It's vaporware created by a leading alt right/NRx figure[1], which explains its popularity.
The urbit website does very little to explain, on a technical level, how any of it works. It goes to great lengths to explain the supposed impact of its design decisions and how it will make all of our lives better (supposedly).
Another post recently popped up about Urbit last week and I did (against my better judgement) a bit of a dive to try and understand all the lingo. It's a real WTF. The "Hoon" language is completely esoteric, the website a mess, the docs written in this very philosopher-intellectual like way that is completely incomprehensible.
I see that the website has gotten a lift recently and they are clearly trying to make an effort to be more approachable, but its cultural roots are in a lot of problematic stuff and it still does not convince me that it's anything more than crypto-LARPing.
Urbit might be technically interesting, I can't tell, but that's not what this blog post is about. It's not what Urbit is trying to sell to me. And based on the thought leadership, I am not interested in buying.