7 ms·

Zooko's Triangle

ronreiter 4y ago
Blockchain is an obvious counterexample
- wikfwikf 4y ago
  But aren't blockchain solutions a form of centralization? The blockchain itself has a decentralized structure. But when we use it as a basis for our naming scheme it becomes a single point of failure. It isn't possible for some participant in the naming scheme to choose to use a different blockchain which they prefer.
itake 4y ago
What about Facebook's onion domain? https://facebookcorewwwi.onion/ https://facebookcorewwwi.onion/ This seems to be human meaningful, secure, and decentralized. https://m.facebook.com/nt/screen/?params=%7B%22note_id%22%3A2655797467977351%7D&path=%2Fnotes%2Fnote%2F&refsrc=deprecated&_rdr https://m.facebook.com/nt/screen/?params=%7B%22note_id%22%3A...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- scraptor 4y ago
  It's not actually secure and human meaningful. There are many possible domains at least as legit looking which are not owned by facebook, and so you must either have the machine remember that facebook is facebookcorewwwi.onion and not wwwfacebookcomyz.onion (secure) or trust the first domain that looks legit (human-meaningful).
- chejazi 4y ago
  I can't believe they managed to grind that one.
- arwt 4y ago
  I'd love to see some insight as to how they were able to generate that domain name. Surely if they can do that (years ago, even), then a well-funded adversary would be able to generate the same now, given enough time. Maybe it took x thousands of compute years to generate the secret key for `facebokcorewww` - and they didn't care about the last character. But still, let's say you're a government agency with endless resources - how hard would it be to recreate that private key? If a private corp can do it once with finite resources - why can't you? Was it is just a stroke of luck for those working on it? What are the chances?
  - pseudalopex 4y ago
    They stress tested a compute farm for by brute forcing onion addresses. About 10 per week per CPU started with facebook. corewwwi was their favorite.[1] Onion addresses are longer now. [1] https://alecmuffett.com/article/15996 https://alecmuffett.com/article/15996
    - arwt 4y ago
      Very interesting read. Thank you!
  - aaron695 4y ago
- cowtools 4y ago
  It is not secure by merit of the fact that they were able to brute-force it. The v2 onion domains are weak. the v3 onion domains are much longer.
  - haakon 4y ago
    Also worth noting that v2 domains are phased out now and will no longer work. Facebook's new onion address is facebookwkhpilnemxj7asaniu7vnjjbiltxjqhye3mhbshg7kx5tfyd.onion, which is not exactly human-meaningful.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mwilcox 4y ago
21e8 fixes this
cjbprime 4y ago
Zooko's Triangle was a useful lens, but I think of it has having long been solved (or, refuted) by many blockchain projects.
- amingilani 4y ago
  I concur, for example, ENS domains are memorable, secure and the whole contract is decentralized. And you can send Vitalik eth at vitalik.eth
  - digitaLandscape 4y ago
  - googlryas 4y ago
    Woe betide other Vitaliks!
    - hackernewds 4y ago
      ?
      - googlryas 4y ago
        It's nice that you can send vitalik eth to vitalik.eth, but what about the 10000 other vitaliks out there? Are they supposed to be vitalik_4591.eth, the_real_vitalik.eth, etc?
        alexslobodnik 4y ago
        they can pick a different name, i don't really understand what solution you are advocating. that no one can be vitalik because there are more than one?
        googlryas 4y ago
        I'm actually not advocating for a solution, because I don't know of one. My point was only that OPs statement of "ENS domains are memorable" is only true for early adopters. Later adopters won't have that luxury. The same thing played out with the .com domain, which is why so many companies use non-.com domains these days, because it is not straightforward to get a memorable domain in .com.
edflsafoiewq 4y ago
Here's another triangle Human-meaningful: Meaningful and memorable names. Unique: The referent of a name is unique and immutable. Intergenerational: The first generation of users can't take up all the good names.
- cowtools 4y ago
  I think the intergenerational aspect is intertwined with the "centralized" aspect if zooko's triangle, because traditionally in DNS you have some central authority (ICANN, IETF, registrar) that is expected to "solve" that somehow by deciding who should be allowed to own certain domains.
- eternityforest 4y ago
  This is another good case for just tossing the whole unique name thing entirely and going with key hashes and freely chosen nonunique names.
- qwerty456127 4y ago
  IMHO there should be no good or bad names and no choice which do you take. I loved ICQ so much because it didn't require me to invent a nickname nor to struggle spelling it aloud to people from different countries. Just a reasonably short number - that was amazing.
rapnie 4y ago
There's also a nice short paper [0] sent to Rebooting the Web of Trust by Christine Lemmer-Webber, Mark S. Miller et al. The Spritely Institute [1] is elaborating on this [2] [0] https://github.com/cwebber/rebooting-the-web-of-trust-spring2018/blob/petnames/draft-documents/petnames.md https://github.com/cwebber/rebooting-the-web-of-trust-spring... [1] https://spritely.institute https://spritely.institute [2] https://spritelyproject.org/news/petname-systems.html https://spritelyproject.org/news/petname-systems.html
eternityforest 4y ago
Human meaningful names aren't great. They basically require that names have a cost. Either DNS or blockchain, and either way you may have trouble on isolated networks. I think a better solution is to just leave meaningful names to centralized DNS. It's a perfect fit. Amazon is centralized already. Private individuals don't commonly need them. Look at phone numbers. We are fine with local assigned names for the most part. What we need is a way to create a URL that embeds its SSL fingerprint and is independent of any authority. Self hosted stuff can use that because there's generally a safe bootstrap method to communicate that name. And even with unsafe bootstrapping like non unique search, you are still not any worse off than you are with Facebook using the same method. Probably better, in fact, if you are using local-only nonunique search over Bluetooth instead of something anyone anywhere can fake. Meaningful names can even give a false sense of security and lead to typosquatting. The advantage of not needing a blockchain or consensus seems bigger than the advantage of names.
- layer8 4y ago
  Human meaningful names are useful when used in configuration files and the like, because otherwise you have no way to recognize what host is being referenced, and to easily communicate with others about it. I would maybe prefer the term “human-recognizable names” for that reason.
  - eternityforest 4y ago
    In a local context they're great, but it seems like Zooko only applies to global DNSlike systems.

Blockchain is an obvious counterexample

wikfwikf 4y ago
But aren't blockchain solutions a form of centralization? The blockchain itself has a decentralized structure. But when we use it as a basis for our naming scheme it becomes a single point of failure. It isn't possible for some participant in the naming scheme to choose to use a different blockchain which they prefer.

What about Facebook's onion domain? https://facebookcorewwwi.onion/ https://facebookcorewwwi.onion/ This seems to be human meaningful, secure, and decentralized. https://m.facebook.com/nt/screen/?params=%7B%22note_id%22%3A2655797467977351%7D&path=%2Fnotes%2Fnote%2F&refsrc=deprecated&_rdr https://m.facebook.com/nt/screen/?params=%7B%22note_id%22%3A...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
scraptor 4y ago
It's not actually secure and human meaningful. There are many possible domains at least as legit looking which are not owned by facebook, and so you must either have the machine remember that facebook is facebookcorewwwi.onion and not wwwfacebookcomyz.onion (secure) or trust the first domain that looks legit (human-meaningful).
chejazi 4y ago
I can't believe they managed to grind that one.
arwt 4y ago
I'd love to see some insight as to how they were able to generate that domain name. Surely if they can do that (years ago, even), then a well-funded adversary would be able to generate the same now, given enough time. Maybe it took x thousands of compute years to generate the secret key for `facebokcorewww` - and they didn't care about the last character. But still, let's say you're a government agency with endless resources - how hard would it be to recreate that private key? If a private corp can do it once with finite resources - why can't you? Was it is just a stroke of luck for those working on it? What are the chances?
- pseudalopex 4y ago
  They stress tested a compute farm for by brute forcing onion addresses. About 10 per week per CPU started with facebook. corewwwi was their favorite.[1] Onion addresses are longer now. [1] https://alecmuffett.com/article/15996 https://alecmuffett.com/article/15996
  - arwt 4y ago
    Very interesting read. Thank you!
- aaron695 4y ago
cowtools 4y ago
It is not secure by merit of the fact that they were able to brute-force it. The v2 onion domains are weak. the v3 onion domains are much longer.
- haakon 4y ago
  Also worth noting that v2 domains are phased out now and will no longer work. Facebook's new onion address is facebookwkhpilnemxj7asaniu7vnjjbiltxjqhye3mhbshg7kx5tfyd.onion, which is not exactly human-meaningful.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mwilcox 4y ago

21e8 fixes this

cjbprime 4y ago

Zooko's Triangle was a useful lens, but I think of it has having long been solved (or, refuted) by many blockchain projects.

amingilani 4y ago
I concur, for example, ENS domains are memorable, secure and the whole contract is decentralized. And you can send Vitalik eth at vitalik.eth
- digitaLandscape 4y ago
- googlryas 4y ago
  Woe betide other Vitaliks!
  - hackernewds 4y ago
    ?
    - googlryas 4y ago
      It's nice that you can send vitalik eth to vitalik.eth, but what about the 10000 other vitaliks out there? Are they supposed to be vitalik_4591.eth, the_real_vitalik.eth, etc?
      - alexslobodnik 4y ago
        they can pick a different name, i don't really understand what solution you are advocating. that no one can be vitalik because there are more than one?
        googlryas 4y ago
        I'm actually not advocating for a solution, because I don't know of one. My point was only that OPs statement of "ENS domains are memorable" is only true for early adopters. Later adopters won't have that luxury. The same thing played out with the .com domain, which is why so many companies use non-.com domains these days, because it is not straightforward to get a memorable domain in .com.

edflsafoiewq 4y ago

Here's another triangle Human-meaningful: Meaningful and memorable names. Unique: The referent of a name is unique and immutable. Intergenerational: The first generation of users can't take up all the good names.

cowtools 4y ago
I think the intergenerational aspect is intertwined with the "centralized" aspect if zooko's triangle, because traditionally in DNS you have some central authority (ICANN, IETF, registrar) that is expected to "solve" that somehow by deciding who should be allowed to own certain domains.
eternityforest 4y ago
This is another good case for just tossing the whole unique name thing entirely and going with key hashes and freely chosen nonunique names.
qwerty456127 4y ago
IMHO there should be no good or bad names and no choice which do you take. I loved ICQ so much because it didn't require me to invent a nickname nor to struggle spelling it aloud to people from different countries. Just a reasonably short number - that was amazing.

rapnie 4y ago

There's also a nice short paper [0] sent to Rebooting the Web of Trust by Christine Lemmer-Webber, Mark S. Miller et al. The Spritely Institute [1] is elaborating on this [2] [0] https://github.com/cwebber/rebooting-the-web-of-trust-spring2018/blob/petnames/draft-documents/petnames.md https://github.com/cwebber/rebooting-the-web-of-trust-spring... [1] https://spritely.institute https://spritely.institute [2] https://spritelyproject.org/news/petname-systems.html https://spritelyproject.org/news/petname-systems.html

eternityforest 4y ago

Human meaningful names aren't great. They basically require that names have a cost. Either DNS or blockchain, and either way you may have trouble on isolated networks. I think a better solution is to just leave meaningful names to centralized DNS. It's a perfect fit. Amazon is centralized already. Private individuals don't commonly need them. Look at phone numbers. We are fine with local assigned names for the most part. What we need is a way to create a URL that embeds its SSL fingerprint and is independent of any authority. Self hosted stuff can use that because there's generally a safe bootstrap method to communicate that name. And even with unsafe bootstrapping like non unique search, you are still not any worse off than you are with Facebook using the same method. Probably better, in fact, if you are using local-only nonunique search over Bluetooth instead of something anyone anywhere can fake. Meaningful names can even give a false sense of security and lead to typosquatting. The advantage of not needing a blockchain or consensus seems bigger than the advantage of names.

layer8 4y ago
Human meaningful names are useful when used in configuration files and the like, because otherwise you have no way to recognize what host is being referenced, and to easily communicate with others about it. I would maybe prefer the term “human-recognizable names” for that reason.
- eternityforest 4y ago
  In a local context they're great, but it seems like Zooko only applies to global DNSlike systems.