24 ms·

GoDaddy Statement on Eth.link Domain Registration

99 points by ca98am79 4y ago

542458 4y ago
So what happens when there are hundreds++ of individuals all interested in a single domain name that will become available at a very well-defined time like this? Do people just hammer the ICANN/registrar servers in hope of being the lucky one, or is it more elegant than that?
- yuvadam 4y ago
  Yes.
- thejosh 4y ago
  Yep, it's called "domain drop", it's a pretty lucrative industry to be in. GoDaddy especially knows this and will auction off domains before selling them, where as third parties can try and register the domain every 0.005 seconds. :-)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- blechschmidt 4y ago
  AFAIK, there are even companies that own hundreds of registrars to just do that [1]. Just scroll through [2]. [1]: https://domainnamewire.com/2015/10/09/wow-dropcatch-adds-300-more-registrars-now-has-752/ https://domainnamewire.com/2015/10/09/wow-dropcatch-adds-300... [2]: https://www.iana.org/assignments/registrar-ids/registrar-ids.xhtml https://www.iana.org/assignments/registrar-ids/registrar-ids...
- YetAnotherNick 4y ago
  No, there is an auction period before domain being available to public(atleast that was the case with another registrar).
- politelemon 4y ago
  In addition to some replies here, some outfits will even lease their office buildings as close as networkly-posible to the registrars so that they can shave those milliseconds in trying to snipe the domain.
  - marban 4y ago
    I thought that was only relevant for financial stuff but as for dropcatchers, that's new to me.
    - mathgeek 4y ago
      They are essentially the same thing. The strategy is the same whether trying to put in buy orders for stocks or domains.
- JohnHaugeland 4y ago
  > So what happens when there are hundreds++ of individuals all interested in a single domain name that will become available at a very well-defined time like this? One of them receives it and the others do not. First come first serve.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  This happens everyday. Nothing new. Hundreds of high value domains expire every week. Some can be worth six figures or more. Everyone competes to “catch it” but usually, the registrar gets it and auctions it off.
- weird-eye-issue 4y ago
  GoDaddy Auctions is what will happen like all their expired domains
  - tomlogic 4y ago
    So they have a financial incentive here to allow the domain to expire.
- NelsonMinar 4y ago
  It's interesting; half the replies here say there will be a bot rush. The other half say GoDaddy will auction it off. Which is it?
curiousgal 4y ago
And this is how you print money. I'll be curious to see how much it goes for.
perihelions 4y ago
Here's additional context, https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=ethlink-service-about-to-go-offline-because-domain-owner-is-in-prison https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=ethlink-service-about-to-go... ("eth.link service about to go offline because domain owner is in prison")
- josteink 4y ago
  That’s very informative. Thanks for posting! > the project has found itself at the mercy of GoDaddy. Welcome to the decentralized web3 we've all been promised! I admit this had me laughing.
  - benreesman 4y ago
    I tend to think the cyber money hyperventilation on both sides ranges from silly to really annoying, but… Molly White is hilarious and that site is gold. She’s (intentionally or not) done a bit of an homage to dealbreaker.com, which is roughly “Wall St. is Going Great” and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys the above. Top kek.
    - CPLX 4y ago
      Every generation deserves a fuckedcompany.com or two.
    - rvz 4y ago
      I also find jesters and clowns hilarious as well. Some of them don't need to dress up, but just love to professionally complain and grift on top of another grift and point fingers at everyone being an extreme crypto supporter. Eventually, they will give up just like the other critics did and it will be on to the next one.
      - benreesman 4y ago
        In general I agree. The cybermoney hate-kegels that HN practices are, interpreted in the most generous possible way a really loud, really low-signal way for a bunch of people to express the sentiment that they think some tradeable instruments are over-valued, which professionals do by either not buying them, or going short if they're convicted. Less charitable interpretations cluster around old-fashioned sour grapes that a bunch of people lucked into 10^6x or 10^7x type returns, which, in fairness, is hard not to be annoyed by on a human flinch level. There is another group of people actively trying to profit either financially or in-kind via page views on the very thing they are calling destructive profiteering, and in the least generous possible interpretation, Ms. White falls into that category with this site. But life is fucking hard at the best of times, and speaking for myself I'm generally much happier and more sane when I keep a sense of humor about things. Her site made me laugh, and was therefore a bargain at the ten minutes I spent chuckling over it.
rocco8620 4y ago
https://www.whatsmydns.net/domain-expiration?q=eth.link https://www.whatsmydns.net/domain-expiration?q=eth.link This website does not agree on the expiration date
- bayindirh 4y ago
  WHOIS query returns the expiry as "Registry Expiry Date: 2023-07-26T19:31:41.508Z". AFAIK, this is the authoritative answer.
  - tialaramex 4y ago
    That's true, up to a point. That's what the .link registry says. It also says Domain Status: autoRenewPeriod .link is a modern gTLD, so its policies are set by ICANN†. ICANN registry policy says the domain automatically enters "autoRenewPeriod" status, it renews for a period (typically one year). But for a few weeks in this status the registrar (GoDaddy in this case) can delete the entry, signifying they don't want to actually renew it, and they aren't billed for renewal. So this lets them offer a "grace period" where eth.link doesn't work but when the subscriber notices hey my DNS entry doesn't work, they're told they can renew (possibly with an extra fee for late payment). GoDaddy also, as I understand it, uses the last few days of the ICANN policy window to run auctions, since you didn't renew but they have say on whether the name is deleted, the auction winner gets to just pay $$$ to have your name. † Some older gTLS have their own policies, and the ccTLDs since they are operated by or on behalf of sovereign entities, well, sovereign entities have armies and stuff, they're not inclined to listen to a bureaucrat about what they can or cannot do, so they set their own policies, making your own rules is sort of the point of being a sovereign entity.
- sp332 4y ago
  > eth.link was last updated on: > Thursday 25th of August 2022 The linked post is from the same day.
jacooper 4y ago
I hate godaddy with Passion, its not because I used their services, its because every good domain name is owned by godaddy.
- klez 4y ago
  So you hate godaddy because a lot of entities decided to register their domain through them? I'm not sure I follow. Is there some previous godaddy history that I'm missing here and would explain such a statement?
  - jacooper 4y ago
    No, I meant that any good domain is bought by godaddy so they can park it and sell it for exorbitant prices. They are not actually used, just parked.
    - klez 4y ago
      Ok, I understand. Yeah, that's scummy.
    - tialaramex 4y ago
      So, I just randomly made up some 2LDs, and asked whois about them. Sure enough none of them exist. fakecheese.info fastdoris.net old-banjo.org spacefare.rs These weren't the results of me trying dozens of things, just writing whatever came into my head and none of them exist. Your definition of "any good domain" just means "Names which are obviously valuable" and then you're surprised that, duh, those names are obviously valuable so a speculator owns them.
      - popcalc 4y ago
        A few days ago I registered a 5 letter actually pronounceable .COM. You just have to be creative.
- leveraction 4y ago
  I now use aws to register my domains. I started with GoDaddy. I remember searching for some names (on GoDaddy) and found something that was reported as available. I went to register it and GoDaddy tells me that it is no longer available, but that they have some service that I can pay for where they will help me to negotiate/handle the purchase from the owner. I called the customer service to ask about this. I found out that it was GoDaddy itself that had purchased it right up from under me. That was the last time I ever dealt with GoDaddy.
nixcraft 4y ago
It was expired and registered again? `whois eth.link | grep -iE 'Updated|Expiry|Creation'` Updated Date: 2022-08-25T23:18:22.578Z Creation Date: 2017-07-26T19:31:41.508Z Registry Expiry Date: 2023-07-26T19:31:41.508Z
- aestetix 4y ago
  That's what I've been wondering about. Godaddy claims that the domain expired, but the WHOIS record says otherwise. I suppose that someone could have made a payment that got the domain date extended, but then the payment failed. But wouldn't the record only be updated after the payment was confirmed? And to that end, I've never heard of a registrar ignoring an extension and force-expiring a domain name. The whole thing is extremely confusing.
  - toast0 4y ago
    > Godaddy claims that the domain expired, but the WHOIS record says otherwise. The Godaddy statement is dated August 25th, and so is the WHOIS record. The situation may have changed after the statement was made. > I suppose that someone could have made a payment that got the domain date extended, but then the payment failed. But wouldn't the record only be updated after the payment was confirmed? Payments sometimes bounce after they were approved (chargebacks, weird check stuff, etc), so there is a procedure to unrenew names.
  - phantomathkg 4y ago
    Maybe GoDaddy squatting the domain themselves?
- yellow_lead 4y ago
  I wonder if godaddy registered it themselves? not sure if possible / legal
  - sp332 4y ago
    It's not really done anymore, but there were some scandals in the first decade of the 2000's. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting
ethanbond 4y ago
On Twitter, crypto maxis seem genuinely confused why a bunch of people (?) on Twitter (?) can’t get together and ask (?) GoDaddy to just extend the legal contract with the guy who’s now in legal trouble for violating sanctions against North Korea. These people are beyond parody.
- eli 4y ago
  I mean normally anyone can pay to extend a domain registration so it’s not that crazy a question.
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    Normally people can pay to extend their domain registration.
    - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
      I mean, most banks don't require ID to make a deposit. It's not an unrealistic thought that someone should be able to top up some dude's account so that his stuff can autorenew. Though a company would need some sort of explicit policy for that more than likely.
      - ethanbond 4y ago
        Sure, if the original contract had a clause that said “anyone can come add money to this and if they do, go ahead and extend it under my name” then this would be entirely reasonable. It seems that clause doesn’t exist here or at least GoDaddy isn’t required to exercise it.
      - baobob 4y ago
        This hasn't been true in the UK for at least a few years now
      - jeremymcanally 4y ago
        > I mean, most banks don't require ID to make a deposit. Due to money laundering regulations, that isn't really true anymore. Most banks straight up won't take cash deposits into someone else's account, identification or not. Other means (ACH, etc.) require KYC from the originating institution. I'm not sure about secure funds like a money order, but I'm guessing they'd be subject to some sort of verification as well.
gajus 4y ago
What's the significance of eth.link?
- yellow_lead 4y ago
  The guy who owns it is in prison and it's used to access IPFS sites through their ENS (Ethereum Name Service) domains. i.e name.eth.link
- jsheard 4y ago
  There's a system called ENS which allows domain names to be registered on the Ethereum blockchain and traded around like NFTs. However, none of the mainstream DNS resolvers support ENS so users either have to (a) switch to a niche DNS provider which does support it or (b) use a site running on conventional DNS like eth.link to proxy through. Unsurprisingly the latter option which doesn't require messing around with network settings is quite popular, and so their decentralized domain system ended up centralizing around a conventional domain name owned by a guy who is unable to pay the bill because he's currently in prison for helping North Korea evade sanctions. Now the domain is about to expire and acquiring it is a crypto phishers dream since there are so many organic links to it in the wild.
- px43 4y ago
  Are you familiar with Tor and .onion links? A decade or so ago, someone set up onion.ws so you could add .ws to any onion link and visit onion sites without running Tor. Eth.link is the same concept, but for .eth domains. Web3 capable browsers like Brave, etc, can access .eth domains directly. This site was for those that are still a bit behind on the web3 thing.
charcircuit 4y ago
I don't understand the purpose of letting actively used domains expire. It's a flaw in the web that is a constant threat to things breaking. This could easily happen to tens of thousands of business or more.
- kirykl 4y ago
  Same reason a metered parking spot expires even when a car is in it Or why you pay to have a telephone number
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    This can be solved by allowing anyone to pay to push the expiration date back.
- rnk 4y ago
  Of course a big reason they expire is so the registrars can get money from you registering them, they aren't providing much service. A much more sensible system is they wouldn't expire. The domain registration industrial complex, with the zillions of dodgy groups that squat on domains is of course not providing much value to the world.
- tialaramex 4y ago
  If you want to have a different policy, you can set up a domain with a different policy. If you have a few million dollars you can do this for a TLD, maybe .charcircuit. But, you will need to figure out where your million dollars a year comes from. Maybe you could require a renewal fee... oh, right. And you'll need some mechanism to clear out useless garbage. For today's domains the renewal fee does that, but you don't want that fee, so... maybe you'll pay interns to look at each domain, weigh up whether it seems "active" enough and if not delete it ? How does an intern guess whether some.example gets a lot of email? Sends a lot of email but with its return address listed? Is mentioned in Java package names for important software? Has a fun text adventure hidden in its DNS answers? Oh they can't do all those things (and dozens of others I didn't think of) ? Then your service isn't fit for purpose or you must commit to keeping absolutely everything, forever, no matter what, which has unlimited cost.
peterkelly 4y ago
https://medium.com/the-ethereum-name-service/ens-partners-with-cloudflare-on-improved-eth-link-service-4801bf9148ff https://medium.com/the-ethereum-name-service/ens-partners-wi... For all the technical effort put into this, one would have hoped some thought would be given to ensure appropriate custody of the eth.link DNS registration.
SXX 4y ago
This is why Gandi.net policy to let anyone renew domain name is amazing.
zeroclip 4y ago
The beauty of decentralization means that ENS is not at the mercy of GoDaddy or eth.link. You can use an alternative open-source proxy like eth.limo[1], or use Infura, Alchemy, or query the ENS endpoint through a local blockchain node. Frustratingly, the critics and mainstream reporting[2] has misrepresented this as some failure of decentralization, ENS, or Web3. Or, they just don't know how the system works. [1] https://eth.limo/ https://eth.limo/ [2] https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=ethlink-service-about-to-go-offline-because-domain-owner-is-in-prison https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=ethlink-service-about-to-go...
- dcow 4y ago
  Just like you can use my nameserver instead of cloudflare or google. The question is, do you trust me? I think the problem people are calling out is that the system’s web2 bridge heavily depends on a centralized trust point. It’s not damning but you have to admit it’s somewhat comical.
  - bonestamp2 4y ago
    It might be funny to outsiders, but it's a well discussed topic in the web 3 community so it's no surprise to them -- it is something that they are constantly warning about and trying to find ways around. The funny part to me is that they used godaddy as their domain registry... like were they not around for all the godaddy bullshit over the past two decades?
    - dcow 4y ago
      Yes I understand people are not oblivious. It is funny how easily people trust but how little they verify.
    - Hamuko 4y ago
      >The funny part to me is that they used godaddy as their domain registry... like were they not around for all the godaddy bullshit over the past two decades? This problem was caused by the domain owner being in prison for helping North Korea evade sanctions. Perhaps some of these people do not have the greatest of judgement?
skyzyx 4y ago
What should we learn from this? Don’t make yourself a single point of failure. Always have at least two people who have admin access on things. Have emails go to a distribution list of at least 2, not to a single individual. The only news here is not actually news. It’s the same way that organizations have been shooting themselves in the foot for decades. We have learned nothing.
- woojoo666 4y ago
  Or use brave browser to access web3 services directly instead of going through a web2 relay
woojoo666 4y ago
Eth.link is just a middleman for people who want to use web2 tech to connect to web3. If you use a browser like Brave, you can skip that step and just connect directly to web3
targ65 4y ago
Crypto bros say it's worth tolerating 100x cost (technical cost, energy wasted, etc) and 100x more complexity (as one example, we are 7 years in and ETH is about to be 'reborn' the right way, with the transition to proof of stake) in exchange for what? For a small but key piece of the 'decentralized' Web3 infrastructure to be controlled by a random stranger due to random events? Welcome to the future, folks!

99 points by ca98am79 4y ago

So what happens when there are hundreds++ of individuals all interested in a single domain name that will become available at a very well-defined time like this? Do people just hammer the ICANN/registrar servers in hope of being the lucky one, or is it more elegant than that?

yuvadam 4y ago
Yes.
thejosh 4y ago
Yep, it's called "domain drop", it's a pretty lucrative industry to be in. GoDaddy especially knows this and will auction off domains before selling them, where as third parties can try and register the domain every 0.005 seconds. :-)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
blechschmidt 4y ago
AFAIK, there are even companies that own hundreds of registrars to just do that [1]. Just scroll through [2]. [1]: https://domainnamewire.com/2015/10/09/wow-dropcatch-adds-300-more-registrars-now-has-752/ https://domainnamewire.com/2015/10/09/wow-dropcatch-adds-300... [2]: https://www.iana.org/assignments/registrar-ids/registrar-ids.xhtml https://www.iana.org/assignments/registrar-ids/registrar-ids...
YetAnotherNick 4y ago
No, there is an auction period before domain being available to public(atleast that was the case with another registrar).
politelemon 4y ago
In addition to some replies here, some outfits will even lease their office buildings as close as networkly-posible to the registrars so that they can shave those milliseconds in trying to snipe the domain.
- marban 4y ago
  I thought that was only relevant for financial stuff but as for dropcatchers, that's new to me.
  - mathgeek 4y ago
    They are essentially the same thing. The strategy is the same whether trying to put in buy orders for stocks or domains.
JohnHaugeland 4y ago
> So what happens when there are hundreds++ of individuals all interested in a single domain name that will become available at a very well-defined time like this? One of them receives it and the others do not. First come first serve.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
This happens everyday. Nothing new. Hundreds of high value domains expire every week. Some can be worth six figures or more. Everyone competes to “catch it” but usually, the registrar gets it and auctions it off.
weird-eye-issue 4y ago
GoDaddy Auctions is what will happen like all their expired domains
- tomlogic 4y ago
  So they have a financial incentive here to allow the domain to expire.
NelsonMinar 4y ago
It's interesting; half the replies here say there will be a bot rush. The other half say GoDaddy will auction it off. Which is it?

curiousgal 4y ago

And this is how you print money. I'll be curious to see how much it goes for.

perihelions 4y ago

Here's additional context, https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=ethlink-service-about-to-go-offline-because-domain-owner-is-in-prison https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=ethlink-service-about-to-go... ("eth.link service about to go offline because domain owner is in prison")

josteink 4y ago
That’s very informative. Thanks for posting! > the project has found itself at the mercy of GoDaddy. Welcome to the decentralized web3 we've all been promised! I admit this had me laughing.
- benreesman 4y ago
  I tend to think the cyber money hyperventilation on both sides ranges from silly to really annoying, but… Molly White is hilarious and that site is gold. She’s (intentionally or not) done a bit of an homage to dealbreaker.com, which is roughly “Wall St. is Going Great” and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys the above. Top kek.
  - CPLX 4y ago
    Every generation deserves a fuckedcompany.com or two.
  - rvz 4y ago
    I also find jesters and clowns hilarious as well. Some of them don't need to dress up, but just love to professionally complain and grift on top of another grift and point fingers at everyone being an extreme crypto supporter. Eventually, they will give up just like the other critics did and it will be on to the next one.
    - benreesman 4y ago
      In general I agree. The cybermoney hate-kegels that HN practices are, interpreted in the most generous possible way a really loud, really low-signal way for a bunch of people to express the sentiment that they think some tradeable instruments are over-valued, which professionals do by either not buying them, or going short if they're convicted. Less charitable interpretations cluster around old-fashioned sour grapes that a bunch of people lucked into 10^6x or 10^7x type returns, which, in fairness, is hard not to be annoyed by on a human flinch level. There is another group of people actively trying to profit either financially or in-kind via page views on the very thing they are calling destructive profiteering, and in the least generous possible interpretation, Ms. White falls into that category with this site. But life is fucking hard at the best of times, and speaking for myself I'm generally much happier and more sane when I keep a sense of humor about things. Her site made me laugh, and was therefore a bargain at the ten minutes I spent chuckling over it.

rocco8620 4y ago

https://www.whatsmydns.net/domain-expiration?q=eth.link https://www.whatsmydns.net/domain-expiration?q=eth.link This website does not agree on the expiration date

bayindirh 4y ago
WHOIS query returns the expiry as "Registry Expiry Date: 2023-07-26T19:31:41.508Z". AFAIK, this is the authoritative answer.
- tialaramex 4y ago
  That's true, up to a point. That's what the .link registry says. It also says Domain Status: autoRenewPeriod .link is a modern gTLD, so its policies are set by ICANN†. ICANN registry policy says the domain automatically enters "autoRenewPeriod" status, it renews for a period (typically one year). But for a few weeks in this status the registrar (GoDaddy in this case) can delete the entry, signifying they don't want to actually renew it, and they aren't billed for renewal. So this lets them offer a "grace period" where eth.link doesn't work but when the subscriber notices hey my DNS entry doesn't work, they're told they can renew (possibly with an extra fee for late payment). GoDaddy also, as I understand it, uses the last few days of the ICANN policy window to run auctions, since you didn't renew but they have say on whether the name is deleted, the auction winner gets to just pay $$$ to have your name. † Some older gTLS have their own policies, and the ccTLDs since they are operated by or on behalf of sovereign entities, well, sovereign entities have armies and stuff, they're not inclined to listen to a bureaucrat about what they can or cannot do, so they set their own policies, making your own rules is sort of the point of being a sovereign entity.
sp332 4y ago
> eth.link was last updated on: > Thursday 25th of August 2022 The linked post is from the same day.

jacooper 4y ago

I hate godaddy with Passion, its not because I used their services, its because every good domain name is owned by godaddy.

klez 4y ago
So you hate godaddy because a lot of entities decided to register their domain through them? I'm not sure I follow. Is there some previous godaddy history that I'm missing here and would explain such a statement?
- jacooper 4y ago
  No, I meant that any good domain is bought by godaddy so they can park it and sell it for exorbitant prices. They are not actually used, just parked.
  - klez 4y ago
    Ok, I understand. Yeah, that's scummy.
  - tialaramex 4y ago
    So, I just randomly made up some 2LDs, and asked whois about them. Sure enough none of them exist. fakecheese.info fastdoris.net old-banjo.org spacefare.rs These weren't the results of me trying dozens of things, just writing whatever came into my head and none of them exist. Your definition of "any good domain" just means "Names which are obviously valuable" and then you're surprised that, duh, those names are obviously valuable so a speculator owns them.
    - popcalc 4y ago
      A few days ago I registered a 5 letter actually pronounceable .COM. You just have to be creative.
leveraction 4y ago
I now use aws to register my domains. I started with GoDaddy. I remember searching for some names (on GoDaddy) and found something that was reported as available. I went to register it and GoDaddy tells me that it is no longer available, but that they have some service that I can pay for where they will help me to negotiate/handle the purchase from the owner. I called the customer service to ask about this. I found out that it was GoDaddy itself that had purchased it right up from under me. That was the last time I ever dealt with GoDaddy.

nixcraft 4y ago

It was expired and registered again? `whois eth.link | grep -iE 'Updated|Expiry|Creation'` Updated Date: 2022-08-25T23:18:22.578Z Creation Date: 2017-07-26T19:31:41.508Z Registry Expiry Date: 2023-07-26T19:31:41.508Z

aestetix 4y ago
That's what I've been wondering about. Godaddy claims that the domain expired, but the WHOIS record says otherwise. I suppose that someone could have made a payment that got the domain date extended, but then the payment failed. But wouldn't the record only be updated after the payment was confirmed? And to that end, I've never heard of a registrar ignoring an extension and force-expiring a domain name. The whole thing is extremely confusing.
- toast0 4y ago
  > Godaddy claims that the domain expired, but the WHOIS record says otherwise. The Godaddy statement is dated August 25th, and so is the WHOIS record. The situation may have changed after the statement was made. > I suppose that someone could have made a payment that got the domain date extended, but then the payment failed. But wouldn't the record only be updated after the payment was confirmed? Payments sometimes bounce after they were approved (chargebacks, weird check stuff, etc), so there is a procedure to unrenew names.
- phantomathkg 4y ago
  Maybe GoDaddy squatting the domain themselves?
yellow_lead 4y ago
I wonder if godaddy registered it themselves? not sure if possible / legal
- sp332 4y ago
  It's not really done anymore, but there were some scandals in the first decade of the 2000's. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting

ethanbond 4y ago

On Twitter, crypto maxis seem genuinely confused why a bunch of people (?) on Twitter (?) can’t get together and ask (?) GoDaddy to just extend the legal contract with the guy who’s now in legal trouble for violating sanctions against North Korea. These people are beyond parody.

eli 4y ago
I mean normally anyone can pay to extend a domain registration so it’s not that crazy a question.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Normally people can pay to extend their domain registration.
  - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    I mean, most banks don't require ID to make a deposit. It's not an unrealistic thought that someone should be able to top up some dude's account so that his stuff can autorenew. Though a company would need some sort of explicit policy for that more than likely.
    - ethanbond 4y ago
      Sure, if the original contract had a clause that said “anyone can come add money to this and if they do, go ahead and extend it under my name” then this would be entirely reasonable. It seems that clause doesn’t exist here or at least GoDaddy isn’t required to exercise it.
    - baobob 4y ago
      This hasn't been true in the UK for at least a few years now
    - jeremymcanally 4y ago
      > I mean, most banks don't require ID to make a deposit. Due to money laundering regulations, that isn't really true anymore. Most banks straight up won't take cash deposits into someone else's account, identification or not. Other means (ACH, etc.) require KYC from the originating institution. I'm not sure about secure funds like a money order, but I'm guessing they'd be subject to some sort of verification as well.

gajus 4y ago

What's the significance of eth.link?

yellow_lead 4y ago
The guy who owns it is in prison and it's used to access IPFS sites through their ENS (Ethereum Name Service) domains. i.e name.eth.link
jsheard 4y ago
There's a system called ENS which allows domain names to be registered on the Ethereum blockchain and traded around like NFTs. However, none of the mainstream DNS resolvers support ENS so users either have to (a) switch to a niche DNS provider which does support it or (b) use a site running on conventional DNS like eth.link to proxy through. Unsurprisingly the latter option which doesn't require messing around with network settings is quite popular, and so their decentralized domain system ended up centralizing around a conventional domain name owned by a guy who is unable to pay the bill because he's currently in prison for helping North Korea evade sanctions. Now the domain is about to expire and acquiring it is a crypto phishers dream since there are so many organic links to it in the wild.
px43 4y ago
Are you familiar with Tor and .onion links? A decade or so ago, someone set up onion.ws so you could add .ws to any onion link and visit onion sites without running Tor. Eth.link is the same concept, but for .eth domains. Web3 capable browsers like Brave, etc, can access .eth domains directly. This site was for those that are still a bit behind on the web3 thing.

charcircuit 4y ago

I don't understand the purpose of letting actively used domains expire. It's a flaw in the web that is a constant threat to things breaking. This could easily happen to tens of thousands of business or more.

kirykl 4y ago
Same reason a metered parking spot expires even when a car is in it Or why you pay to have a telephone number
- charcircuit 4y ago
  This can be solved by allowing anyone to pay to push the expiration date back.
rnk 4y ago
Of course a big reason they expire is so the registrars can get money from you registering them, they aren't providing much service. A much more sensible system is they wouldn't expire. The domain registration industrial complex, with the zillions of dodgy groups that squat on domains is of course not providing much value to the world.
tialaramex 4y ago
If you want to have a different policy, you can set up a domain with a different policy. If you have a few million dollars you can do this for a TLD, maybe .charcircuit. But, you will need to figure out where your million dollars a year comes from. Maybe you could require a renewal fee... oh, right. And you'll need some mechanism to clear out useless garbage. For today's domains the renewal fee does that, but you don't want that fee, so... maybe you'll pay interns to look at each domain, weigh up whether it seems "active" enough and if not delete it ? How does an intern guess whether some.example gets a lot of email? Sends a lot of email but with its return address listed? Is mentioned in Java package names for important software? Has a fun text adventure hidden in its DNS answers? Oh they can't do all those things (and dozens of others I didn't think of) ? Then your service isn't fit for purpose or you must commit to keeping absolutely everything, forever, no matter what, which has unlimited cost.

peterkelly 4y ago

https://medium.com/the-ethereum-name-service/ens-partners-with-cloudflare-on-improved-eth-link-service-4801bf9148ff https://medium.com/the-ethereum-name-service/ens-partners-wi... For all the technical effort put into this, one would have hoped some thought would be given to ensure appropriate custody of the eth.link DNS registration.

SXX 4y ago

This is why Gandi.net policy to let anyone renew domain name is amazing.

zeroclip 4y ago

The beauty of decentralization means that ENS is not at the mercy of GoDaddy or eth.link. You can use an alternative open-source proxy like eth.limo[1], or use Infura, Alchemy, or query the ENS endpoint through a local blockchain node. Frustratingly, the critics and mainstream reporting[2] has misrepresented this as some failure of decentralization, ENS, or Web3. Or, they just don't know how the system works. [1] https://eth.limo/ https://eth.limo/ [2] https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=ethlink-service-about-to-go-offline-because-domain-owner-is-in-prison https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=ethlink-service-about-to-go...

dcow 4y ago
Just like you can use my nameserver instead of cloudflare or google. The question is, do you trust me? I think the problem people are calling out is that the system’s web2 bridge heavily depends on a centralized trust point. It’s not damning but you have to admit it’s somewhat comical.
- bonestamp2 4y ago
  It might be funny to outsiders, but it's a well discussed topic in the web 3 community so it's no surprise to them -- it is something that they are constantly warning about and trying to find ways around. The funny part to me is that they used godaddy as their domain registry... like were they not around for all the godaddy bullshit over the past two decades?
  - dcow 4y ago
    Yes I understand people are not oblivious. It is funny how easily people trust but how little they verify.
  - Hamuko 4y ago
    >The funny part to me is that they used godaddy as their domain registry... like were they not around for all the godaddy bullshit over the past two decades? This problem was caused by the domain owner being in prison for helping North Korea evade sanctions. Perhaps some of these people do not have the greatest of judgement?

skyzyx 4y ago

What should we learn from this? Don’t make yourself a single point of failure. Always have at least two people who have admin access on things. Have emails go to a distribution list of at least 2, not to a single individual. The only news here is not actually news. It’s the same way that organizations have been shooting themselves in the foot for decades. We have learned nothing.

woojoo666 4y ago
Or use brave browser to access web3 services directly instead of going through a web2 relay

woojoo666 4y ago

Eth.link is just a middleman for people who want to use web2 tech to connect to web3. If you use a browser like Brave, you can skip that step and just connect directly to web3

targ65 4y ago

Crypto bros say it's worth tolerating 100x cost (technical cost, energy wasted, etc) and 100x more complexity (as one example, we are 7 years in and ETH is about to be 'reborn' the right way, with the transition to proof of stake) in exchange for what? For a small but key piece of the 'decentralized' Web3 infrastructure to be controlled by a random stranger due to random events? Welcome to the future, folks!