Introducing Uqbar Network

The Web 3 You Were Promised.

If you’re reading this article, we likely don’t need to prove to you the value of blockchain technology.

Yet, despite the vast resources pouring into blockchain development, mass adoption of smart contract platforms still faces numerous barriers, from inflated transaction costs to complex onboarding to a simple lack of functionality.

To us, the core benefits of blockchain adoption are obvious: decentralization, security, and seamless transactions between trustless actors. But none of those benefits can reach their potential until smart contracts offer utility to everyone, not just those managing digital assets.

So how do we get there?

Scalability….and then What?

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin first described what is now known as the Blockchain Trilemma, which posits that attempting to augment any of the three pillars of blockchain platforms (security, decentralization, and scalability) will likely compromise the others.

Various attempts have been made to address the trilemma. Some companies, such as Solana and Cardano, have attempted Layer 1 solutions, building a new blockchain from the ground up. Other protocols, such as Polygon or the Bitcoin Lightning Network, are tackling Layer 2 solutions, which aim to integrate third-party infrastructure atop existing blockchains, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. However, any promised improvements to one pillar (most often scalability, the current bugaboo) have inevitably led to the collapse of the other pillars. Solana, for example, which claims to process up to 65,000 transactions per second (compared to 1,700 for Visa) at virtually zero cost, has suffered significant criticism for centralization, as well as several high profile network outages.

A secondary, though no less important, barrier to blockchain adoption is usability.

While Ethereum and its competitors have demonstrated the viability of decentralized finance, DAOs, and NFTs, the ecosystem is largely clunky, unnatural, and difficult to use. Furthermore, we believe that blockchain technology can offer significantly more valuable tools than these few poorly executed profiteering platforms.

To reach widespread adoption, merely addressing the Blockchain Trilemma, is necessary, but not sufficient. Increasing speed and decreasing fees on the Ethereum network alone will not entice new users. Such improvements may incentivize investment, but the average person still requires more: something new they can actually do.

Uqbar (but, also, Urbit)

At Uqbar, we believe that for blockchain to not only survive but thrive, it must surpass the limited uses of defi and trading — and perfect those ecosystems while we’re at it!

A fully realized blockchain environment will include instant messaging, social networks, shopping platforms, search engines, and more, all secured and seamlessly integrated with platforms for managing digital assets. For many users, it will just be the internet. For those concerned with security and autonomy, it will be the internet as we were promised.

But how?

By simultaneously addressing questions of blockchain utility and scalability, Uqbar can tackle both problems more effectively than any protocol focusing on one aspect or the other. Utility requires fast, cheap transactions, and scalability requires attracting users to the network.

And the secret to our plan is Urbit.

Uqbar is built atop Urbit, a peer-to-peer network and operating system designed to offer users maximum flexibility, autonomy, and ownership over their digital assets.

Understanding the value of Urbit requires understanding the current structure of the internet. While surfing the web is superficially free, a small handful of corporations, such as Google or Amazon, hold the vast majority of power, controlling the tools by which we interact with the internet, as well as the data we create while using their services.

Urbit, by contrast, is both permissionless and optional, meaning that you may participate in any public forum or utilize any public tool, customize those tools to match your needs, and use only the parts of the service that you desire. For developers, that means a programming environment that is dynamic, rich, and fully customizable. For everyday users, that means security, privacy, and an ability to integrate all your online activity into a single easy-to-use headquarters.

In short: using the internet today is like renting an apartment, in which the owners may redecorate at will, sell your trash, increase your rent, or evict you at any time without notice. Urbit, quite simply, gives you the keys to your house and goes away.

This is especially important as it becomes clear that a fully-realized blockchain ecosystem will not be able to process every single transaction on the main chain. The internet, as it currently exists, is designed to be extremely mutable. Blockchains, by their very nature, are difficult to change. They are lumbering dinosaurs — powerful, but slow.

If some features of digital life must necessarily exist, to some degree, off-chain, Urbit provides a secure, decentralized platform for the rapid activity required by everyday life, while still allowing Uqbar to settle the most important, highest priority transactions on chain. By building Uqbar on top of Urbit, instead of assembling an entirely new blockchain ecosystem from scratch, we will effectively side-step several of the most difficult questions facing the mass adoption of programmatic blockchain platforms.

In essence, Uqbar will be that first rare unicorn: a secure, decentralized, scalable, user-friendly crypto Operating System. We represent a completely new internet, one that returns to the earliest technological principles of fairness and freedom.

The internet, in other words, as it was meant to be.

What’s Next?

In our opinion, it is difficult to overstate the value of a fully functional crypto operating system.

For the first time, Uqbar will offer a way for users to fully control their online experience, all while owning their own data and participating in a permissionless smart contract execution and development. Users will be able to manage their digital assets, participate in DAO management, interact with dApps, and develop their own smart contracts, all from a single secure, decentralized platform in which users retain the power to customize their personal sandbox as they see fit. It is a path to complete digital sovereignty.

Uqbar is so incredible that, on some level, you need to see it to believe it. That is why we are focusing all our energy on developing usable (and, frankly, revolutionary) tools to demonstrate the power of Uqbar.

We have already made significant progress toward implementing a radical new comms suite and DAO tooling interface, and the Uqbar test net is nearing deployment. Also in the works are improved DEXs and an NFT command center and marketplace that will make OpenSea irrelevant. We are quite literally in the process of executing programs that mere months ago we were told could not be done. We have never been more excited to prove the haters wrong.

As for tech, we’ll get to the nitty-gritty in future posts (such as our evangelism for ZK-rollups), but for now, here is what you need to know: by marrying avant-garde blockchain development with the existing Urbit infrastructure, Uqbar has the ability to act as both a Layer 1 and Layer 2 solution, building a distinct platform while also leveraging the existing architecture of the Ethereum ecosystem.

Welcome to the blockchain revolution. We’re glad you made it.