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While I can't vouch for the financial incentive regarding the VC funding. From a pure technical perspective, wouldn't it be better to have a blockchain style o

While I can't vouch for the financial incentive regarding the VC funding. From a pure technical perspective, wouldn't it be better to have a blockchain style of recording keeping instead of having the record to be in one central location?

tirpen 6y ago
No. I haven't looked into this particular implementation, but most blockchains have the fundamental problem of being immutable. Storing domain names in an immutable registry seems like a legal disaster waiting to happen. What if someone registers a domain whose name contains sensitive personally identifiable information? Like www.elon-musks-SSN-is-0123456789.com? Everyone who distributes the DNS records might be in violation of the GDPR and similar laws. And similarly if the name of a domain is found to be libel.
- thinkmassive 6y ago
  Instead of speculating, you could try to find the real answer... https://handshake.org/faq/ https://handshake.org/faq/ tl;dr: Censorship resistance is a feature, not a bug. Names are registered for a year at a time. Existing TLDs and the top 100,000 Alexa websites are reserved for existing DNS registrants.
  - brazzy 6y ago
    It very much is a bug to design your system incapable of complying with existing laws. Calling it "censorship resistance" doesn't make that noble, just dishonest. It's also funny how the FAQ explicitly claims better protection of registrants' personal information as a feature, yet according to you a complete inability to protect anyone's personal information that some puts out there is also a feature...
    - dependenttypes 6y ago
      If something is leaked once it is leaked forever. Anyway, would you say the same about projects like tor or freenet? They have censorship resistance too.
      - DagAgren 6y ago
        And they are mainly used for breaking the law.
        dependenttypes 6y ago
        Debatable, but even if this is true, and?
        DagAgren 6y ago
        That maybe "censorship resistance" isn't the universal good some people make it out as. Maybe the people who benefit the most from it, and who make up the majority of those who actually benefit, are criminals. Maybe it's not a great idea to make tools that make it easier for criminals to commit crimes.
        dependenttypes 6y ago
        > That maybe "censorship resistance" isn't the universal good some people make it out as How is it not? Not having it means that certain organisations and governments will be able to remove your ability to see certain things. > Maybe the people who benefit the most from it, and who make up the majority of those who actually benefit, are criminals Again, debatable. See all kinds of videos that are removed from youtube because either youtube thinks that they violate their tos or because someone makes a copyright claim on them for example. But even if the majority of these who did benefit from it were criminals, I will ask again, and? > Maybe it's not a great idea to make tools that make it easier for criminals to commit crimes. How so? I would assume that most of these who make such tools have some form of ideology similar to anarchism and who do not think that every action that the government designates as a crime is morally evil. In addition a lot of these people believe that certain elites and government officials are the ones committing the biggest crimes and use such tools to enforce transparency and benefit from censorship resistance and anonimity.
    - bitxbitxbitcoin 6y ago
      Actually, I find that calling it censorship resistance is incredibly honest. You're absolutely right that there's a complete inability to protect anyone's personal information that someone puts out there at the blockchain level - but that's clearly a different level of "protecting registrants' personal information" than keeping such information for all website names in centralized databases that governments can access with a piece of rubber stamped paper. The two aren't conflatable the way OP mentions it. As an example - elonmusksssnis012345167 and other such names containing personal information could be blocked by the browsers or other legally liable, centralized points of access that people use to access Handshake names. My example isn't mutually exclusive with having a decentralized, distributed base layer (root zone) for names. If such (legally needed) censorship abilities were built in at the root zone, we'd see it abused as it is in the current system. That's the censorship resistance feature. tldr; Legal censorship can and should happen at another layer.
  - tirpen 6y ago
    Oh, so they purposefully designed it to not be legal? Well in that case I guess it's ok!
- dathinab 6y ago
  > tl;dr: Censorship resistance is a feature, not a bug. Names are registered for a year at a time. Existing TLDs and the top 100,000 Alexa websites are reserved for existing DNS registrants. This doesn't make it any less incompatible with many countries law system. And yes sadly this means that systems compatible with most countries law are also prone to corruption by secret service/government order. Even if you are limiting it to "democratic western" countries. Through it's at least worth a try as law can be changed and as long as it doesn't come closer to replacing the current system as main solution it likely to be tolerated giving it time to convince people to allow the change.
dathinab 6y ago
There are some major practical problems with blockchain based domain management. Mainly because of all kind of local country specific regulations. Like e.g. with regard to trademarks. You know this kind of thinks people like to not bother with when making a technical solution to a not purly technical problem. While I believe that a good decentralized technical solution is possible and can be a massive improvement I am extremely sceptical about any solution involving any form of coins.

tirpen 6y ago

No. I haven't looked into this particular implementation, but most blockchains have the fundamental problem of being immutable. Storing domain names in an immutable registry seems like a legal disaster waiting to happen. What if someone registers a domain whose name contains sensitive personally identifiable information? Like www.elon-musks-SSN-is-0123456789.com? Everyone who distributes the DNS records might be in violation of the GDPR and similar laws. And similarly if the name of a domain is found to be libel.

thinkmassive 6y ago
Instead of speculating, you could try to find the real answer... https://handshake.org/faq/ https://handshake.org/faq/ tl;dr: Censorship resistance is a feature, not a bug. Names are registered for a year at a time. Existing TLDs and the top 100,000 Alexa websites are reserved for existing DNS registrants.
- brazzy 6y ago
  It very much is a bug to design your system incapable of complying with existing laws. Calling it "censorship resistance" doesn't make that noble, just dishonest. It's also funny how the FAQ explicitly claims better protection of registrants' personal information as a feature, yet according to you a complete inability to protect anyone's personal information that some puts out there is also a feature...
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    If something is leaked once it is leaked forever. Anyway, would you say the same about projects like tor or freenet? They have censorship resistance too.
    - DagAgren 6y ago
      And they are mainly used for breaking the law.
      - dependenttypes 6y ago
        Debatable, but even if this is true, and?
        DagAgren 6y ago
        That maybe "censorship resistance" isn't the universal good some people make it out as. Maybe the people who benefit the most from it, and who make up the majority of those who actually benefit, are criminals. Maybe it's not a great idea to make tools that make it easier for criminals to commit crimes.
        dependenttypes 6y ago
        > That maybe "censorship resistance" isn't the universal good some people make it out as How is it not? Not having it means that certain organisations and governments will be able to remove your ability to see certain things. > Maybe the people who benefit the most from it, and who make up the majority of those who actually benefit, are criminals Again, debatable. See all kinds of videos that are removed from youtube because either youtube thinks that they violate their tos or because someone makes a copyright claim on them for example. But even if the majority of these who did benefit from it were criminals, I will ask again, and? > Maybe it's not a great idea to make tools that make it easier for criminals to commit crimes. How so? I would assume that most of these who make such tools have some form of ideology similar to anarchism and who do not think that every action that the government designates as a crime is morally evil. In addition a lot of these people believe that certain elites and government officials are the ones committing the biggest crimes and use such tools to enforce transparency and benefit from censorship resistance and anonimity.
  - bitxbitxbitcoin 6y ago
    Actually, I find that calling it censorship resistance is incredibly honest. You're absolutely right that there's a complete inability to protect anyone's personal information that someone puts out there at the blockchain level - but that's clearly a different level of "protecting registrants' personal information" than keeping such information for all website names in centralized databases that governments can access with a piece of rubber stamped paper. The two aren't conflatable the way OP mentions it. As an example - elonmusksssnis012345167 and other such names containing personal information could be blocked by the browsers or other legally liable, centralized points of access that people use to access Handshake names. My example isn't mutually exclusive with having a decentralized, distributed base layer (root zone) for names. If such (legally needed) censorship abilities were built in at the root zone, we'd see it abused as it is in the current system. That's the censorship resistance feature. tldr; Legal censorship can and should happen at another layer.
- tirpen 6y ago
  Oh, so they purposefully designed it to not be legal? Well in that case I guess it's ok!
dathinab 6y ago
> tl;dr: Censorship resistance is a feature, not a bug. Names are registered for a year at a time. Existing TLDs and the top 100,000 Alexa websites are reserved for existing DNS registrants. This doesn't make it any less incompatible with many countries law system. And yes sadly this means that systems compatible with most countries law are also prone to corruption by secret service/government order. Even if you are limiting it to "democratic western" countries. Through it's at least worth a try as law can be changed and as long as it doesn't come closer to replacing the current system as main solution it likely to be tolerated giving it time to convince people to allow the change.

dathinab 6y ago

There are some major practical problems with blockchain based domain management. Mainly because of all kind of local country specific regulations. Like e.g. with regard to trademarks. You know this kind of thinks people like to not bother with when making a technical solution to a not purly technical problem. While I believe that a good decentralized technical solution is possible and can be a massive improvement I am extremely sceptical about any solution involving any form of coins.