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Re:Ask HN: What are decentralized Twitter alternatives? by ekam on Friday January 08, 2021 @11:11PM (#25696814)
Urbit is interesting but $120 for a planet is egregious
Re:Ask HN: What are decentralized Twitter alternatives? by gw666 on Saturday January 09, 2021 @06:13PM (#25706086)
That's what I said about Bitcoin at $1 (groan).... I'm heavy into Urbit now, learning their programming language, Hoon (more mindbending than Brainfuck).

I just checked on opensea.io; you can get a planet for 0.04 ETH--around $50.

Urbit is the Next Big Thing--I haven't seen anything like it in 40 years; it's a "computing platform" blank slate! I don't think it'll ever go away because there are enough tech people to keep it going. I can also see academia using it.

Setting up your own planet is a real hassle. Soon, you will be able to "rent" your own planet for a monthly fee (like paying for an ISP), and the provider will take care of all hardware and software. On the other hand, you can put your planet on a server for $10-$20/month.

Look into it; it's going to be a wild ride!

Re:Ask HN: What are decentralized Twitter alternatives? by chc4 on Friday January 08, 2021 @11:28PM (#25696993)
Urbit using Ethereum as a global consistent PKI store seemed like a perfectly fine idea, until transaction costs for distributing those keys bloomed 11,000% in a year :(
Re:Ask HN: What are decentralized Twitter alternatives? by buddha420 on Saturday January 09, 2021 @12:53PM (#25702580)
It's being worked on. If the plan to use ZK-STARKs to rollup PKI transactions goes through, it should be only a few cents to set up a planet. In the meantime though, it is a major barrier :(