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Ah ok. I was trying to figure out how you would fix say abc.xyz is announced by someone name squatting. Then the real abc.xyz comes along and says 'hey wait'.

Ah ok. I was trying to figure out how you would fix say abc.xyz is announced by someone name squatting. Then the real abc.xyz comes along and says 'hey wait'. First come first serve fixes someone else coming along and stealing but not squatting. In all of the systems I come up with I always end up with some sort of central trusted authority/machine saying 'this is ok, that is not'.

bullen 5y ago
Yes, but good point about the squatting, I know it's going to be a problem, eventually solved by the "market" but I would like something a bit leaner... thanks for stirring my noodles. Maybe a penalty for unused names with time, but that will just drive paid spam and energy "waste"... time solves everything, I'm sure a better solution will crop up eventually, it's not like I will be done next week! Unfortunately for us, everything is a pyramid scheme, you just have to make an as stable/fair pyramid as you can!
- sumtechguy 5y ago
  Oh very true. It is what I keep running into when trying to create something like this. I end up with something where 'the buck stops here' kind of deal. There is a secondary problem too of transfer of ownership. Companies split up and buy each other out all the time. So you have to have a way transfer ownership too. Which in purely technical terms looks like someone else is squatting. But they are not you want them to have it. The existing DNS business system kind of grew into all of this. As in DNS today right now does not preclude anyone not making their own set of domains. You probably could make it very decentralized just using the config options. The problem is someone 'reputable' has to verify. That becomes a weak point and place where someone can gatekeep. Adding any sort of monetary advantage will also unfortunately motivate people to gatekeep. However, money keeps the lights on...
dboreham 5y ago
I don't think you can do better than : you have to pay to rent in the namespace. This allows first-come first-served, and squatters, but they have to pay. Since the namespace is new, in theory there's no benefit to squatting because no particular name has any value yet. Of course often there's a desire to mirror some existing namespace (e.g. DNS, trademarks) where there is value in the name already. In that case the best you can do is to build some oracle mechanism that consumes proofs of namespace ownership. Similar to how LE/Acme works, but used to drive an oracle.

bullen 5y ago

Yes, but good point about the squatting, I know it's going to be a problem, eventually solved by the "market" but I would like something a bit leaner... thanks for stirring my noodles. Maybe a penalty for unused names with time, but that will just drive paid spam and energy "waste"... time solves everything, I'm sure a better solution will crop up eventually, it's not like I will be done next week! Unfortunately for us, everything is a pyramid scheme, you just have to make an as stable/fair pyramid as you can!

sumtechguy 5y ago
Oh very true. It is what I keep running into when trying to create something like this. I end up with something where 'the buck stops here' kind of deal. There is a secondary problem too of transfer of ownership. Companies split up and buy each other out all the time. So you have to have a way transfer ownership too. Which in purely technical terms looks like someone else is squatting. But they are not you want them to have it. The existing DNS business system kind of grew into all of this. As in DNS today right now does not preclude anyone not making their own set of domains. You probably could make it very decentralized just using the config options. The problem is someone 'reputable' has to verify. That becomes a weak point and place where someone can gatekeep. Adding any sort of monetary advantage will also unfortunately motivate people to gatekeep. However, money keeps the lights on...

dboreham 5y ago

I don't think you can do better than : you have to pay to rent in the namespace. This allows first-come first-served, and squatters, but they have to pay. Since the namespace is new, in theory there's no benefit to squatting because no particular name has any value yet. Of course often there's a desire to mirror some existing namespace (e.g. DNS, trademarks) where there is value in the name already. In that case the best you can do is to build some oracle mechanism that consumes proofs of namespace ownership. Similar to how LE/Acme works, but used to drive an oracle.