11 ms·

Opera adds native support for blockchain domain names

195 points by mrnobody_67 5y ago

mrnobody_67 5y ago
Not sure about others, but I've paid thousands of dollars for ICANN renewal fees over the last decade... love the idea of "owning" real estate on the internet vs. merely renting it (and having prices go up every few years).
- bastawhiz 5y ago
  Presumably you need to pay every time you want to update where the domain points, no? https://docs.unstoppabledomains.com/domain-registry-essentials/records-reference https://docs.unstoppabledomains.com/domain-registry-essentia... From the docs it seems like you can "hardcode" IPs or...a traditional dns cname. At $40/domain, if you update your DNS records once every two years, you're really only just breaking even. Also, from the FAQ: > Trademark holders with proof of ownership can apply to claim ownership of trademarked names. If a trademark name has already been sold, then it will be refunded. Note - this process ends once domains have been distributed. Unstoppable Domains does not have the ability to move a domain once distribution has occurred. Seems like a less-than-agreeable policy for most folks. Unless you're a scalper.
  - baby 5y ago
    You shouldn't have to pay much though, it's should simply be a transaction on the Ethereum network. If whoever set up that contract wants to take a fee, then it's up to people to use another contract.
    - bastawhiz 5y ago
      The average ethereum transaction fee right now is more expensive than a domain renewal fee for many common TLDs. Right now, the original purchase price of one of these domains is ~4 years of fees on a traditional registrar. Let's round the transaction fee down to $10 for the sake of simplicity. If you update your configuration every two years (which seems generous), you'll break even in...six years? And that's assuming whoever made the contract doesn't take a fee. This assumes Ethereum fees don't change. Proof of stake might affect transaction cost, but the trend right now is up and to the right: in one year the average transaction cost has increased two orders of magnitude. If we assume the rate of growth of the average transaction fee slows dramatically to one order of magnitude every two years for the next few years, that means the cost of your domain will probably never break even (over a traditional domain) in your lifetime. Even if it only doubles every two years, you'll likely never break even.
- 542458 5y ago
  Perma-owning domain names sounds like a domain name squatter’s dream come true - and therefore not a great time for everybody else.
fs111 5y ago
So we need blockchain because google controls the emails of his kids that he has set up. What? If you want you data to be safe, then host your data yourself and make backups. Yet another "we had a blockchain and did not know what to do with it" solution that nobody needs. I think I lost IQ points reading this nonsense.
- roachpepe 5y ago
  This.
- Spivak 5y ago
  Yeah I'm kinda confused as to why he went through all the effort of setting up email addresses rather than throwing them in a folder and backing it up to as many off-site storage providers as needed to make him comfortable. I get that sending an email might be easy but so is uploading to Dropbox or Nextcloud if it must be self-hosted. And you don't have any storage limits. Plus having blockchain domain names does nothing for the storage. IPFS is great but he still have to keep seeding it or it will go offline eventually. He still needs backups!
  - otterley 5y ago
    The author is female.
    - Spivak 5y ago
      Well shit. Too late to fix it now.
  - nprateem 5y ago
    There are projects where you can store things on the blockchain too. That's the point - it's all decentralised.
- twobitshifter 5y ago
  If you want to host your own data, it sounds like you need opera unite! https://news.softpedia.com/news/Download-Opera-10-10-Final-with-Opera-Unite-127687.shtml https://news.softpedia.com/news/Download-Opera-10-10-Final-w...
roachpepe 5y ago
"It’s encrypted and hashed. It can’t be hacked..." It says so on the internet, so it must be true.
SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
All you need to know: > Will My Life Change? > Yes, my friend! It will because you can easily build your own decentralized website and simplify your cross wallet crypto payments, share music and photos (not just of my kids), start a business, secure and verify your identity “on chain”, or showcase your brilliant NFT art gallery.
- ectopod 5y ago
  Pure hucksterese. How do people still fall for this? You don't even need to start to parse the content to know you're being conned.
- aetherspawn 5y ago
  "share music and photos (not just of my kids)" -- am I the only one who was creeped out by this?
- rjmunro 5y ago
  "easily"?
nonameiguess 5y ago
Why on earth do you want to decentralize personal belongings? I absolutely want my possessions centralized, in storage locations I own. That is the much more obvious solution than putting personal possessions on a blockchain. If you want to store digital tokens for your kids that you can be reasonably assured will still be there when they become adults, use thumb drives. Keep them in a fireproof safe if you're really worried. Somehow, my mom has managed to keep all the videos and photos of key events in my childhood safe and intact for 40 years without having to put them on a public distributed ledger. When betamax went obsolete, she transferred to VHS. When that went away, to DVD. I really don't understand what this woman thinks she is buying. I guess this is a better storage medium for precious moments and collectibles than sending copies of everything to gmail, but so is almost any other way of storing something.
- throwaway_isms 5y ago
  > my mom has managed to keep all the videos and photos of key events in my childhood safe and intact for 40 years without having to put them on a public distributed ledger No offense, but in all likelihood no one is attempting to counterfeit or pirate your Mom's videos and photos of your childhood, and ownership/p2p ownership transfers are not material. There are almost infinite real world examples were ownership records are benefited by blockchain technologies over centralized services. Take property deeds, usually kept and recorded at the County level, there is almost endless fraud with people filing forged quitclaim deeds on a daily basis. That would be an example of a public record, but their are private record keeping examples such as stock certificates. Usually the "Dole" case is the most famous example, where you have a publicly traded company with all the benefits of corporate record keeping, stock trusts and banks, and centralized stock exchanges, but when the buyer went to take it private low and behold the public company with all the centralized safe guards in the world should have had a total capitalization of 36M shared but somehow had about 49M share issued, it only ended up in $150M in damages, but this could not have happened using blockchain and most agree nearly every publicly traded company likely would have the same inconsistencies.
  - lozaning 5y ago
    This is a great idea until you get hit by a bus and now your private keys are gone and your family can no longer recover your estate(house and investments). Should a mechanism exist in your system wherein-by your family can reclaim ownership without your keys, means that whoever the chain says owns something clearly doesn't actually matter anyways.
baby 5y ago
Domain name/identity and key pinning has always been the only useful use of NFTs that I can think of. Today, to encrypt your communications with people, you use something like PGP or Signal which rely on "trust on first use (TOFU) but verify", in practice people don't really verify so it's more like TOFU. This means that if someone compromised the session at the moment where it was created (or re-created), then your communication are being snooped on. Today, to encrypt your communication to websites, you use HTTPS which rely on a vast network of certificate authorities. Any of these actors misbehaving leads to potential attacks. Because of that, the Certificate Transparency project was created to _potentially_ catch bad actors, that is if you check for your own domains regularly. Using a consensus-based registry, you can prevent (better than detect) attacks in both of these scenarios. Let people register their identity or domain name, and associate a public key to it that can be used to encrypt communications with the identity/domain, as long as the number of dishonest actors remain under a threshold no attacks are possible. The only (albeit not small) downside is that by taking middle men out of the picture, the naive approach prevents account recovery from happening. So to be practical, you need to find the right middle ground.
- cracker_jacks 5y ago
  > no attacks are possible I think this just shifts the responsibility and point of attack onto the owner (which is true for all decentralized crypto). An attack is still possible and worse yet, it is completely irreversible. That said, the option of taking personal custody and responsibility is important and I think it should always be an option.
  - mrnobody_67 5y ago
    Honeypot is much smaller. Any centralized source of data is very attractive and worth spending a lot of time & effort on and inevitable gets hacked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_data_breaches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_data_breaches
  - baby 5y ago
    > I think this just shifts the responsibility and point of attack onto the owner The owner is always a target, it doesn't change that, it just removes a bunch of single points of failure and middle men. > An attack is still possible and worse yet, it is completely irreversible Attacks are always possible, but depending on your threat model you do end up eliminating a number of them. As I said, with a naive implementation you make an attack irreversible, but it's not impossible to imagine an optional, committee base KYC-based account recovery mechanism.
walrus01 5y ago
People have been trying to make alternate-root DNS systems a thing for 20+ years, it has never caught on.
- ketralnis 5y ago
  I'm not a blockchain fan but "somebody tried this once and it didn't work" is hardly a dismissal of an entire class of ideas. Beanz didn't catch on but bitcoin seems to have.
  - walrus01 5y ago
    Not just 'somebody', but like a dozen different somebodies with many different methodologies. Getting an 'alternate root' DNS system trusted in any appreciable percentage of popular operating systems and web browsers, in a default out-of-the-box configuration, is a very hard problem to solve.
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      Yes, it is a very hard problem to solve. This is primarily because a 30 year old DNS system is entrenched into the infrastructure of the internet, it was not built to change and so implementing changes fights the network effect. The only solution to this problem is brute force. The problem is a brick wall. The only way to get past it is to keep creating newer, adaptable naming systems and supporting them. Every attempt to create a domain registry system that is not centrally controlled I will support, even though most of them will fail.
- imiric 5y ago
  Blockchain technology only became popular in the last decade and, as much as it has become a meme at this point, DNS is actually one of the best use cases for it. The current DNS is distributed, but highly centralized, and paying renewal fees for keeping a record in a file and a server running feels like extortion. An immutable, consistent and decentralized storage system solves those issues, and I can pay once and technically own that record for life. (Though Unstoppable Domains' prices seem arbitrarily high...) So I'm hopeful that some of this new tech can disrupt the current system, which we know is inherently flawed.[1] While I'm not going to use Opera anytime soon, we should celebrate this news and push for other browsers to do the same. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pp72gUYx00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pp72gUYx00
jsmith99 5y ago
More fragmentation. I use Nextdns for my router's DNS, which theoretically allows me to access any domains on the competing Handshake crypto protocol, but I've never actually some across any so far.
- nine_k 5y ago
  Yes, I also hoped they're going to support Nextdns. Maybe with a next update %)
- lifty 5y ago
  I really think that Handshake is the superior DNS root + PKI alternative, so hopefully more projects adopt it.
  - petre 5y ago
    Is there an open source resolver and Handshake to DNS gw with caching?
tpmx 5y ago
Opera is beyond rescue. As someone who spent a decade working there it saddens me to say so, but please don't use it. Actual, executive day-to-day control over the browser tech has progressed sort of like this: 1995: Oslo, Norway 2008: Linköping, Sweden 2014: Wrocław, Poland 2020: Beijing, PRC (the sale happened in 2016, but they were hands-off for quite some time; I think they were being busy with shady fintech stuff in Africa enabled by the Opera Mini work we did mostly in Sweden a decade earlier: https://www.engadget.com/2020-01-19-opera-accused-of-predatory-loan-apps.html https://www.engadget.com/2020-01-19-opera-accused-of-predato...)
- artursapek 5y ago
  Are you saying it's beyond rescue because it's controlled by China?
  - tpmx 5y ago
    Yes.
  - takeda 5y ago
    Opera died to me after version 12 (the moment it essentially became Chrome with a different skin). I was their user since version 5 or 6 (this was before everyone started the crazy version system, back them they released a major version about once a year). The biggest things that I loved about the browser you couldn't get by extension, they could do many things because they could directly update the engine. Now learning that they are owned by PRC there's even less reasons for me to use it. Opera could have done a lot of good if they would open sourced their old browser (kind of line what Netscape did). Someone leaked the original source code, but because it was leaked and not officially published, no one wants to touch it. Anyway now it's too late, because it's way behind the current browsers.
  - mxcrossb 5y ago
    No I think he’s saying it’s beyond rescue because first it went from a “good” country like Norway, to a “worse” country like Sweden, to an “even worse” country like Poland, to an “even more Wiesel country like China, and racist crap like this is popular on this website.
a-b 5y ago
Here is referral link if you want to register your domain https://unstoppabledomains.com/r/1ca7931f8b68487 https://unstoppabledomains.com/r/1ca7931f8b68487
Zamicol 5y ago
So there doesn't appear to be ENS support?
neals 5y ago
I like the "speed dial" feature of mobile opera. I can't find a comparable function for mobile FF or Chrome. How do you guys switch between your list visited 10ish site on those browsers?
- twobitshifter 5y ago
  Bookmarks?
  - neals 5y ago
    No really, you should check out the 'speed dial' on Opera. It's the only reason to use it. You can get to your top 30 websites in 2 clicks. I don't think mobile chrome or firefox let me organize bookmarks like that.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- BenjiWiebe 5y ago
  Tabs.
  - neals 5y ago
    I don't believe keeping your favorite 30 website open in tabs is comparable. You would have to switch to tabview, scroll to your site and refresh the page. Speeddail lets you get there in 2 clicks, I love the feature. Firefox and Chrome don't have anything like it.
crazypython 5y ago
Doesn't seem to support Handshake, .eth, or Namecoin.
cobaltoxide 5y ago
I had totally forgotten about Opera.
cookiengineer 5y ago
...so they claim to be a consensus based registry, yet they block existing trademarked domains and are the only entity receiving money? How does that even hold up with their core argument that DNS is too centralized?
- jesp010 5y ago
  Hi, i read your comment from January 2020, where you said you had a t440p working with 32gb, ram, i wanted to ask you how did you were able to do that since t440p is for default blocked at 16gb. thanks Link of old comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22174009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22174009
  - cookiengineer 5y ago
    If you want me to help you do reverse engineering work, or order my services as a consultant on matters of how to patch coreboot - please use my website to contact me. Otherwise I'd recommend you to try the checkra1n or ivyra1n discords if you want to try to patch the mrc.bin yourself.
prepend 5y ago
Where is this money going? How are these prices set? I looked up a four letter .com I have and it’s $2400. Why? Other domains aren’t available yet. NFTs for names is a really good idea but it seems like the novelty is in getting acceptance and trust. Not sure why a random org should get really substantial fees for names. For ICANN we’re forced to. But for a good blockchain solution the prices should be equitable. I understand that reselling goes to the owner, but this seems like a cash grab. That and many domains like common first names aren’t available yet.
- imiric 5y ago
  I agree that the prices seem arbitrary and high, but since there's no central authority competition could drive the prices down. Eventually I think we'll get to a Let's Encrypt level of service and all of this will be free, as I don't see a technical reason anyone should pay more than the transaction costs. The high cost does prevent abuse though, as squatting would be a bigger nuisance than it is with traditional DNS if registration were cheap/free.
- mrnobody_67 5y ago
  There are only so many viable combinations of 4-letter domain names... $2400 seems pretty fair compared to what .com's of the same length are going for (50K-$1m+ for random 4 letter combinations)
  - prepend 5y ago
    Fair compared to what? Why should the price for one be greater than another? The price of generating an NFT is the same no matter how many combinations. As a user, I would not want willingly join in a new name system that benefits an arbitrary company so much. ICANN forces use of domain registrars so I have no choice. A future system should be better, I think.
russellbeattie 5y ago
I was just looking at registering my name on https://ens.domains https://ens.domains that give you a "decentralized" .eth address. The registration fee was like $10, but the gas cost was like $80. So I didn't do it. Ethereum needs to move to Proof of Stake ASAP. Edit: Also, it looks like this deal doesn't include ENS. I thought "unstoppable" was just being used as an adjective at first, but it's a company.
throwawaysea 5y ago
I am not sure I understand the technology, but personally I like the idea of an immutable/unstoppable Internet as it is sold here. I am guessing that those with deeper technical expertise will be able to show that this is all just marketing and things are still ultimately, "stoppable", but the goals seem right.
BLanen 5y ago
Lose your key? Lose your domain, forever, for everyone, irreversible by any legal intervention. Yea, fuck that. Also, as with 99% of "smart contracts". The main contract which allows for updating the smart contract, and thus is ultimately in control of everything, is controlled by 1 private key. Nice "trustless". Just gotta trust this one entity never to make a mistake. Also, this has literally already been done at least 5 other times already before the "NFT" acronym was invented. Remember namecoin, anyone?
- Tenoke 5y ago
  If I lose my ssh key I lose access to any data on my server, too with no recourse and we are fine with that. It's a trade-off but some people can take care of their keys and prefer that risk which they've covered over a risk that a third party can take control which they can't cover. It's fine if you are not one of those people but not everyone has your needs.
  - account42 5y ago
    > If I lose my ssh key I lose access to any data on my server, too with no recourse and we are fine with that. Do you? Most hosting setups will have other ways to get to the data.
tomcooks 5y ago
> Remember when the world wide web began? Many thought static pages were not that exciting (what the heck am I going to do with this?), and no one could have predicted all the use cases that followed! Purchasing clothes on your phone, real-time traffic updates, scuba diving weather forecasts, locating your ‘tweens around town. As we enter Web3, the same excitement exists…where will Web3 advancements and integrations take us? Take me back to the boring, reliable, niche internet and keep the use cases.
infocipate 5y ago
That's a great news for opera lovers.
space_rock 5y ago
Reinventing namecheap with a scam layer on top
fastball 5y ago
This isn't quite the same thing, but Brave has had support for IPFS[1] for a while, which I think is a pretty cool alternative to the ICANN-controlled TLD system. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System
londons_explore 5y ago
Notice that this doesn't use handshake names (the popular naming scheme from last year) or namecoin (the big naming scheme from 5 years ago).
hellow0rldz 5y ago
Dunno why, but IPFS seems such a kludge. Just share your static files in the distributed hash table and access those resources via their hash ID. Like... it's not much. This news is interesting as I wonder what happens if .crypto does become a TLD?
INTPenis 5y ago
I've been using Mozilla, or Phoenix, for as long as I can remember but there was a period during 2004-2005 that Firefox used too much RAM on my 256MB laptop and I had to use Opera. At that time they had ads inside of the UI of the browser so I had to make a firewall rule to block those, but other than that it was a great browser in the pre-noscript days. But I've also heard some insider info from a Norwegian pal and apparently it's a disaster in that company. Only reason they're still alive today is all the embedded work.
kristianp 5y ago
That reminds me: whatever happened to namecoin? That was one of the top cryptocurrencies about 8 years ago.
terrycody 5y ago
I try to register more than 10 domains, all with protection, but these domains are not copyright related, upstoppable domain use a sneaky word matching system to prevent you register a good name, oh thanks for this but no.

195 points by mrnobody_67 5y ago

Not sure about others, but I've paid thousands of dollars for ICANN renewal fees over the last decade... love the idea of "owning" real estate on the internet vs. merely renting it (and having prices go up every few years).

bastawhiz 5y ago
Presumably you need to pay every time you want to update where the domain points, no? https://docs.unstoppabledomains.com/domain-registry-essentials/records-reference https://docs.unstoppabledomains.com/domain-registry-essentia... From the docs it seems like you can "hardcode" IPs or...a traditional dns cname. At $40/domain, if you update your DNS records once every two years, you're really only just breaking even. Also, from the FAQ: > Trademark holders with proof of ownership can apply to claim ownership of trademarked names. If a trademark name has already been sold, then it will be refunded. Note - this process ends once domains have been distributed. Unstoppable Domains does not have the ability to move a domain once distribution has occurred. Seems like a less-than-agreeable policy for most folks. Unless you're a scalper.
- baby 5y ago
  You shouldn't have to pay much though, it's should simply be a transaction on the Ethereum network. If whoever set up that contract wants to take a fee, then it's up to people to use another contract.
  - bastawhiz 5y ago
    The average ethereum transaction fee right now is more expensive than a domain renewal fee for many common TLDs. Right now, the original purchase price of one of these domains is ~4 years of fees on a traditional registrar. Let's round the transaction fee down to $10 for the sake of simplicity. If you update your configuration every two years (which seems generous), you'll break even in...six years? And that's assuming whoever made the contract doesn't take a fee. This assumes Ethereum fees don't change. Proof of stake might affect transaction cost, but the trend right now is up and to the right: in one year the average transaction cost has increased two orders of magnitude. If we assume the rate of growth of the average transaction fee slows dramatically to one order of magnitude every two years for the next few years, that means the cost of your domain will probably never break even (over a traditional domain) in your lifetime. Even if it only doubles every two years, you'll likely never break even.
542458 5y ago
Perma-owning domain names sounds like a domain name squatter’s dream come true - and therefore not a great time for everybody else.

fs111 5y ago

So we need blockchain because google controls the emails of his kids that he has set up. What? If you want you data to be safe, then host your data yourself and make backups. Yet another "we had a blockchain and did not know what to do with it" solution that nobody needs. I think I lost IQ points reading this nonsense.

roachpepe 5y ago
This.
Spivak 5y ago
Yeah I'm kinda confused as to why he went through all the effort of setting up email addresses rather than throwing them in a folder and backing it up to as many off-site storage providers as needed to make him comfortable. I get that sending an email might be easy but so is uploading to Dropbox or Nextcloud if it must be self-hosted. And you don't have any storage limits. Plus having blockchain domain names does nothing for the storage. IPFS is great but he still have to keep seeding it or it will go offline eventually. He still needs backups!
- otterley 5y ago
  The author is female.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    Well shit. Too late to fix it now.
- nprateem 5y ago
  There are projects where you can store things on the blockchain too. That's the point - it's all decentralised.
twobitshifter 5y ago
If you want to host your own data, it sounds like you need opera unite! https://news.softpedia.com/news/Download-Opera-10-10-Final-with-Opera-Unite-127687.shtml https://news.softpedia.com/news/Download-Opera-10-10-Final-w...

roachpepe 5y ago

"It’s encrypted and hashed. It can’t be hacked..." It says so on the internet, so it must be true.

SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago

All you need to know: > Will My Life Change? > Yes, my friend! It will because you can easily build your own decentralized website and simplify your cross wallet crypto payments, share music and photos (not just of my kids), start a business, secure and verify your identity “on chain”, or showcase your brilliant NFT art gallery.

ectopod 5y ago
Pure hucksterese. How do people still fall for this? You don't even need to start to parse the content to know you're being conned.
aetherspawn 5y ago
"share music and photos (not just of my kids)" -- am I the only one who was creeped out by this?
rjmunro 5y ago
"easily"?

nonameiguess 5y ago

Why on earth do you want to decentralize personal belongings? I absolutely want my possessions centralized, in storage locations I own. That is the much more obvious solution than putting personal possessions on a blockchain. If you want to store digital tokens for your kids that you can be reasonably assured will still be there when they become adults, use thumb drives. Keep them in a fireproof safe if you're really worried. Somehow, my mom has managed to keep all the videos and photos of key events in my childhood safe and intact for 40 years without having to put them on a public distributed ledger. When betamax went obsolete, she transferred to VHS. When that went away, to DVD. I really don't understand what this woman thinks she is buying. I guess this is a better storage medium for precious moments and collectibles than sending copies of everything to gmail, but so is almost any other way of storing something.

throwaway_isms 5y ago
> my mom has managed to keep all the videos and photos of key events in my childhood safe and intact for 40 years without having to put them on a public distributed ledger No offense, but in all likelihood no one is attempting to counterfeit or pirate your Mom's videos and photos of your childhood, and ownership/p2p ownership transfers are not material. There are almost infinite real world examples were ownership records are benefited by blockchain technologies over centralized services. Take property deeds, usually kept and recorded at the County level, there is almost endless fraud with people filing forged quitclaim deeds on a daily basis. That would be an example of a public record, but their are private record keeping examples such as stock certificates. Usually the "Dole" case is the most famous example, where you have a publicly traded company with all the benefits of corporate record keeping, stock trusts and banks, and centralized stock exchanges, but when the buyer went to take it private low and behold the public company with all the centralized safe guards in the world should have had a total capitalization of 36M shared but somehow had about 49M share issued, it only ended up in $150M in damages, but this could not have happened using blockchain and most agree nearly every publicly traded company likely would have the same inconsistencies.
- lozaning 5y ago
  This is a great idea until you get hit by a bus and now your private keys are gone and your family can no longer recover your estate(house and investments). Should a mechanism exist in your system wherein-by your family can reclaim ownership without your keys, means that whoever the chain says owns something clearly doesn't actually matter anyways.

baby 5y ago

Domain name/identity and key pinning has always been the only useful use of NFTs that I can think of. Today, to encrypt your communications with people, you use something like PGP or Signal which rely on "trust on first use (TOFU) but verify", in practice people don't really verify so it's more like TOFU. This means that if someone compromised the session at the moment where it was created (or re-created), then your communication are being snooped on. Today, to encrypt your communication to websites, you use HTTPS which rely on a vast network of certificate authorities. Any of these actors misbehaving leads to potential attacks. Because of that, the Certificate Transparency project was created to _potentially_ catch bad actors, that is if you check for your own domains regularly. Using a consensus-based registry, you can prevent (better than detect) attacks in both of these scenarios. Let people register their identity or domain name, and associate a public key to it that can be used to encrypt communications with the identity/domain, as long as the number of dishonest actors remain under a threshold no attacks are possible. The only (albeit not small) downside is that by taking middle men out of the picture, the naive approach prevents account recovery from happening. So to be practical, you need to find the right middle ground.

cracker_jacks 5y ago
> no attacks are possible I think this just shifts the responsibility and point of attack onto the owner (which is true for all decentralized crypto). An attack is still possible and worse yet, it is completely irreversible. That said, the option of taking personal custody and responsibility is important and I think it should always be an option.
- mrnobody_67 5y ago
  Honeypot is much smaller. Any centralized source of data is very attractive and worth spending a lot of time & effort on and inevitable gets hacked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_data_breaches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_data_breaches
- baby 5y ago
  > I think this just shifts the responsibility and point of attack onto the owner The owner is always a target, it doesn't change that, it just removes a bunch of single points of failure and middle men. > An attack is still possible and worse yet, it is completely irreversible Attacks are always possible, but depending on your threat model you do end up eliminating a number of them. As I said, with a naive implementation you make an attack irreversible, but it's not impossible to imagine an optional, committee base KYC-based account recovery mechanism.

walrus01 5y ago

People have been trying to make alternate-root DNS systems a thing for 20+ years, it has never caught on.

ketralnis 5y ago
I'm not a blockchain fan but "somebody tried this once and it didn't work" is hardly a dismissal of an entire class of ideas. Beanz didn't catch on but bitcoin seems to have.
- walrus01 5y ago
  Not just 'somebody', but like a dozen different somebodies with many different methodologies. Getting an 'alternate root' DNS system trusted in any appreciable percentage of popular operating systems and web browsers, in a default out-of-the-box configuration, is a very hard problem to solve.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    Yes, it is a very hard problem to solve. This is primarily because a 30 year old DNS system is entrenched into the infrastructure of the internet, it was not built to change and so implementing changes fights the network effect. The only solution to this problem is brute force. The problem is a brick wall. The only way to get past it is to keep creating newer, adaptable naming systems and supporting them. Every attempt to create a domain registry system that is not centrally controlled I will support, even though most of them will fail.
imiric 5y ago
Blockchain technology only became popular in the last decade and, as much as it has become a meme at this point, DNS is actually one of the best use cases for it. The current DNS is distributed, but highly centralized, and paying renewal fees for keeping a record in a file and a server running feels like extortion. An immutable, consistent and decentralized storage system solves those issues, and I can pay once and technically own that record for life. (Though Unstoppable Domains' prices seem arbitrarily high...) So I'm hopeful that some of this new tech can disrupt the current system, which we know is inherently flawed.[1] While I'm not going to use Opera anytime soon, we should celebrate this news and push for other browsers to do the same. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pp72gUYx00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pp72gUYx00

jsmith99 5y ago

More fragmentation. I use Nextdns for my router's DNS, which theoretically allows me to access any domains on the competing Handshake crypto protocol, but I've never actually some across any so far.

nine_k 5y ago
Yes, I also hoped they're going to support Nextdns. Maybe with a next update %)
lifty 5y ago
I really think that Handshake is the superior DNS root + PKI alternative, so hopefully more projects adopt it.
- petre 5y ago
  Is there an open source resolver and Handshake to DNS gw with caching?

tpmx 5y ago

Opera is beyond rescue. As someone who spent a decade working there it saddens me to say so, but please don't use it. Actual, executive day-to-day control over the browser tech has progressed sort of like this: 1995: Oslo, Norway 2008: Linköping, Sweden 2014: Wrocław, Poland 2020: Beijing, PRC (the sale happened in 2016, but they were hands-off for quite some time; I think they were being busy with shady fintech stuff in Africa enabled by the Opera Mini work we did mostly in Sweden a decade earlier: https://www.engadget.com/2020-01-19-opera-accused-of-predatory-loan-apps.html https://www.engadget.com/2020-01-19-opera-accused-of-predato...)

artursapek 5y ago
Are you saying it's beyond rescue because it's controlled by China?
- tpmx 5y ago
  Yes.
- takeda 5y ago
  Opera died to me after version 12 (the moment it essentially became Chrome with a different skin). I was their user since version 5 or 6 (this was before everyone started the crazy version system, back them they released a major version about once a year). The biggest things that I loved about the browser you couldn't get by extension, they could do many things because they could directly update the engine. Now learning that they are owned by PRC there's even less reasons for me to use it. Opera could have done a lot of good if they would open sourced their old browser (kind of line what Netscape did). Someone leaked the original source code, but because it was leaked and not officially published, no one wants to touch it. Anyway now it's too late, because it's way behind the current browsers.
- mxcrossb 5y ago
  No I think he’s saying it’s beyond rescue because first it went from a “good” country like Norway, to a “worse” country like Sweden, to an “even worse” country like Poland, to an “even more Wiesel country like China, and racist crap like this is popular on this website.

a-b 5y ago

Here is referral link if you want to register your domain https://unstoppabledomains.com/r/1ca7931f8b68487 https://unstoppabledomains.com/r/1ca7931f8b68487

Zamicol 5y ago

So there doesn't appear to be ENS support?

neals 5y ago

I like the "speed dial" feature of mobile opera. I can't find a comparable function for mobile FF or Chrome. How do you guys switch between your list visited 10ish site on those browsers?

twobitshifter 5y ago
Bookmarks?
- neals 5y ago
  No really, you should check out the 'speed dial' on Opera. It's the only reason to use it. You can get to your top 30 websites in 2 clicks. I don't think mobile chrome or firefox let me organize bookmarks like that.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
BenjiWiebe 5y ago
Tabs.
- neals 5y ago
  I don't believe keeping your favorite 30 website open in tabs is comparable. You would have to switch to tabview, scroll to your site and refresh the page. Speeddail lets you get there in 2 clicks, I love the feature. Firefox and Chrome don't have anything like it.

crazypython 5y ago

Doesn't seem to support Handshake, .eth, or Namecoin.

cobaltoxide 5y ago

I had totally forgotten about Opera.

cookiengineer 5y ago

...so they claim to be a consensus based registry, yet they block existing trademarked domains and are the only entity receiving money? How does that even hold up with their core argument that DNS is too centralized?

jesp010 5y ago
Hi, i read your comment from January 2020, where you said you had a t440p working with 32gb, ram, i wanted to ask you how did you were able to do that since t440p is for default blocked at 16gb. thanks Link of old comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22174009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22174009
- cookiengineer 5y ago
  If you want me to help you do reverse engineering work, or order my services as a consultant on matters of how to patch coreboot - please use my website to contact me. Otherwise I'd recommend you to try the checkra1n or ivyra1n discords if you want to try to patch the mrc.bin yourself.

prepend 5y ago

Where is this money going? How are these prices set? I looked up a four letter .com I have and it’s $2400. Why? Other domains aren’t available yet. NFTs for names is a really good idea but it seems like the novelty is in getting acceptance and trust. Not sure why a random org should get really substantial fees for names. For ICANN we’re forced to. But for a good blockchain solution the prices should be equitable. I understand that reselling goes to the owner, but this seems like a cash grab. That and many domains like common first names aren’t available yet.

imiric 5y ago
I agree that the prices seem arbitrary and high, but since there's no central authority competition could drive the prices down. Eventually I think we'll get to a Let's Encrypt level of service and all of this will be free, as I don't see a technical reason anyone should pay more than the transaction costs. The high cost does prevent abuse though, as squatting would be a bigger nuisance than it is with traditional DNS if registration were cheap/free.
mrnobody_67 5y ago
There are only so many viable combinations of 4-letter domain names... $2400 seems pretty fair compared to what .com's of the same length are going for (50K-$1m+ for random 4 letter combinations)
- prepend 5y ago
  Fair compared to what? Why should the price for one be greater than another? The price of generating an NFT is the same no matter how many combinations. As a user, I would not want willingly join in a new name system that benefits an arbitrary company so much. ICANN forces use of domain registrars so I have no choice. A future system should be better, I think.

russellbeattie 5y ago

I was just looking at registering my name on https://ens.domains https://ens.domains that give you a "decentralized" .eth address. The registration fee was like $10, but the gas cost was like $80. So I didn't do it. Ethereum needs to move to Proof of Stake ASAP. Edit: Also, it looks like this deal doesn't include ENS. I thought "unstoppable" was just being used as an adjective at first, but it's a company.

throwawaysea 5y ago

I am not sure I understand the technology, but personally I like the idea of an immutable/unstoppable Internet as it is sold here. I am guessing that those with deeper technical expertise will be able to show that this is all just marketing and things are still ultimately, "stoppable", but the goals seem right.

BLanen 5y ago

Lose your key? Lose your domain, forever, for everyone, irreversible by any legal intervention. Yea, fuck that. Also, as with 99% of "smart contracts". The main contract which allows for updating the smart contract, and thus is ultimately in control of everything, is controlled by 1 private key. Nice "trustless". Just gotta trust this one entity never to make a mistake. Also, this has literally already been done at least 5 other times already before the "NFT" acronym was invented. Remember namecoin, anyone?

Tenoke 5y ago
If I lose my ssh key I lose access to any data on my server, too with no recourse and we are fine with that. It's a trade-off but some people can take care of their keys and prefer that risk which they've covered over a risk that a third party can take control which they can't cover. It's fine if you are not one of those people but not everyone has your needs.
- account42 5y ago
  > If I lose my ssh key I lose access to any data on my server, too with no recourse and we are fine with that. Do you? Most hosting setups will have other ways to get to the data.

tomcooks 5y ago

> Remember when the world wide web began? Many thought static pages were not that exciting (what the heck am I going to do with this?), and no one could have predicted all the use cases that followed! Purchasing clothes on your phone, real-time traffic updates, scuba diving weather forecasts, locating your ‘tweens around town. As we enter Web3, the same excitement exists…where will Web3 advancements and integrations take us? Take me back to the boring, reliable, niche internet and keep the use cases.

infocipate 5y ago

That's a great news for opera lovers.

space_rock 5y ago

Reinventing namecheap with a scam layer on top

fastball 5y ago

This isn't quite the same thing, but Brave has had support for IPFS[1] for a while, which I think is a pretty cool alternative to the ICANN-controlled TLD system. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System

londons_explore 5y ago

Notice that this doesn't use handshake names (the popular naming scheme from last year) or namecoin (the big naming scheme from 5 years ago).

hellow0rldz 5y ago

Dunno why, but IPFS seems such a kludge. Just share your static files in the distributed hash table and access those resources via their hash ID. Like... it's not much. This news is interesting as I wonder what happens if .crypto does become a TLD?

INTPenis 5y ago

I've been using Mozilla, or Phoenix, for as long as I can remember but there was a period during 2004-2005 that Firefox used too much RAM on my 256MB laptop and I had to use Opera. At that time they had ads inside of the UI of the browser so I had to make a firewall rule to block those, but other than that it was a great browser in the pre-noscript days. But I've also heard some insider info from a Norwegian pal and apparently it's a disaster in that company. Only reason they're still alive today is all the embedded work.

kristianp 5y ago

That reminds me: whatever happened to namecoin? That was one of the top cryptocurrencies about 8 years ago.

terrycody 5y ago

I try to register more than 10 domains, all with protection, but these domains are not copyright related, upstoppable domain use a sneaky word matching system to prevent you register a good name, oh thanks for this but no.