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Any bitcoin-like blockchain must be a valuable currency at the core to reward miners with minted units and fees. Otherwise, there's no incentive to deploy petah

Any bitcoin-like blockchain must be a valuable currency at the core to reward miners with minted units and fees. Otherwise, there's no incentive to deploy petahashes of computing power to secure consensus worldwide. Namecoin is a currency. If it's not valuable, its security is nil. Economically, users want to keep cash in the most liquid (marketable) asset, therefore, users and miners want to converge on a single most powerful blockchain (aka "network effect"). Today it's Bitcoin and it can only change if it's completely replaced for some reason by a superior, even more liquid blockchain. Also: blockchain does not need to store more than 32 bytes of metadata or have special name-handling features like Namecoin does. You only need to associate 1 satoshi with a 32-byte hash of your metadata (addresses, certificates, private keys etc.) Metadata can be distributed by any means, e.g. by today's network of name servers. Blockchain only works as a proof of name ownership that links that metadata to a name. You can use just 1 satoshi to be allocated for the name. If you lose your name, it'll be worth much more than that anyway.

michaelt 13y ago
You only need to associate 1 satoshi with a 32-byte hash of your metadata (addresses, certificates, private keys etc.) Metadata can be distributed by any means, e.g. by today's network of name servers. If you store the hashes and rely on something else to tell you the metadata, how do you stop people deleting records from the past by deleting or blocking access to the metadata? For example: The legitimate owner of www.alice.com creates a DNS record saying "www.alice.com is owned by alice", then puts scrypt("www.alice.com is owned by alice") into the blockchain, then creates a DNS record saying "and the proof of this ownership is transaction e8a2e79eee906 which took place in December 2013". You're on malicious coffee shop wifi. You don't have anything pinned. You make a DNS request and you get records saying "www.alice.com is owned by eve" and "the proof of this is transaction c8bb5f503dc26820 which took place in January 2014". How do you find the first, legitimate transaction?
JetSpiegel 13y ago
Of course there's incentive to secure consensus! If you don't secure it, you lose your domain name. It's like a registrar, only distributed and (maybe) safer.

michaelt 13y ago

You only need to associate 1 satoshi with a 32-byte hash of your metadata (addresses, certificates, private keys etc.) Metadata can be distributed by any means, e.g. by today's network of name servers. If you store the hashes and rely on something else to tell you the metadata, how do you stop people deleting records from the past by deleting or blocking access to the metadata? For example: The legitimate owner of www.alice.com creates a DNS record saying "www.alice.com is owned by alice", then puts scrypt("www.alice.com is owned by alice") into the blockchain, then creates a DNS record saying "and the proof of this ownership is transaction e8a2e79eee906 which took place in December 2013". You're on malicious coffee shop wifi. You don't have anything pinned. You make a DNS request and you get records saying "www.alice.com is owned by eve" and "the proof of this is transaction c8bb5f503dc26820 which took place in January 2014". How do you find the first, legitimate transaction?

JetSpiegel 13y ago

Of course there's incentive to secure consensus! If you don't secure it, you lose your domain name. It's like a registrar, only distributed and (maybe) safer.