In the 2000s, Curtis Yarvin was a programmer with two projects. One was personal and turned him into a favorite philosopher of the alt-right: the blog Unqualified Reservations, which he started in 2007, posting under the pen name Mencius Moldbug. For about six years, he regularly updated Reservations with his thoughts on politics and culture, gaining a considerable online following thanks to his controversial, often repugnant views. In one early post, Yarvin wrote that, although he was not himself a white nationalist, he felt “the urge to defend” the ideology. Mostly, Moldbug railed against democracy, questioning whether it might be an aberration that should be done away with.
As we can see, the politics of most crypto developers are not popular. While the code produced by these developers may be fantastic, good, or decent, this will not stop the media from focusing in on the controversial political views of developers. But there is a point which needs to be stated, as I stated in previous posts, a developer must cherish and appeal to the interests of their stakeholders. This is particularly true in blockchain projects where there are tokens, voting, etc. This is also true in corporate atmospheres, or political atmospheres.
In 2013, Yarvin largely moved away from blogging and sped up work on the second, more professional project. Since 2002, Yarvin had been working on an algorithm — the backbone of Urbit, a product that would restructure how people use the internet. In 2013, he launched the San Francisco-based company Tlon, which oversees Urbit.
In my humble opinion, Urbit is a very interesting project and technology. It is a technology that I could find useful depending on how it turns out. And the ideas around it are also interesting, both philosophical and technical. I would suggest anyone look into Urbit to see for themselves whether they would actually want to use it regardless of the political views of the developer. Either Urbit is useful or it isn't, either the code is of high quality or it isn't, and really it's up to you whether you'd rather trust Urbit or Google with your digital life.
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