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Urbit is interesting, but this troubles me:

> there are only 2^32 (~4B) Urbit IDs, so they cost something.

> Ultimately, we want your Urbit ID to feel like a civilizational key. If your Urbit ID were a piece of hardware, you could tap it to unlock a door, swipe it to buy a coffee, and plug it into any computer to log in. Your Urbit ID should be a unique, beautiful object that’s both an address and a wallet. It’s a key to a secret club and the ticket to your digital life.

So I guess almost half the current global population is excluded from civilization?



Apparently it's taken us ~30 years to come close[1] to this number of users on the current internet. Seems like not an issue for a very long time, and if it becomes one, it can be amended.

That said, anyone can get on Urbit for free as a comet. The only real limitations on comets are social in nature—not technological.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...


They talk about that - if they're approaching the limit they'd make changes to produce more IDs.

The network has a built in governing body that can do things like that (and they would since restricting access isn't the goal).


But if the number of available Urbit IDs can be scaled up and down on an as-needed basis, why did they start with 4B and not, for example, 1M?


32-bits is just a convenient round number to wrap everything around.




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