You may be interested in the gopherverse. It's not exactly what you're looking for (still lives on top of mainstream DNS), but it does satisfy the "nothing but

You may be interested in the gopherverse. It's not exactly what you're looking for (still lives on top of mainstream DNS), but it does satisfy the "nothing but realms run by webmasters" and "user run directory" features. Here's a reasonable place to start: https://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?gopher%3A%2F%2Fgopher.floodgap.com%2F1 https://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?gopher%3A%2F%2Fgopher....