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> There are tons of registrars But those registrars only exist at the discretion of a single centralized authority (ICANN) It doesn’t matter which registrar

> There are tons of registrars But those registrars only exist at the discretion of a single centralized authority (ICANN) It doesn’t matter which registrar you use, ICANN can always take away your domain name and give it to someone else, no laws apply to protect your domain it is all subject to ICANN and their decision. They have taken away 10’s of registered thousands of domain names. Alternatively there is no centralized authority that can take away a decentralized domain name such as ENS.

acdha 5y ago
ICANN controls the root name servers but it’s an international organization with bylaws and governance involving a number of parties around the world. They can’t force a registrar to transfer your domain without following a formal process, and misuse of what power they have would have significant consequences since they depend on cooperation. ENS is based on Ethereum, which is controlled by a smaller number of people and has already had one case where they rewrote history when it was financially advantageous. There is no reason to think that in a hypothetical future where ENS came to matter to anyone the same pressures wouldn’t apply because the critical flaw for ENS is the same one preventing popular use of blockchains in general: there’s no way to recover from mistakes or abuse. This is not an idle concern: domain theft happens regularly and there’s a process for recovering your domain: https://www.icann.org/en/blogs/details/documentation-is-key-to-recovering-hijacked-domain-names-14-4-2016-en https://www.icann.org/en/blogs/details/documentation-is-key-... If ENS became popular there’s no chance that the same problem wouldn’t occur, and the value of a domain and risk to the public means that people would not accept the answer that the attacker won for all time. Something would happen - whether that’s the Ethereum developers rewriting history again, a global block or override list, or something else. As a simple learning example, imagine that the Chinese government got the keys for Taiwanese government in a hack or someone stole the keys for Amazon. Do you think that the ENS community’s response would be to say there’s nothing to be done and Amazon should rebrand, or that anyone would continue to use ENS if they did?
- throwawaycities 5y ago
  > ICANN controls the root name servers but it’s an international organization with bylaws and governance... All true, but doesn’t make ICANN not centralized. >ENS is based on Ethereum…and has already had one case where they rewrote history when it was financially advantageous. There is a difference between rewritten and forked. Nothing was rewritten, both chains exist. Similarly there is no centralized authority that prevents an individual or group from forking the blockchain, nor any central authority forcing users to the new fork. Alternatively, you won’t have much success attempting to “fork” your own .com TLD because of conflict with DNS. Realistically even ENS potentially faces this risk with .eth conflicting with DNS at some point. But as it relates to ENS on EVM, if you are suggesting Amazon could in anyway force the take over of Amazon.eth from another owner on the blockchain, it is not possible, not even the ENS DAO has that power. This may be a result of your misunderstanding that Ethereum was previously “rewritten”.

acdha 5y ago

ICANN controls the root name servers but it’s an international organization with bylaws and governance involving a number of parties around the world. They can’t force a registrar to transfer your domain without following a formal process, and misuse of what power they have would have significant consequences since they depend on cooperation. ENS is based on Ethereum, which is controlled by a smaller number of people and has already had one case where they rewrote history when it was financially advantageous. There is no reason to think that in a hypothetical future where ENS came to matter to anyone the same pressures wouldn’t apply because the critical flaw for ENS is the same one preventing popular use of blockchains in general: there’s no way to recover from mistakes or abuse. This is not an idle concern: domain theft happens regularly and there’s a process for recovering your domain: https://www.icann.org/en/blogs/details/documentation-is-key-to-recovering-hijacked-domain-names-14-4-2016-en https://www.icann.org/en/blogs/details/documentation-is-key-... If ENS became popular there’s no chance that the same problem wouldn’t occur, and the value of a domain and risk to the public means that people would not accept the answer that the attacker won for all time. Something would happen - whether that’s the Ethereum developers rewriting history again, a global block or override list, or something else. As a simple learning example, imagine that the Chinese government got the keys for Taiwanese government in a hack or someone stole the keys for Amazon. Do you think that the ENS community’s response would be to say there’s nothing to be done and Amazon should rebrand, or that anyone would continue to use ENS if they did?

throwawaycities 5y ago
> ICANN controls the root name servers but it’s an international organization with bylaws and governance... All true, but doesn’t make ICANN not centralized. >ENS is based on Ethereum…and has already had one case where they rewrote history when it was financially advantageous. There is a difference between rewritten and forked. Nothing was rewritten, both chains exist. Similarly there is no centralized authority that prevents an individual or group from forking the blockchain, nor any central authority forcing users to the new fork. Alternatively, you won’t have much success attempting to “fork” your own .com TLD because of conflict with DNS. Realistically even ENS potentially faces this risk with .eth conflicting with DNS at some point. But as it relates to ENS on EVM, if you are suggesting Amazon could in anyway force the take over of Amazon.eth from another owner on the blockchain, it is not possible, not even the ENS DAO has that power. This may be a result of your misunderstanding that Ethereum was previously “rewritten”.