certain updates I've made to myown mental model of how media
(03:14):
and technology really shouldinteract. I think I kind of
decided at a certain point, if Ibelieve in something, I should
work quietly on it behind thescenes and not necessarily bang
the drum publicly. Not thatthere's anything wrong with
that.
I think if you believe insomething, you should do that
also. I just, in my own personalcase, I think I got very excited
about Urbit, and I was bangingthe drum a ton. And I don't
(03:37):
regret that at all. I mean, Istill really like Urbit. I'm
super proud to, you know, beassociated with Urbit.
A lot of people associate mewith Urbit. I still think it's
very possible and maybe evenprobable that Urbit, you know,
takes over the world someday. Ithink I've updated my model of
that in in a few crucial ways,which I do want to kind of
reflect on with you and sharewith you. But my basic view
(03:57):
remains the same. I'm just anenthusiastic guy.
I get really into things. Andwhen I get carried away, like to
have fun with it and go hard andtalk about it and whatever. So
that's fine. But I definitely,looking back on it, I think I
was a little overexcited oncertain things. Miscalculated on
certain things.
The interesting thing aboutmarkets and startups is that
(04:17):
these are empirical realities.There's a history. You can track
your thesis, and you canevaluate whether you were right
or wrong, and how you were rightor wrong based on what actually
happens. And in the case ofUrbit, really interesting things
actually happen. So you have tokind of do that work of going
back over and thinking, what didI think at this point?
And how was I right or wrong?And so I haven't talked about
Urban in a few years. And so,well, I I mean, I haven't talked
(04:40):
about much in a few years,frankly. I had kids a couple
years ago, and I frankly havefallen off, to be totally
honest. I I think I'm back ontrack now.
Everything's pretty much rampingback up to a 100% in terms of my
writing and my content and allof that. But I fell off. I'm not
gonna not gonna mince wordsabout that. And so I stopped
talking about a lot of things.Just about everything, to be
fair, for a couple years, whileI kind of learned how to have
(05:01):
small children.
Anyway, I'm back up for air now.I want to kind of do a full
accounting of where everything'sbeen in the past few years. Hey,
everybody. Real quick. I finallyfinished writing my latest book,
The Independent Scholar, andit's the best thing I've
written, the most importantthing I've written because it
compiles everything I've learnedover the past five years
figuring out this new lifestyleslash business model of mine
(05:22):
working full time as anindependent scholar outside of
institutions and on theInternet.
Since I left academia five yearsago, I've been experimenting
like crazy, testing alldifferent kinds of things. I've
done books and courses andsubscriptions, and I've tried it
all. I've tested every model,and I've learned so much. I've
made so many mistakes, but I'vealso done things well. And I've
(05:44):
earned a few $100,000 doing allthese different things.
Now I've really got the modeldown, the ideal model. I've
narrowed it down to what worksthe best and what's most
reproducible for most people.Just a super practical focused
book, what works and whatdoesn't work in the most concise
and practical format possible.So buy it. Order it now online
at otherlife.co/scholar.
(06:07):
You can also just search for theindependent scholar book. Maybe
add Justin Murphy in there ifyou want to find it more easily.
Otherlife.co/scholar. Go by TheIndependent Scholar, the ideal
model. Everything I've learnedover the past five years working
full time as an independentscholar.
Thank you. I'm very proud of it.Otherlife.co/scholar. So when I
(06:29):
first seriously learned aboutUrbit, when I really studied it
and grokked it, I judged it tobe a underrated project, which
was being kind of systematicallyunderpriced for specifiable
reasons. I wrote a long essayback at this time about why I
(06:50):
thought that was happening andthe examples of that that I was
seeing.
At the same time, I was meetinga lot of the people in this
ecosystem, and they were supercool, just really smart people
who I genuinely really like.They were just like me in a lot
of ways. And I would be remissto not point out that there's
also this kind of high energy,somewhat euphoric crypto market
(07:13):
happening in the background. Andat the time, I think I did not
appreciate how much that wascoloring my perceptions. But in
retrospect, I think that willend up being one of the bigger
lessons I take away from thosecouple of years.
Basically, there were a lot ofrandom people making tons of
money by just being a part ofsome random ecosystem, some
(07:37):
blockchain this or token that.And most of which was nonsense.
Like, was genuinely a lot of itwas total BS. And I'm looking at
that, and remember, I'm freshout of academia. I had just left
my career, which I was sort ofensconced in for my entire adult
life.
I've never been exposed tomarkets in my entire life. So
(07:59):
I'm coming out of that. I'mnavigating the world. I'm
looking to see what'sinteresting. It just so happens
that the world is in this kindof crazy period where a bunch of
random people are creating allkinds of weird technologies,
dubious technologies, many ofwhich seem to be literally
nothing.
They're getting all thisattention. They're getting all
these users. In some cases,they're making all this money.
(08:22):
And I can see that a lot of itis just nonsense. And then I
come across Urbit and I'm like,okay, no one's really talking
about this yet.
This seems actually really smartand interesting and cool. And
I'm meeting the people andthey're genuinely really smart.
I found an underpriced gem. AndI was like, this is really cool.
(08:43):
And if all of that other stuffis finding success and spreading
like wildfire, and people aremaking money and building cool
things and things are takingoff, and a lot of that is crap,
and I found this thing that'slike underrated, underpriced,
and actually genuinely reallycool, well, I could just help
this thing find its proper leveland get it more understood by
(09:06):
people.
And we bring on more users. Andthe cool thing about crypto and
that whole promise ofpermissionless economies is
precisely that you can findsomething early, and you can get
involved, and you can get yourhands dirty. And at the same
time, you can kind of put yourmoney where your mouth is, and
help bring things into theworld, and get exposure at the
same time. And you know, it'sfunny. I mean, I remember being
(09:27):
quite inspired by MichaelSaylor.
I have no pretensions to beingsome kind of big businessman or
anything like that. But justit's an interesting example.
This guy loaded up on Bitcoinand then just went around the
world being a really goodarticulate proponent of Bitcoin,
and did very well for himselfdoing this. And at least so far,
we'll see how that pans out. ButI just thought this was very
(09:50):
cool, and admirable, and he'ssharp, he's intelligent, and
he's a hustler.
And I remember thinking like,man, that's really inspiring and
interesting. If you'reinterested in social science.
Right? And if you're interestedin having a unique model of the
world that you think is maybeone or 2% more correct than the
(10:11):
conventional model, well thenyou should be able to bet on
that. Right?
And you should be able to makeinteresting things happen that
other people can't. Right? Andso that was very much the
background here. The backgroundkind of conditions, the things
that I'm seeing and feeling whenI encounter Urbit. And so that
was what made me feel inspired.
And I was like, this is anunderpriced gem. This is really
(10:33):
cool. I genuinely like this andwanna hang out with these
people. Like, these are mypeople, whether this project
succeeds or not. And I have anewsletter and a and a, you
know, YouTube and podcast.
So I'm just gonna throw myweight behind this, and let's
try to make this thing real. Theother thing that was also that
it did seem to me objectively,and it seemed to many people in
the ecosystem at the time thatUrban was on the cusp of of
(10:55):
breaking out. For many reasons,it had just shipped. The network
had just shipped. So what seemedto be some pretty significant
kind of paradigm changingupgrades in the form of, for
instance, the app ecosystem.
So for the first time in Urbit'slike ten year history at the
time, anyone could build anUrbit app and ship it to the
(11:15):
network, and everyone else couldfind it, and download it, and
use it, and people could findeach other on those apps. This
is pretty cool. And inprinciple, it worked. Like that
was shipped, and that wasdelivered at right around the
time that I'm kind of reallygetting into it. So I'm like,
wow, this is genuinely reallyamazing and impressive.
All we really need is morepeople to use this network, and
then we need startups to buildon it, and then capital will
(11:37):
flow into this space, and thenmore people will find out about
it, and it'll become moreuseful, and then more people
will be wanna be on it, and stayon it. And so it, you know, it
was very plausible at the timeto see Urbit as on the brink of
a flywheel. So all of theseconsiderations are in the
background and feeding into myperception and evaluation of
Urbit. And my decision to throwmy weight behind it and make it
(11:58):
something I was sharing aboutit, analyzing it, and talking
about it. And I tried to buildon it as well, like my own
community and stuff like that.
I'm not a software engineer oranything, but even software
actually. Commissioned somesoftware on there, did these
different interestingexperiments, because this is
what was so cool about it, isthe promise of kind of
decentralized, kind of communitybased software development and
things like this. So I wasreally doing all this. Oh, and
(12:19):
by the way, people have asked methis here and there over the
years. I was never being paid byUrbit.
First of all, Urbit isn't Urbitis just the name of this
decentralized ecosystem. Urbitis not an entity per se. So
there was no one who could payme to talk about Urbit. I came
across it totally on my own, gotpassionate about it totally on
my own, and started writing andtalking about it because I
thought I found something reallycool, I wanted to talk about it.
(12:41):
And I thought I understoodsomething better than other
people that people had notcaught onto yet.
So I found that naturallymotivating and interesting to
share and develop my ideasaround it. I was given a few
stars at some point, like a fewjunctures. I was given stars,
like as a gift from the UrbanFoundation or whoever, because
that's what all ecosystems do tokind of just reward valuable
(13:02):
contributors, basically. Butthose were just retroactive
grants, and they never totaledto too much. I mean, in the
world of urban investors, I'mlike, I assure you, nothing.
I just have a handful of starsto this day. And I did buy a few
myself as well. Oh, this is anunderpriced gem. I'm gonna try
to throw my weight behind it. Ibought a few at that point.
But remember, I never had anymoney. I was an academic. So I
(13:24):
had I think I bought a couple ofstars when I first got into it
myself. Then later after, youknow, becoming like a pretty
valuable contributor, I mean, Idid a lot of stuff. Like, I, you
know, brought a lot of peopleonto the network, and really
helped a lot of peopleunderstand it.
You go into an Urban Meetuptoday, and a good fraction of
the people there will say thatthey found out about it through
me. So it makes sense that theygifted me some stars. Anyway, I
(13:46):
was never paid by Urbit. Youcan't be paid by Urbit. I did,
at then another point, starteddoing some consulting for like,
Urbit Startups.
And that moment of UrbanStartups is its own story that I
wanna get into next. So at acertain point, I was hired by a
company here or there to helpwith their internal stuff, like
messaging, marketing, and thatkind of stuff. Even that was
only a handful of months,really. And those startups did
(14:10):
not work out. And that's a keypart of the story, which we'll
get to in a minute.
But just wanted to respond tothat, because a couple of people
had asked me this when I metthem over the years. And that
made me actually realize like,wow, I actually really did help
Urban a lot by talking about itso much, Because That people
actually thought I was likebeing paid. I must have been
doing a good job. Oh, and by theway, I still own the
(14:30):
overwhelming majority of all thestars that I've ever owned. So I
never made any money on Urbanaddress space.
I've I've held them all, and Istill hold them. I think I've
sold a couple here and there,but very, very few. The address
space went quite high in valueat a certain point in the kind
of bull run of the cryptomarket, and then totally went
(14:52):
down. The address space has beenreally destroyed in the past few
years. So let's try tounderstand why that is.
What happened? What went wrong?Let's go to the startup period,
we'll call it. There was aperiod where three or four
startups raised money to buildcompanies on top of Urban. These
(15:15):
were a few different projects.
One was a layer two blockchainproject, Lookbar. One was a
consumer social product,Hollium. One was originally a
kind of consumer creatorproject, Terrell. They were
going to do kind of like aSubstack type product on Urbit
(15:35):
and Payment Rails. I'm deep intoUrbit at this time.
As I said, I was sort of, youknow, doing a little bit of
advising or consulting withinsome of these companies. And
what I got to kind of seefirsthand, personally, was that
basically, in every case, eachcompany eventually determined
(15:56):
that they could not do what theywanted to do on Urbit. And each
project eventually defected, anddecided to go a separate way.
Because of limitations of thecore Urbit network. I think in
some cases, the issues had to dowith speed, speed of one kind or
(16:17):
another being an insufficient.
I think in other cases, the overthe air updates, I think were
pretty brutal, if I recallcorrectly. I mean, experienced
this firsthand myself multipletimes, just as being the host of
a active group, and running someof my own ships, and and even
just with the limited things Iwas maintaining on Urbit. The
(16:37):
over the air updates are whenthe whole network basically
upgrades itself, and theseupdates have to propagate
through the system. In an idealworld, that all just happens
behind the scenes, andeverything just works the next
day. In practice, virtuallyeverything would break, is my
memory of it.
At least a handful of times.Like, I'm not sure about how
(16:59):
that system is doing right now,but there was a year or so where
every time there was an over theair update, basically, it was
just a nightmare for anyonemaintaining serious applications
on the network. And I think thatwas not planned. That I think
people were not expecting it tobe that rough, and I think that
was one example of one of theunderlying issues. I think a lot
(17:25):
of us were too optimistic aboutthe state of the underlying
network.
And one of the most interestingdevelopments since then is that
the founder, the inventor ofUrbit, Curtis Jargon, who you
might know from other contexts,as a writer, he's on my podcast
a while back, interestingthinker and writer in his own
respect. He stepped back intothe project, and he is now the
(17:48):
leader of Urbit. So this is veryinteresting. I don't think
anyone was expecting this. Hehad officially and completely
withdrawn from the thing that hecreated, and he was brought back
through investors, decided thatsomething drastic had to be
done, and you had to bring thefounder back to right the ship.
That happened only within thepast year. If you listen to what
(18:10):
he has said since coming back, Ithink he's made it pretty clear
that everyone got ahead of theirskis, and that the network was
not sufficiently developed andnot sufficiently advanced and
hardened, and that it wasperhaps too soon to have
startups trying to raise moneyand build on this thing. Of
(18:31):
course, that's easier to say inretrospect after that appears to
have been the case. But I thinkhe's right there. I think it is
just an ineluctable inferencethat that moment where we all
thought that there were going tobe startups building on Urbit,
and bringing new capital, andbringing more users, and
(18:51):
improving the experience at anaccelerating rate.
That moment, I think thatexpectation was just
miscalculated, I think. Nowthere's another key variable in
all of this, which is the cryptomarket. And at one point in this
cycle, the Urban address space,the kind of investable asset
that trades on the market wentup quite high. Like if I
(19:15):
remember correctly, I think anUrban Star was worth like
something like $20,000 or more,maybe. Now it's like closer to
like 1,000 or something likethat.
The reason that this matters isthat the value of the asset has
a huge psychological effect oneverything, basically. Urbit was
actually one of the firstserious projects to use NFTs, to
(19:38):
actually be built on NFTs. TheUrbit identity system is built
on Ethereum, and it was done soway before it was cool, way
before the trendy appreciationof NFT assets that happened a
few years back. It was waybefore that that the decision
was made to put the identitysystem on Ethereum functionally
as NFTs. And so again, back atthat time when I'm coming across
(19:59):
this stuff for the first time,I'm like, this is so much proof
that this really is a kind ofvisionary project, like five
steps ahead of everything else.
It sort of understood NFTsbefore they were even cool. I
was like, this is all incrediblesetup. And when the world
realizes how promising thisproject is, these assets are
(20:22):
going to go through the roof.That's going to make more people
pay attention. That's going togive developers more money to
play with.
That's going to bring in moreinvestors. That's going to bring
in more startups trying to dostuff, and it would be this kind
of, you know, positive feedbackloop. And so, when the startup
part of that feedback loopfailed, it was followed by
(20:45):
gradually descent of the valueof the address space. That alone
doesn't necessarily tell youanything about the value or the
promise of the product.Especially because the
implementation of the identitysystem was established before we
had very sophisticated mentalmodels of tokenomics.
(21:06):
It was not designed in a way tomake the price go up. Nothing
about Urbit was designed to makethe price go up. In the way that
nowadays, with all of thelessons learned through, you
know, a few crypto cycles now,you can design token projects in
very clever and sophisticatedways that almost guarantee the
price goes up in certain ways.You can be very strategic and
(21:28):
clever about that, and if youexecute properly, you can launch
absolutely crap products thathave no original engineering,
that have no vision at all, thatdo nothing really. And if the
tokenomics are engineeredcorrectly, a bunch of people can
make a lot of money doingthrough this kind of tokenomic
engineering.
All of Urbit and its NFT layerwas built and designed before
(21:51):
there was any strategiccalculation around tokenomics.
And so this came to really hurtUrbit because it is just the
fact that emotions and marketvalues are strong variables in
this whole game of gettingusers, and winning hearts and
minds, and then winning morecapital, and getting that
(22:12):
flywheel going. And so despitelacking tokenomics, the Urban
Atro space pumps up quite wellat one point. Stars are worth
like more than $20,000 each.That's obviously really
exciting.
But then when that goes down, Ithink it goes down more brutally
than almost any other cryptoproject. So that now, right now,
(22:36):
I think you can actually makethe case that Urbit is once
again the most undervaluedcrypto project out there. I
actually think that's evenpossibly more true now because
it's been sort of overlypunished by its failure to make
good on its initial hype cycle.And so once the startups decided
(23:00):
that they could not build onUrbit, and then the address
space gradually declined toreally painfully low level. I
think that's when I kind ofpersonally was like, okay.
However strong and promisingthis project might be, it's
clearly not going to blow up inthe short term, which is what I
(23:22):
wanted to happen. And that wasmy mental model of the world at
that time, to be clear. That wasmy thesis explicitly. It was
now's the perfect time. Thisthing could really work.
It's awesome and underrated.Let's get attention on it. Let's
get capital flowing into thespace. Let's get startups
building on it, and let's getusers to grow. And if we do all
of those things right now, thenI think this could take over the
(23:44):
world.
Like now. Starting now.Obviously, that would be a
process to take over the world,but it could really kick off
starting right now. Once thestartups quit, and the address
space deflated, I think at thatpoint, it was clear that my
thesis was wrong, and that wasnot going to happen in the short
term. This says nothing aboutUrbet's ability to succeed in
(24:05):
the long term or even the mediumterm, especially now that Curtis
is back at you know, that's abig variable.
Who knows what could happenmoving forward? I wouldn't I'm
not counting Urbet out at all.I'm just updating on the past up
till this point, and trying tobe honest and and and
transparent about what mythinking was and what actually
happened. Now, what'sinteresting about this whole
(24:26):
story is that in many ways sincethat time, urbit has actually
made great strides. So I shouldpoint out that urbit now has a
really good iPhone app thatanyone can get, and anyone can
get on the network on theirphone in a very normal,
traditional social media websitetype experience.
And they can get their ownpersonal server running on on
(24:49):
the internet, and they can bechatting and talking with a kind
of Signal like or Telegram likeexperience on their phone pretty
quickly and easily. And it'spretty fast. It works pretty
smoothly. It's not quite signalor telegram in terms of speed
and reliability, but it isactually surprisingly close, and
much, much better than it waseven when I got really into
(25:09):
Urbit. So all of these littlesubtle ways, Urban continues to
actually improve objectively.
And with Curtis taking back thereins, there's really no telling
what could happen with goodleadership and with a new
direction. And it's really anopportunity to recreate a whole
new narrative and bootstrap awhole new period of growth and
(25:30):
perception around Urbit. So itcould just be the case that
Urbit is going to requireanother twenty years. It's not
crazy to think that. If you lookat something like Linux, you
know, from the beginning to itseventual success and domination,
it was at least twenty years.
Some great projects do just takea very long time. It's obviously
(25:52):
not a traditional startup. Itsstructure is not that of a
startup. Its vision is not thatreally of a startup. And what
it's trying to do is reallytruly so bold that, in
retrospect, maybe it just makessense that it needs to take a
ton of time.
And I was just foolish forthinking that it could be done
so quickly. So, that's the mainway that I've updated my mental
model about urbit, frankly. Toput it simply, is I actually
(26:15):
don't think my judgment orevaluation of the project was
fundamentally wrong in any wayexcept the timeline. I think I
was overly optimistic about thetimeline. I was euphoric, in
part due to a market environmentthat I was utterly naive to and
green towards.
I had never been in a bullmarket. I had never owned any
assets at all, basically, letalone owning a couple assets
(26:38):
that were appreciating rapidly.Here I'm just talking about like
a little bit of Bitcoin, alittle bit of Ethereum at that
time. I'm watching the numberson my little ledger wallet grow
really fast. And it was thefirst time I've ever seen that
happen on my computer in any ofmy accounts in my life.
I did not realize how much thatwas affecting my perception of
(26:58):
everything, basically. So that'sthe lesson that I learned. Those
are the main lessons that I'vetaken away from it all. In that
context, there's just not reallyanything for me to do with Urbit
right now, or there's no realway for me. I can't really
recruit developers through mymedia, which I was doing
actually, like pretty well even.
To this day, I mean, are highranking Urbit engineers in the
(27:20):
ecosystem who found out about itthrough me, and got into it
through me. I can't really dothat kind of contribution right
now, because it seemsobjectively like it's not ready
yet. And I still host acommunity on urbit, but again,
it's taking a very long time forUrbit to just have a user
(27:41):
experience that is even on parwith a simple chat app like
Signal or Telegram. So, youknow, as an entrepreneur and a
creator, and someone who, youknow, wants to live and create
and build at the speed ofcutting edge technology, I was
really down to get my handsdirty and work with Urbit and
(28:02):
build things on Urbit when Isaw, in my mind, a clear
trajectory to doing thatcollaboratively with the
ecosystem in a way that couldbootstrap it into the Urbit
takeover. Like, so long as Icould see even a plausible model
to bet on the Urbit takeover,was down to get my hands dirty
and try things and try to buildthings, and even bring people on
(28:25):
and try to build my owncommunity structures there.
But at this moment, it's hard tosee how ERBT has that kind of
takeoff opportunity in the shortterm. I can't really justify to
myself or to other people, youknow, why they should jump
through these other hoops to getonto this system When I can't
(28:48):
really do that much on thesystem yet, it still does have
these issues. I mean, when I wastrying to build my community on
Urbit, I'm not even talkingabout some fancy software
engineering project, but justtrying to host and grow a
community and do differentthings on there, like courses
and meetings for my ownbusiness. It was pretty painful.
(29:08):
Like, there was just constantlittle hang ups, basically.
And it was kind of death by athousand paper cuts. Like the
OTAs, for instance, were prettybrutal on me. Like there were
whole days, whole weeks even,where like, you know, I'm an
entrepreneur. I'm not likerolling in the dough or
anything. And I'm personallytrying to solve pretty technical
(29:28):
challenges.
I just couldn't really make itwork economically and personally
to really keep using it for myown serious work. And so that's
why I haven't really talkedabout it. Because I haven't
wanted to you know, I still loveUrban, and still love all the
people. And I never wanted it toseem like I was, you know,
bringing it down or beingnegative or whatever when, you
(29:51):
know, people were working reallyhard to keep things moving. But
now it's just a natural momentright now where the address
space could not be lower in themarket.
Curtis has just taken over, andthere was a major leadership
reshuffling. So everything'sbeen reset. There are rumors
circulating about a few other,you know, positive developments,
(30:15):
which I won't confirm or denybecause I have nothing to do
with them. Basically, manypossible ways in which the whole
project gets reset andrelaunched and revivified, but
right now is a natural kind ofresetting period. So it's a good
time, I think, to come up forair and share all of these
stories and reflections.
(30:36):
So then it was about a year ago,a little bit more than a year
ago now, that I was approachedby one of my Urbit friends,
Logan Allen, who was building astartup as well. He actually was
one of the co founders ofTerrell, the company that was
initially going to do kind ofsub stack plus payment rails
operation on Urbit. They raisedmoney to do that. And somewhere
(31:00):
along that process, he had somereally harebrained realizations
about the value of Urbit'sprogramming language, the lower
level language of NOC, themachine code language, the
instruction set, as they callit. He had some crazy
realizations that this wasreally uniquely good for zero
(31:22):
knowledge proofs.
And zero knowledge proofs, in myestimation, represent one of the
most singular and specificvectors of transformative
sovereignty technology outthere. It's sort of it's
obviously within the field ofcryptography, but it's sort of
better to even think about it assomething different than crypto.
(31:44):
It's a very specific scientificand technical discovery, this
concept of zero knowledgeproofs, how to do them, how to
make them, and what they meanand how they work. This is a
kind of discovery withincryptography that could very
well end up being as significantas what we now call crypto more
generally, or let's saydistributed ledgers, like
(32:04):
Bitcoin or whatnot. So this isnot a video all about zero
knowledge proofs, but you'reprobably familiar with the basic
intuition.
A zero knowledge proof basicallylets you prove something without
actually revealing theunderlying information. You
could, for instance, prove thatyou have a certain amount of
money in your bank accountwithout giving anyone the actual
numbers in your bank account.You could also prove that an
(32:26):
entire software program that youbuilt does what it says it does,
and it doesn't do anything else.You could prove this in a very
tiny little piece of data. Soyou can actually prove something
about a huge mass of data, witha proof that is only very, very
tiny.
The size of the proof is more orless constant, no matter how
(32:49):
much data you're kind ofcompressing. It increases a very
tiny bit, with huge increases ofdata. And so it has this
extraordinary kind ofcompression value, but also this
extraordinary political andsociological value as well. It
pretty much turns upside downeverything that we currently
(33:09):
assume about sharing data on theInternet. What's most
interesting about zero knowledgeproofs is that no one has really
built a fundamentallycivilization changing economic
engine around these things.
Like Bitcoin, for instance, isthis ingenious contraption. It's
this sociotechnical game thatorganizes some cryptographic
(33:35):
primitives in such an ingeniousway that a self perpetuating and
self enforcing monetary assetemerges as a result, and kind of
bootstraps its own value. Gavecrypto an economic engine that
actually made it spread out intothe world. It actually changed
(33:55):
the nature of how we think aboutmoney, and how people store
their money. And that's nowhaving continuing ripples into
financial institutions morebroadly, which are still playing
out.
They're only beginning to playout. So zero knowledge proofs
are relatively new. They've onlybeen around for a decade or two.
I think Naval Ravikant tweetednot too long ago that the future
(34:19):
of human freedom depends on zeroknowledge proofs. So this idea
is already in the ether, but wedon't yet know how this
technology is going to bemobilized.
How is it actually going toenter into our everyday
computing systems, and intoinstitutional data transmission
(34:40):
pipelines of various sorts? Thatis actually very hard to see,
and I don't think many peoplehave a very strong thesis as to
how to do that. Logan comes tome more than a year ago now, and
says that they're going to justbuild a new blockchain from
scratch, And it's going to beengineered to pretty much do to
(35:03):
zero knowledge proving whatBitcoin did for money, is one
way to think about it. And thequestion is, can you create an
economic game, a protocol thatgame theoretically mobilizes
different parties, such asminers, to actually just produce
way more zero knowledge proofs,and to competitively do it, to
(35:24):
optimize their hardware to doit, and to indirectly create
around it a whole larger economyof zero knowledge proving. And
if you could build such a game,if you could build this protocol
that gets a large number ofpeople competitively optimizing
hardware to do zero knowledgeproving, well then, guess what?
(35:47):
Maybe then, you could startplugging computers into that.
People could start buildingsoftware that leverages zero
knowledge proofs. Maybe they'reposting those proofs to that
blockchain. Maybe they're usingthat blockchain in the long run
as a kind of communicationmedium, basically. And anything
you want to interact with thepublic world, you compress into
(36:08):
zero knowledge proofs, post itto the chain, and other parties
will be able to do with it onlywhat they are entitled to do
with it.
Now, this is all more abstractand long term. I'm just painting
a picture. But in the shortterm, what is more concrete and
specific is Bitcoin, of course,is a proof of work chain. This
means you have to expendelectricity energy to do
(36:28):
computational puzzles in orderto successfully mine Bitcoin,
and this is how the chainachieves consensus and security.
But the question has been, canyou do this with zero knowledge
proofs?
Can you merge, basically, orblend zero knowledge proving
with proof of work? I got tospeak personally with a leading,
I mean, top of the linecryptography researcher not too
(36:51):
long ago, and he told me that ZKPowell is pretty much the holy
grail right now. And this ispretty much what Logan came to
me, saying that he thinks he hasa way to do this using knock.
And that if it can be done withknock, it might actually be
better and faster than a lot ofthe current state of the art
technologies for ZK proving. Andso it's very difficult to put a
(37:15):
probability on these outcomes.
Right? Startups areintrinsically risky and
uncertain. But Logan came to mewith this proposition more than
a year ago, and he asked me if Iwould help out with the
messaging and the branding andthe content strategy and the
publishing. And over the pastyear, we actually managed to
build a pretty sizable audience,including a lot of fairly elite
(37:36):
opinion makers and players inthe space. And over all that
time, they worked on theproduct, and it now looks like
they're getting ready to launcha totally novel blockchain, a
zero knowledge proof of workblockchain.
And I haven't really talkedabout it too much for really two
reasons. One is just that I'veactually been working pretty
hard with them and for them. Andso now that I'm a slow middle
(37:58):
aged father, I have beenstruggling to do much else,
frankly. The other reason is, Iwould say a lesson that I
learned from my years workingclosely within the urban
ecosystem, which is just thatI'm a little bit more measured,
I think, around radicaltechnology projects. Like,
they're intrinsically risky,intrinsically difficult, and
(38:19):
everyone knows that moststartups fail.
It's just a basic statisticalfact. And I just don't want to
be a hype man for anything,really. Which is not to say I'm
not willing to put my name onthings. I certainly am. I just
think that there is a time andplace for hard work behind the
scenes.
There are periods where quiet,and patience, and steady work
(38:42):
without fanfare are theappropriate mode. And then there
are times where you turn on themedia, and you bang the drum,
and you go to war in the public.And as I said, I have no regrets
about my time banging the drumfor Urbit. I mean, I still think
Urbit is super cool. So I reallydon't regret it, but I
definitely have to admit that Iwas overzealous.
(39:03):
My sense of the timeline wasbadly calibrated. Then you have
to be measured, and you can'tjust go around promoting. I
mean, when you look at SiliconValley culture, it is one of the
worst things about that world.In some ways, the American
technology sector is becoming akind of counter institution to
the East Coast academicinstitutions in certain ways.
(39:28):
They're kind of a new patron ofarts and letters.
They have their own kind ofintellectual organs emerging.
There's a very interestinglarger story there to be told
that hasn't really been toldyet. But one of the biggest
drawbacks of that new pull ofcultural power is that everyone
is always talking their book.And VCs and founders are often
(39:51):
very smart people, but theoverwhelming majority of all
words emitted by this largercollection of individuals is
almost always hot air. It'salmost all hot air.
I mean, the smartest VCs inAmerican technology are some of
the smartest people in theworld. Some incredibly sharp,
courageous, and bold thinkers.But the bottom 90% of VCs and
(40:15):
founders who are doing any kindof public thought leadership are
many of the most flimsy andmotivated public figures in the
world. Almost statistically, isthe case because we know that,
you know, 95% of startups fail.You know, I do think that more
and more writers and thinkersand kind of post academics, such
(40:40):
as myself, will find interestinghomes for themselves
sociologically and economically.
And many of those homes will bemuch better in every way than a
lot of the homes thatcontemporary institutional
academics have, is verydifficult. And the way to do
that has not yet been determinedby anyone. That playbook has not
been figured out. It's verylive, and very new, and it's
(41:04):
very riddled with risks, andtemptations. And I think this is
one of the biggest, which isjust that it's very tempting and
very easy on some level tobecome a kind of professional
spokesman or hype man for anynumber of projects.
You could do this one projectafter another. Each one fails.
Keep going to the next one.Like, if you're articulate and
(41:25):
smart, you can absolutely, youknow, get jobs doing this kind
of stuff where you're just kindof hired to promote things and
hype things. And when one thingfails, you go on to the next
one.
And if your calling in life isto be a thoughtful, honest
writer and thinker, and you havethis long term creative project
to study the world, but also tofind alpha, and to exploit that
(41:46):
alpha, and to throw your weightbehind things that you believe
in when you believe in them, Youalso want to be honest, and
authentic, and trustworthy atall times. You better be really
careful. You know what I mean?This is like a new type of
personality, a new type of role,and these are new types of
synthetic, creative, andeconomic partnerships, and
(42:08):
collaborations that are nowarising and emerging. And there
are many examples of this kindof thing.
You can point to many, but it'sstill very unthoughtful and
unconscious in many ways. It'sbeing figured out
experimentally. And I am justsaying that in my own
experiments so far. If I'minterested in a project, and I
personally believe it's worthpaying attention to, and it's
(42:31):
worth working on, and it couldactually be really big, and the
people doing it are legit, andhonest, and hardworking, and I
can see the promise and thepotential, and I judge it to be
worth your time or attention,then I should spend my own time
and effort and attentionprivately for a long time before
I'm hyping it or telling otherpeople about it or representing
(42:53):
it in any way. And that's kindof the mistake I made with
urbit.
And that's my own mistake.That's not urbit's mistake.
That's me. Like, I got into it.I got passionate and
enthusiastic.
And then I just sort of wenthard in the paint, trying to get
new users, trying to tell peopleabout this thing, trying to help
it blow up. But if I spent ayear trying to build a startup
on it first, then I probablywould have been humbled. And
(43:17):
then I might not have gotten soeuphoric. And then I might not
have miscalculated the timelinesand my expectations in the ways
that I think I did miscalculatethem. So, that's why I've been
working quietly with Zorp.
And I'm super proud of my rolemy humble role in the company. I
think we've written somethingmore like more than 50 blog
posts or something once a week,every week, for more than a
(43:40):
year. And I wrote all ofSomething like 30 or 40 of them
are actually just totallyoriginal creative essays in
philosophy and history andanthropology that I just cooked
up myself, basically, incollaboration with Logan and in
conversation with him over manythings. Some of them are more
motivated by some of his ideashe shared with me. Some of them
are of my own creation, SuiGeneris.
(44:02):
But obviously, Logan and I seethings similarly, and we have a
lot of shared references. So hejust gave me full freedom,
basically, to build aperspective around technology,
and our kind of shared values.And for many of them, just let
me go wild. And we've actuallybuilt an audience, and I'm it's
pretty cool. Like, to have donethat anonymously, I did that
(44:23):
from scratch organically.
We actually built a little cultfollowing, and, you know, we had
a party a few months back inAustin, and a lot of people came
out. So it was pretty specialexperience to be able to do that
from scratch without my name,you know? And now they're
getting ready to launch, andit's super exciting. It's nerve
racking because they're hopingto launch imminently. If they
(44:45):
launch and this thing if thismachine works, it's a really
crazy achievement andaccomplishment.
I'm not close enough to theengineering to understand any of
the details, but as far as Iknow, this thing is coming
together. And I mean, if theybring into the world a zero
knowledge proof of workblockchain from scratch, there's
really no telling what thatcould eventually grow into. The
(45:06):
long term implications of thatare every bit as vertiginous,
and exhilarating as the longterm promises of Erbit. And in
many ways, these are the samepromises. The long term vision
and goals are very much thesame.
It's just a very difficultquestion about how to get there,
and what kinds of machines andgames does one have to build, in
(45:29):
what order to actually bringthat vision into the world
concretely. I have no ideawhat's gonna happen. I'm
obviously bullish and excited,and I wouldn't be working with
them so closely for so long if Iwasn't. But that's basically
where I'm sitting right now, andwhat I'm seeing in this current
state of radical sovereigntytechnology. Whether it's Erbit,
(45:50):
or it's Nocturne, or maybe theyboth win, or maybe they, in some
ways, become symbiotic in waysthat can't be fully foreseen.
These are questions that anyonecan guess about. But I've tried
to share with you how I seethings, how things have unfolded
in my eyes, the judgments andthe theses I've had at different
junctures, and what I've learnedfrom my experiences in this
(46:12):
space, and thinking prettycarefully about these issues as
deeply as I can, you know, forseveral years now. Nocturne is a
permissionless protocol thatanyone can mine. It's being
launched as a fair launch. Sothat means there is no pre
mined.
Meaning, every single token thatis ever minted into existence on
(46:33):
the NOK chain will be given tominers who competitively use
their computational power tosolve the proof of work puzzles
on chain. And everyone in theworld has a chance to start
mining on the very same day. Andso it is truly this kind of
crazy, wide open,permissionless, and extremely
(46:55):
fair game that is being put intothe world by Zorp. And what
happens is anyone's guess. It'sone of the reasons it's so
interesting and wild is we don'tknow what's gonna happen.
Maybe no one's gonna mine. Maybea ton of people are gonna mine.
Maybe the thing will work. Maybethe thing will break. Obviously,
I'm bullish and super excited.
I wouldn't have given so mucheffort and time to it over the
(47:15):
past year and a half if Iwasn't. But it's just an
intrinsically risky, crazy game.It's one of the reasons why it's
so exciting. And I think also,frankly, it's one of the reasons
why we have a genuinely loyal,active audience base of people
who pay attention to us everyday, and care about what we're
doing, and care about what wesay, is because this is a wild
and unpredictable game. It'srisky and hard, and it's
(47:37):
ultimately an experiment thatwill be decided by empirical
reality.
So, yeah. You can actually mineon Mac minis. We have no idea
what is ultimately going to bethe best hardware that's going
to be settled by competition onthe network. But, at least for
when we launch, I'm told by theteam that, and it's in the FAQs,
that anyone with the Mac minican take a stab at mining and
(48:00):
getting NOx from the NOC chainfrom the day that it launches.
And everyone in the world has anequal shot at doing that at the
same time.
So, you can't really say thatabout many blockchains. In
addition to the reasons why thisfeels like a good time to come
up for air and reflect on Erbit,it also is a good time to come
up for air and reflect on whatI've been doing for the past
year with Nocturne. Now thatthey're getting ready to launch,
(48:22):
I'm quite proud to share alittle bit about what they've
been doing, what I've been doingwith them. And from here, it's
anyone's guess. Alright, I'llkeep you posted.
I'll let you know how things go.Thanks for listening everyone.
Subscribe to the channel,subscribe to the podcast, the
newsletter, whichever one youwant. Thanks, everyone. I
appreciate you.
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