runtime "Vere". They are randomly created from the available comet address space which is large enough that accidentally spawning the same one twice is not necessary to worry about. Comets are 'temporary' primarily because their keys cannot be rotated separately from the ID name, and they cannot be 'breached' (have their state reset on the network). Having a large, but limited set of IDs that have a low, but non-zero cost makes urbit resistant to spam since creating large amount of IDs when blocked is not economically viable (since comets and abusive IDs can be trivially blocked). All IDs can be used to install (and distribute) applications. All IDs can communicate with other IDs on the urbit network. The most used application on urbit currently is a group chat application developed by Tlon. Co-founder Galen Wolfe-Pauly claims that Urbit can provide a unified interface for applications akin to WeChat, with the critical difference that the end user retains control over their data. Platform Background The Urbit platform was conceived of in 2002 by neo-reactionary blogger Curtis Yarvin. The company has received seed funding from various investors since its inception, most notably Peter Thiel, whose Founders Fund, with venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz invested $1.1 million in the Tlon Corporation to help build out Urbit further. The platform has been described as "complicated for even the most seasoned of functional programmers". OS1 Urbit OS1 launched in April 2020. This consisted of a group messaging app, a message board, a note-taking system, and several simple apps such as a clock and a weather meter. Politics and controversy In 2015, Yarvin's invitation to the Strange Loop conference was rescinded; the conference organizer said Yarvin's "mere inclusion and/or presence would overshadow the content of his talk." In 2016 after Urbit founder Curtis Yarvin was invited to the functional programming conference LambdaConf, five speakers and three sponsors withdrew their participation due to their stated opposition to Yarvin's political views. The source code and design sketches for the project alluded to some of Yarvin's views, including initially classifying users as "lords," "dukes," and "earls." Yarvin and Tlon rejected any ideological associations with the project. Andrea O'Sullivan of libertarian magazine Reason described Urbit as having a "libertarian ethos". Yarvin departed Tlon in 2019. In a blog post about his departure, Yarvin said Urbit "is not designed as a political structure". See also Web3 References External links Tlon.io