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Throughout Urbit's development, changes to the Ames network protocol have sometimes required a reset of the network state, essentially creating a new network (this is somewhat analogous to a "hard fork" on a blockchain). In the past, this has required users to take some action in order to get on the new network.

As Urbit has matured, network resets have become less frequent. This network introduces version negotiation between Arvo (Urbit's OS) and Vere (Urbit's runtime), allowing each to be updated separately without worrying about an incompatibility on ships. For example, if you are running Vere 1.0 and an OTA (over-the-air) update of Arvo goes out that requires Vere 2.0, your ship will simply drop the update and notify you that you need to update your binary in order to receive the next update. When you update your binary is up to you.

The introduction of version negotiation means we can be optimistic that this will be the last reset, as all future updates to the network can be distributed as OTA (over-the-air) updates, possibly accompanied by a notification to update a binary version.