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Urbit aims to be more than a platform in which people can communicate with each other. From the versatility of Hoon to the robustness of Vere to the scalability of Ames, Urbit is designed from top to bottom to be self-sufficient and able to handle any part of the computation and networking stack. Various components of Urbit, then, correspond to almost any aspect of digital life.
Planets are Urbit's primary unit of identity, but as mentioned in part 1, Azimuth only allows for around 4 billion planets. Comets (another form of identity) are essentially unlimited, but their absence from Azimuth limits their functionality, and they are more prone to be considered untrustworthy than planets since they are free to obtain. This creates two distinct "classes" of user in Urbit, with one clearly being more valued than the other.
Planets have the ability to spawn moons, satellite ships that are inseparable from their host. While moons also don't have a presence on Azimuth, and thus can't escape their planet or have a crypto wallet of their own, they still receive OTA updates from their host planet, and thus already have more functionality than comets.
Tlon and others imagine moons to be used by smart devices for IoT purposes, or to be used by individual servers to host apps or groups. However, several people on Urbit already use moons as personal identities, joining and posting in groups as a moon rather than as their planet directly. This has led me to some thoughts about how moons can be utilized for identity purposes.
In real life, Earth has a finite amount of land on which people can live. Humans can change their address and even their names, but even with terraforming, the world only has so many square miles on which dwellings can be built. The finiteness (and resulting economic scarcity) of land is a particular issue in densely-populated areas; this problem is generally solved via apartments, condominiums, and other arrangements in which one building houses many people.
The current use of moons in Urbit leads me to think that planets can be viewed similarly to land. Planet operators own a slice of the limited number of Azimuth points, just like how land owners in the real world own a slice of Earth. Planets can use these points as they fee,either inhabiting the planet itself or spawning moons and connecting from them--similar to how land owners can either develop their entire property for personal use or section off a small portion to live out of. Further, land owners in the real world can becomes landlords, buying properties and renting them to people who need a place to live.
I think planet operators have a similar opportunity to spawn and give moons to people who don't have planets of their own. Moons innately come with better reputation than comets, giving fresh users a step up. They are closely linked to their hosts and receive updates, unlike comets. While they do not have wallets of their own, they can interact with other planets and moons through their host.
If a comet is operated by a bad actor, planets cannot act unilaterally to kick them from the network. This is a good thing; some sort of open access must remain for a system to avoid stagnation, and the lower status of a comet is a good trade-off for free access in my opinion. However, if a moon operated by another person acts in bad faith, the planet that spawned the moon can revoke it immediately. This encourages moon operators to "play nice", or to at least follow the strictures of the host.
Moons cannot escape their sponsor, unlike planets or stars. However, if a "moon dweller" is unhappy with his host planet, with over four billion planets on Azimuth that can spawn moons, he would likely have a wide array of alternate hosts to choose from.
One suggested use for moons already conforms to this idea: a planet could be owned jointly by a household, and the members of the family are issued moons. This arrangement allows parents to manage their children's access, while children are not allowed to spend money freely from the planet's wallet or try to change its ownership keys.
Using moons as "tenant" identities would create a third stratum of presence in Urbit, one that sits comfortably between the "landed gentry" of planet owners and the "vagrants" running free comets. There is incentive to behave well, as failing to do so can cause your access to be revoked unilaterally, and planets have an impetus to only accept those who do behave. More of Urbit's services are available to moons than to comets, despite their lack of Azimuth points. And the huge number of planets that could offer such tenancy allows for a wide selection of sponsors to join Urbit, likely even for free.
I would encourage fellow Martians to consider the identity uses for moons more prominently. We already have too many people in the world for everyone to have a planet, and if Urbit hopes to drive human technology in the future, that is a limitation we must face. Moons might be the answer.
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[Last updated: 2024-10-06]