@@ -14,13 +14,13 @@ image = "https://media.urbit.org/site/posts/essays/haleek_sigil.jpg"
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1515We sat down recently with Haleek Maul to discuss the current state of NFTs and the future of Urbit IDs and digital communities.
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17−Are Urbit IDs, NFTs? Sure, they are ERC-721 “non-fungible tokens” which you can buy on OpenSea, but we honestly don’t particularly care. An Urbit ID is a number that is used to generate both a phonetic name and an avatar, but it is so much more than your average NFT, it is a key to an entire digital world.
17+Are Urbit IDs NFTs? Sure, they're ERC-721 non-fungible tokens which you can buy on OpenSea—but to be clear, we made them way back before the word "NFT" had entered mainstream consciousness. An Urbit ID is a number that is used to generate both a phonetic name and an avatar (what we call [sigils](https://urbit.org/blog/creating-sigils)), but it is so much more than your average NFT—it is a key to an entire digital world.
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19−We built Urbit IDs for digital communities and the people they’re made of. An Urbit ID is a decentralized and pseudonymous identity perfect for your collective, commune, squad, team, or DAO. Unlike most addresses or social identities, you own your Urbit ID like you own your crypto. Your Discord handle might be free for now, but as the saying goes, if it’s free then you’re the product. On Urbit your ID is actually yours and you pay for it up front. You can log into third party apps or software without ever relinquishing control of your data. What is yours stays with you. IDs themselves can be owned collectively, there are already DAOs on Urbit who jointly own stars and galaxies.
19+We built Urbit IDs for digital communities and the people they’re made of. An Urbit ID is a decentralized and pseudonymous identity perfect for your collective, commune, squad, team, or DAO. Unlike most addresses or social identities, you own your Urbit ID like you own your crypto. Your Discord handle might be free for now, but as the saying goes, if it’s free then you’re the product. On Urbit your ID is actually yours and you pay for it up front. You can log into third party apps or software without ever relinquishing control of your data. What is yours stays with you. IDs themselves can be owned collectively—there are already DAOs on Urbit who jointly own stars and galaxies.
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21−Urbit IDs are evolving and generative. They’re generative because some IDs spawn additional NFTs which themselves can be bought and sold. For instance, each star can spawn 65,535 planets. The network itself is evolving, meaning that the network can be upgraded via a majority vote by galaxy holders. Urbit IDs and the Ubit network itself are inherently dynamic.
21+Urbit IDs are evolving and generative. They’re generative because some IDs spawn additional NFTs which themselves can be bought and sold. For instance, each star can spawn 65,535 planets, and each galaxy can spawn 255 stars. The network itself is evolving, meaning that the network can be upgraded via a majority vote by galaxy holders. Urbit IDs and the Ubit network itself are inherently dynamic.
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23−At Urbit, we support communities of all kinds. We recently granted Holdersland ten Urbit IDs: four stars and six planets to be auctioned off. Haleek Maul(~fosmex-hocmel) will be creating custom artwork for each of the sigils. The proceeds of the auction will help support Holdersland in bringing blockchain technologies to the Caribbean. The auction will go live on September 16th, 2021 on [holders.land/urbit](https://holders.land/urbit).
23+At Urbit, we support communities of all kinds. We recently granted Holdersland ten Urbit IDs: four stars and six planets to be auctioned off. Haleek Maul (his Urbit ID is `~fosmex-hocmel`) will be creating custom artwork for each of the sigils. The proceeds of the auction will help support Holdersland in bringing blockchain technologies to the Caribbean. The auction will go live on September 16th, 2021 on [holders.land/urbit](https://holders.land/urbit).
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2525Without further ado, here’s Haleek Maul.
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6969**Thanks for chatting!**
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71−See you at Assembly 2021!
71+See you at Assembly 2021!