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I read the paper, and stopped abruptly when you said you haven't specified anything yet because you want to work with the Namecoin community. This is what I th

I read the paper, and stopped abruptly when you said you haven't specified anything yet because you want to work with the Namecoin community. This is what I think you're saying: 1) Namecoin successfully squares Zooko's Triangle. 2) Namecoin is hard to use, so something new, let's call it DNSNMC, will be needed to make it easy. 3) A DNSNMC server will decode data from the namecoin chain, and you can trust that it is telling the truth because you already trust that DNSNMC server. A trusted proxy/offload for namecoin lookups isn't a crazy idea, but it doesn't add much to the system. I'd suggest rewriting this paper and removing all the political justification for why one might want such a system. Everyone gets that, but not everyone wants a system like this for the same reasons anyway. And since it's of interest to you anyway, I'd very much like to read some analysis from you on Dan Kaminsky's criticisms of Aaron's proposal. Does Namecoin square Zooko's Triangle?

itistoday2 13y ago
Excellent comment. For reference, dvanduzer is most likely referring to this blog post and the exchange that took place in the comments: http://dankaminsky.com/2011/01/13/spelunk-tri/ http://dankaminsky.com/2011/01/13/spelunk-tri/ First, let me answer your question, "Does Namecoin square Zooko's Triangle?" Yes, I believe it does. Whether or not Namecoin works depends on whether or not Bitcoin works. They are the same exact technology (they're just used for different purposes). From what I could tell of Dan Kaminsky's comments, I believe his arguments boil down to the well known 51% attack. Two things of note here: 1. See Dan's 2013 post on businessinsider where he appears to be retracting his words: "I Tried Hacking Bitcoin And I Failed" http://www.businessinsider.com/dan-kaminsky-highlights-flaws-bitcoin-2013-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/dan-kaminsky-highlights-flaws... 2. The 51% attack is still a real threat. The Bitcoin community is on it: Proof of blockchain fair sharing is a draft Bitcoin protocol change proposal by Iain Stewart, with the goal of allowing the network to continue to settle on a sensible consensus blockchain even when subject to a considerably- greater-than-50% attack. The protocol is under construction. The following description is a "teaser", establishing its basic flavour and sketching how it exploits an asymmetry in the goals of the honest (<50%) and malicious (>50%) miners to avoid the usual reductio ad absurdum argument against any protocol surviving a >50% attack. From: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_blockchain_fair_sharing https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_blockchain_fair_sharing Re: "I'd suggest rewriting this paper and removing all the political justification for why one might want such a system. Everyone gets that, but not everyone wants a system like this for the same reasons anyway." Given the well popularized "debate" on this topic, I think it's quite clear that everyone does not get that. it doesn't add much to the system. It adds: - The ability for JS apps to talk to and retrieve info from the blockchain without a browser extension (this wasn't possible before. It's a significant thing IMO). - A new meta-domain (.nmc) and corresponding RESTful API for manipulating the blockchain - DNSNMC may also support DNSCrypt (so that adds secure queries too). - A gateway for browsers and other software to verify SSL certs without having to run a local namecoind client. (Which means you don't need to pay for them anymore!) Probably other useful stuff I'm forgetting at the moment. Perhaps others might chime in. Oh, see also related topic: "Transitioning the web to Namecoin by addressing squatters" https://dot-bit.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1439 https://dot-bit.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1439
- itistoday2 13y ago
  Yes, I believe it does. Actually, let me qualify that comment, I should say that it effectively does. As Dan notes, BitTorrent, for example, is considered to be a decentralized protocol, but it does have some centralized components "for a reason". IMO, in practice, this is inconsequential, because those centralized components aren't critical pieces, and they are fully "hot swappable". Any one of those bootstrap servers can go down, and they can be easily replaced. They don't really hold any valuable information themselves, they're just entry points into a distributed network.
  - dvanduzer 13y ago
    I'm glad you brought that line in the 2011 piece up, because it caught my eye too. I am not sure it's clear whether Kaminsky was talking about peer introduction or content discovery, though. Regardless, this gets down to the crux of the "squared triangle" issue. Getting introduced to the network isn't the only place where centralization helps, and it's probably not even an important one, as you say. A human that wants to get on the BitTorrent network just finds a client binary. There isn't a need at any point to type bit torrent dot com into a browser. Arguably, the human-oriented / memorable leg of the triangle can't be solved globally. Here's some really good thinking on the subject: http://stpeter.im/journal/1035.html http://stpeter.im/journal/1035.html
- dvanduzer 13y ago
  Thanks for taking the time to research and respond! So: 1) Dan's comments on Bitcoin in that BI article are a bit subtler than that. The very last section suggests (to me) that despite what value the BTC protocol has, it doesn't "square the triangle." 2) Dan is mainly talking about Sybil attacks in his 2011 post. The difference between a 51% attack and a Sybil attack is somewhat blurry, but here's my understanding: A Sybil attack can't be prevented if an attacker controls >33% of the nodes. This is a mathematical truth of distributed systems (cf. Byzantine Generals), but Bitcoin's proof-of-work is often cited as the first practical system to demonstrate a workaround. The >50% problem becomes the new lower bound for attackers, because with proof-of-work, you can't just fake 33% of the nodes. They have to be participating in the number crunching. However, recent research blew this entirely out of the water, at least as far as Bitcoin goes[0]. They propose a change to the protocol that makes it a >25% percent problem, but currently it is a >0% problem. That is kind of a big deal. There are some good ideas in the "proof of stake" discussions, but none of the answers appear to lend support to the "triangle is squared" hypothesis. Now then: I think you misunderstood my remark about the political aspects. I'm not saying anyone agrees on who/what/when/why/how of privacy issues. If the goal is to describe a system that is resilient to eavesdropping, you shouldn't distract from that system in the same paper with so much argument about why you want a system resilient to eavesdropping. Spill your ink to convince people if your system meets the requirements you lay out. Finally: - "meta-domain" is a very strange term to use. It makes you sound ignorant of the realities of DNS, whether you are or not. - My statement was that a proxy to namecoin doesn't add much to the system. The first and fourth of your bullet points might be paraphrased as "but it adds a proxy to namecoin!" - What would be the purpose of adding DNSCrypt to DNSNMC? What do you mean by "secure queries" there? Anonymous queries? Validated responses? It's okay if you haven't finished specifying DNSNMC yet, but I wasn't asking for guesses about what you might do in the future. Meanwhile, don't let counter arguments discourage you, but remember that the problem space is large. Failure to solve a gigantic problem may still be success when solving a normal sized problem. [0] http://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0243 http://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0243

itistoday2 13y ago

Excellent comment. For reference, dvanduzer is most likely referring to this blog post and the exchange that took place in the comments: http://dankaminsky.com/2011/01/13/spelunk-tri/ http://dankaminsky.com/2011/01/13/spelunk-tri/ First, let me answer your question, "Does Namecoin square Zooko's Triangle?" Yes, I believe it does. Whether or not Namecoin works depends on whether or not Bitcoin works. They are the same exact technology (they're just used for different purposes). From what I could tell of Dan Kaminsky's comments, I believe his arguments boil down to the well known 51% attack. Two things of note here: 1. See Dan's 2013 post on businessinsider where he appears to be retracting his words: "I Tried Hacking Bitcoin And I Failed" http://www.businessinsider.com/dan-kaminsky-highlights-flaws-bitcoin-2013-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/dan-kaminsky-highlights-flaws... 2. The 51% attack is still a real threat. The Bitcoin community is on it: Proof of blockchain fair sharing is a draft Bitcoin protocol change proposal by Iain Stewart, with the goal of allowing the network to continue to settle on a sensible consensus blockchain even when subject to a considerably- greater-than-50% attack. The protocol is under construction. The following description is a "teaser", establishing its basic flavour and sketching how it exploits an asymmetry in the goals of the honest (<50%) and malicious (>50%) miners to avoid the usual reductio ad absurdum argument against any protocol surviving a >50% attack. From: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_blockchain_fair_sharing https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_blockchain_fair_sharing Re: "I'd suggest rewriting this paper and removing all the political justification for why one might want such a system. Everyone gets that, but not everyone wants a system like this for the same reasons anyway." Given the well popularized "debate" on this topic, I think it's quite clear that everyone does not get that. it doesn't add much to the system. It adds: - The ability for JS apps to talk to and retrieve info from the blockchain without a browser extension (this wasn't possible before. It's a significant thing IMO). - A new meta-domain (.nmc) and corresponding RESTful API for manipulating the blockchain - DNSNMC may also support DNSCrypt (so that adds secure queries too). - A gateway for browsers and other software to verify SSL certs without having to run a local namecoind client. (Which means you don't need to pay for them anymore!) Probably other useful stuff I'm forgetting at the moment. Perhaps others might chime in. Oh, see also related topic: "Transitioning the web to Namecoin by addressing squatters" https://dot-bit.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1439 https://dot-bit.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1439

itistoday2 13y ago
Yes, I believe it does. Actually, let me qualify that comment, I should say that it effectively does. As Dan notes, BitTorrent, for example, is considered to be a decentralized protocol, but it does have some centralized components "for a reason". IMO, in practice, this is inconsequential, because those centralized components aren't critical pieces, and they are fully "hot swappable". Any one of those bootstrap servers can go down, and they can be easily replaced. They don't really hold any valuable information themselves, they're just entry points into a distributed network.
- dvanduzer 13y ago
  I'm glad you brought that line in the 2011 piece up, because it caught my eye too. I am not sure it's clear whether Kaminsky was talking about peer introduction or content discovery, though. Regardless, this gets down to the crux of the "squared triangle" issue. Getting introduced to the network isn't the only place where centralization helps, and it's probably not even an important one, as you say. A human that wants to get on the BitTorrent network just finds a client binary. There isn't a need at any point to type bit torrent dot com into a browser. Arguably, the human-oriented / memorable leg of the triangle can't be solved globally. Here's some really good thinking on the subject: http://stpeter.im/journal/1035.html http://stpeter.im/journal/1035.html
dvanduzer 13y ago
Thanks for taking the time to research and respond! So: 1) Dan's comments on Bitcoin in that BI article are a bit subtler than that. The very last section suggests (to me) that despite what value the BTC protocol has, it doesn't "square the triangle." 2) Dan is mainly talking about Sybil attacks in his 2011 post. The difference between a 51% attack and a Sybil attack is somewhat blurry, but here's my understanding: A Sybil attack can't be prevented if an attacker controls >33% of the nodes. This is a mathematical truth of distributed systems (cf. Byzantine Generals), but Bitcoin's proof-of-work is often cited as the first practical system to demonstrate a workaround. The >50% problem becomes the new lower bound for attackers, because with proof-of-work, you can't just fake 33% of the nodes. They have to be participating in the number crunching. However, recent research blew this entirely out of the water, at least as far as Bitcoin goes[0]. They propose a change to the protocol that makes it a >25% percent problem, but currently it is a >0% problem. That is kind of a big deal. There are some good ideas in the "proof of stake" discussions, but none of the answers appear to lend support to the "triangle is squared" hypothesis. Now then: I think you misunderstood my remark about the political aspects. I'm not saying anyone agrees on who/what/when/why/how of privacy issues. If the goal is to describe a system that is resilient to eavesdropping, you shouldn't distract from that system in the same paper with so much argument about why you want a system resilient to eavesdropping. Spill your ink to convince people if your system meets the requirements you lay out. Finally: - "meta-domain" is a very strange term to use. It makes you sound ignorant of the realities of DNS, whether you are or not. - My statement was that a proxy to namecoin doesn't add much to the system. The first and fourth of your bullet points might be paraphrased as "but it adds a proxy to namecoin!" - What would be the purpose of adding DNSCrypt to DNSNMC? What do you mean by "secure queries" there? Anonymous queries? Validated responses? It's okay if you haven't finished specifying DNSNMC yet, but I wasn't asking for guesses about what you might do in the future. Meanwhile, don't let counter arguments discourage you, but remember that the problem space is large. Failure to solve a gigantic problem may still be success when solving a normal sized problem. [0] http://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0243 http://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0243