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This is a great idea with one easily correctable but nonetheless fatal flaw: it's an all-or-nothing preposition. If users choose to use Handshake as their DNS r
by Ajedi32 7y ago
This is a great idea with one easily correctable but nonetheless fatal flaw: it's an all-or-nothing preposition. If users choose to use Handshake as their DNS roots, they will no longer be able to access websites which only exist on ICANN's root zone.
Assuming I'm not mistaken and that really is how Handshake is set up (someone please correct me if I'm wrong), then IMO the whole project is essentially dead on arrival. There's no chance they're going to be able to convince millions of large websites to register on a new DNS root overnight. And even if they did somehow managed to convince 80% of websites move to the new system, users _still_ wouldn't switch over because doing so would effectively break 20% of the internet for them.
It's a real shame, because this problem would be trivially avoidable if they simply allowed the existing TLDs use the ICANN roots and confined Handshake domains to their own TLD (.handshake maybe). That way, adoption could happen slowly over time and users could switch over to the Handshake roots with no downsides. As-is though this is simply unworkable.
- xur17 7y ago> If users choose to use Handshake as their DNS roots, they will no longer be able to access websites which only exist on ICANN's root zone. This is not true. You can setup Handshake to be your resolver, and it will resolve both domains on handshake, and legacy domains from icann.
- Ajedi32 7y agoThen what's this paragraph in the FAQ about? > Existing TLDs and over 100,000 Alexa websites are reserved on the Handshake blockchain. Upon removing collisions, generic, and exclusions (e.g. 1 or 2 character names), approximately 80,000 names remain. Using the root key and DNSSEC, domain owners can cryptographically prove ownership to the Handshake blockchain to claim names. Does Handshake control existing (`.com`, `.org`, etc.) domain names or don't they? If they do, then what happens when a DNS entry in Handshake's roots contradicts what's in the ICANN roots? If Handshake wins conflicts, then that breaks the internet for existing users.
- xur17 7y agoI have a longer answer here [0], but in short, Handshake does not control existing domain names. They are giving the top 100k existing domain name owners control of a gtld based on the domain they own. Ex `example.com` receives `example` in Handshake's system. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22312059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22312059
- Ajedi32 7y agoOkay, that's much better. Thanks for the clarification. I assume "com", "org", "net", "ninja", etc are also reserved then?
- xur17 7y agoYes, they are. The list can be found here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/handshake-org/hsd/1c2d1036b262ecb767e71a73cd91ef11c940b230/lib/covenants/names.json https://raw.githubusercontent.com/handshake-org/hsd/1c2d1036...
- tynes 7y agoIn blockchains, there is a difference between consensus and policy. The way that the Handshake recursive resolver works is not based on consensus. This means that people can insert rules for delegating a particular request to ICANN or to the Handshake authoritative resolver. It currently checks the Handshake authoritative resolver first, then falls back to ICANN. If this behavior is easily configurable/shared and open source, then people can opt into whatever configuration that best suites their needs.
- Ajedi32 7y agoAwesome, that's good to hear! Sounds like a pretty easy fix then. Users just need to configure the recursive DNS resolver to delegate existing TLDs to ICANN and that fixes the compatibility issue. I might actually give that a try at some point.