10 ms·

Can Namecoin obsolete ICANN (and more)?

141 points by hoggle 13y ago

dual 13y ago
MeowBit is system service for Windows which allows for resolution of dot-bit domains across all applications. http://meowbit.com http://meowbit.com
ChuckMcM 13y ago
Given the news around bitcoin one could imagine that stealing 'google.bit' out of the google wallet[1] would be a pretty lucrative target. [1] No I don't really think Google would let that happen but Bob's Bakery Buns might and it could cost him his business.
- notahacker 13y ago
  Bob's Bakery Buns isn't likely to pick a web address that - at this stage - requires potential visitors to his site to download a plugin to find it. I'd be interested to see what percentage of major brands' .bit addresses become owned by the brands rather than squatters. If the latter percentage is sufficiently high you can pretty much guarantee that fear of phishing will make browser vendors very wary of seamlessly integrating .bit resolution into the standard browser build.
ericmsimons 13y ago
How long does it take to resolve a namecoin key=>value pair? Considering the variable speed in these sorts of decentralized networks, is there a noticeable lag when you initially request a .bit website?
- 1qaz2wsx3edc 13y ago
  Sure, decentralized networks can have variable speeds, but you could put a caching layer in front and the problem should be solved, no? The writes will be variable, but reads don't have to be.
- wyager 13y ago
  It's very fast, and if it's not fast enough, one can build an optimized data structure in another program.
- fragsworth 13y ago
  Just as fast as a DNS lookup. It can be cached anywhere (even locally, with your own name server on your own machine). It's also almost exactly the same as DNS regarding name changing. You have to wait about 10 minutes for the blockchain to register a name, and then about 24 hours before all the cache servers update it.
- gomox 13y ago
  The blockchain is only used as an authoritative source. You don't really look up names in the blockchain, you use a vanilla cache for it.
- rakoo 13y ago
  All the blockchain is local. The time taken to resolve a key->value pair is the time your software takes to decode information from your disk; it's nothing compared to DNS. Change propagation, on the other hand, is as long as blocks can travel from peer to peer.
  - VikingCoder 13y ago
    Hmm - if your ISP has a good DNS, and has a cache hit on your DNS request, versus if you have to seek your HD, the DNS might be much, much faster. http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/interactive_latency.html http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/interactive_laten... Round trip in same datacenter: 500,00ns. Disk seek: 4,000,000ns. You have to lean on the numbers pretty hard to make the DNS faster, but it's possible it could be faster than your local disk.
    - al2o3cr 13y ago
      Pretty sure the intersection of the set of people who worry about DNS performance and the set of people who are still running servers exclusively off spinning rust is nigh-vanishing...
    - ferongr 13y ago
      The broadband connection usually has latency depending on the protocol. ADSL2+ with data interleaving can be as high as 32ms. DOCSIS has at least 5ms for the first hop too. And that assumes your ISP's (or whichever) DNS server is close from a network perspective and that it has enough power to instantly send a reply down the wire.
gomox 13y ago
I have been looking at *coins for a while and the implications of the blockchain-based concensus system are interesting. The system really maps the real world onto computers very well, in that it reduces what used to be technical issues to "political" issues. These systems work on concensus, and as such, require a significant amount of interested parties to work in the expected way. They are very much subject to network effects that only occur after critical mass is reached. Namecoin, in particular, was subject to a major security issue last year: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ohyom/fatal_flaw_in_namecoin_found_doesnt_enforce_some/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ohyom/fatal_flaw_i... Blockchains are being used to implement solutions to different problems, and they could really solve some significant problems such as decentralized identity and reputation management (!). The difficulty lies in creating a significant enough "currency" so that miners will become involved and make the blockchain stable and reliable. Bitcoin is a currency in a much stronger sense than namecoin or any other of "not-really-money-coins" around. I wonder if piggybacking on bitcoin might actually be the solution for this situation (i.e introduce other information in the bitcoin blockchain instead of using a brand new one). Sadly, adding external information to the blockchain could be construed as "spamming the blockchain" and therefore not deemed worthy for inclusion in the bitcoin blockchain by miners. So there is a big challenge there. If you are interested in this topic and want to work on related projects feel free to reach out (google my username).
- elidourado 13y ago
  > Blockchains are being used to implement solutions to different problems, and they could really solve some significant problems such as decentralized identity and reputation management (!). The difficulty lies in creating a significant enough "currency" so that miners will become involved and make the blockchain stable and reliable. Author of the original article here. Namecoin is actually merge-mined with Bitcoin, so miner participation is not a serious problem. There's no way you could have known that without happening to know that, though, and I agree that this is an issue for a lot of new blockchain-based technologies.
  - gomox 13y ago
    Maybe I've misunderstood it, but how does merge mining create an incentive to mine namecoins? I figured all it did was make it "cheaper" to mine namecoins by "reusing" work done for the bitcoin blockchain. In order for the namecoin network to function, you still need to actively get involved with it. Here's some information on merge-mining for anyone else involved: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/273/how-does-merged-mining-work http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/273/how-does-merg... http://dot-bit.org/Merged_Mining http://dot-bit.org/Merged_Mining
chime 13y ago
Can I register google.bit, facebook.bit, apple.bit, oracle.bit, and microsoft.bit for a total of $0.25? Can they do anything to get it back?
- baddox 13y ago
  They can offer you a large amount of Namecoin to get it back.
  - zmanian 13y ago
    Does namecoin have an operation for transfer which wallet is bound to the key,value pair? Or do you need to transfer private keys off blockchain?
    - elidourado 13y ago
      Yes, you can transfer names on the blockchain.
- GigabyteCoin 13y ago
  No, you could not register those names. Because they are already registered. They could ask very nicely for ownership of them, or perhaps send you a court order depending on what country the both of you were located in. But unless you provide them with the private key or fail to renew your registration... nobody should ever gain control of any .bit domain. A Kraken.com dev looking into the namecoin code found a flaw and declared on the Namecoin blockchain that "Namecoin died October the 15th 2013, coinslayer" by re-writing the DNS values for the very first .bit domain ever registered (which is bitcoin.bit). The flaw allowed for some people to "steal" domain ownership, but a patch was put through and everything is back to normal now. As far as I know, all domains are back in the hands of the original registrars. This link shows the entire debacle taking place: http://explorer.namecoin.info/n/1 http://explorer.namecoin.info/n/1
  - PeterisP 13y ago
    Okay, so right here you've got a reason why namecoin won't be adopted. There is a critical mass of many, many memorable names. These organizations already have them in the current system; don't have them on the namecoin (since someone likely is squatting on them) and, as you say, have no reasonable way to gain them w/o paying extortion. Due to network effects, namecoin won't replace ICANN without making it better for all those organizations; and due to the core nature of namecoin, it won't be better for them.
doctoboggan 13y ago
I am using namecoin to resolve bittorrent sync secrets in my distributed browser Syncnet: https://github.com/jminardi/syncnet https://github.com/jminardi/syncnet It was fairly easy to integrate
- sudoquai 13y ago
  Hey nice - i've posted an Article at Namecoin @ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Namecoin.NMC https://www.facebook.com/Namecoin.NMC Support and Like !
- higherpurpose 13y ago
  Why not use the open source Clearskies instead of BTSync? https://github.com/jewel/clearskies https://github.com/jewel/clearskies
  - whyever 13y ago
    AFAIK Clearskies does not have a working implementation yet.
  - dfc 13y ago
    Did you intend to link to a repository of markdown files?
    - doesnt_know 13y ago
      I don't know anything about the project but it looks like there is a working implementation of the protocol in ruby in that linked repository (just not in the master branch). There is also an in-progress c++ implementation of the protocol in a different repo [1]. Even so, it's pretty clear that the thing isn't ready yet and even states that it shouldn't be used for anything other than test data. [1]https://github.com/larroy/clearskies_core https://github.com/larroy/clearskies_core
- dmix 13y ago
  This is interesting. Could the static HTML files connect to decentralized databases?
zimbatm 13y ago
Do namecoins have to be renewed or are we going to have old good domain names infinitely unavailable because someone forgot their key ?
- elidourado 13y ago
  They have to be updated around every 36,000 blocks (about 250 days), or else you relinquish the name. It can be just a "touch" update, no need to change the information.
  - ycombasks 13y ago
    Do you have to pay the 0.01 fee to update?
rakoo 13y ago
Note that you can use namecoin blockchain with your DNS and HTTP tools with dnschain [0]. Check this out: $ dig @dns.dnschain.net okturtles.bit $ curl http://dns.dnschain.net/d/okturtles http://dns.dnschain.net/d/okturtles Both of them will resolve to whatever info is stored in d/okturtles domain. With the (soon-to-be) DANE support (for those who forgot: DANE is about distributing TLS keys through a channel you trust (it comes from the domain you're visiting) but that is not the same as the final application (it's DNS, not HTTP/SMTP/IMAP/XMPP/etc), so you can prevent MiTM), I don't see what's missing technically to have our own internet. [0] https://github.com/okTurtles/dnschain https://github.com/okTurtles/dnschain
- nly 13y ago
  > DANE is about distributing TLS keys through a channel you trust Only to the extent that you and your visitors already have to trust your DNS provider, your domain registrar, the TLD registry, and the DNS root. Neither DANE nor DNSSEC intrinsically solve anything that hasn't already been solved for end users... particularly when you consider forwarders will have to accept unsigned zones for years to come. Namecoin etc does go some way to "squaring Zooko's triangle" (as many good minds have discussed already) but proof-of-work chains have their own burdens, and are not any more immune to the lure of trading robustness and security for convenience than traditional DNS forwarders, online DNSSEC signing, or webmasters offering up their SSL certificates up to CDNs.
  - rakoo 13y ago
    > Only to the extent that you and your visitors already have to trust your DNS provider, your domain registrar, the TLD registry, and the DNS root. Which is not something I want to do, hence my push for namecoin :) > proof-of-work chains have their own burdens Do you have more information about how it can be detrimental to namecoin, specifically distributing DNS information ?
cordite 13y ago
So, what happens if your domain gets hijacked?
- GigabyteCoin 13y ago
  Domain hijacking is impossible without access to the private key that controls the information written in the blockchain concerning that domain. If somebody gets your private key, they can "steal" your website away from you, sure. Just don't let anybody access your private key.
  - PeterisP 13y ago
    So, your answer is - if your domain does get hijacked, then you're out of luck unless you pay the hijacker? That's a serious flaw. Most people don't want their technical infrastucture to be immune to law enforcement, just the contrary.
    - GigabyteCoin 13y ago
      That's not my answer. That's how Namecoin works. Namecoin is just a name/value store system. That's it. It might not be perfect for DNS but it's being used for other things like https://onename.io https://onename.io right now. The public can choose to use it in it's current implementation or build a better way of dealing with domain hijacking should they so choose.
      - PeterisP 13y ago
        Sure, it has a wide variety of niches which it fits greatly, and where it can be successfully used - but if anybody considers it as a solution to obsolete ICANN, as the original article proposes, then it's an entirely different ballpark than being just a name/value store; and rather different criteria for success.
  - cordite 13y ago
    As hopeful as people may be, humans don't surround themselves with the best security. Sure, stealing it without the private key may be impossible, but stealing the private key can be very possible.
mrfusion 13y ago
Has anyone created an easy to use name coin registration system so non-technical people can register names? It seems like that would be a good opportunity?
- elidourado 13y ago
  There is https://dotbit.me/ https://dotbit.me/ , but who knows how reputable that site is? Just as Bitcoin needed something like Coinbase, the Namecoin ecosystem needs a web wallet with reputable backing.
  - mrfusion 13y ago
    I guess not necessarily even a wallet. A non technical user shouldn't even have to own or even know about name coins. They simply want a way to register a cheap, non-censorable domain, right? I'm imagining someone would make a service that offers that.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
quasque 13y ago
I expect it will obsolete ICANN as effectively as AlterNIC, New.net, OpenNIC, etc. The technical fact that it is blockchain-based really doesn't make much difference as it's incredibly unlikely to be adopted worldwide, due to the network effect of the already-established domain name system.
- brownbat 13y ago
  The telegraph, MySpace, and AOL had network effects. It's a hurdle, but it's not insurmountable. The question is whether namecoin provides anything sufficiently more appealing to all players to overcome that headwind...
  - quasque 13y ago
    As it stands now, a domain name owner in the current system probably has more risk from domain hijacking than authoritarian censorship. So the main feature of Namecoin - to provide a censorship-resistant, cryptographically untamperable set of domain name records - is also its biggest disadvantage, as recovery of any stolen domain names is entirely up to the goodwill of the thief. This reason alone would make it very unappealing for most domain name owners, because as well as going against the established domain name system, it must also break societal expectations of redressing thefts through legal means.
    - larrys 13y ago
      "So the main feature of Namecoin - to provide a censorship-resistant, cryptographically untamperable set of domain name records" And the above means zilch to the majority (let's pick an arbitrary 95%) of domain name owners (source: I am intimately involved in this business since the start and deal with these owners) Do people seriously think that the millions of existing domain name owners are going to undo years of marketing effort for something that they don't even need? Local restaurant for example has no issues with censorship at least with respect to their website.
      - quasque 13y ago
elidourado 13y ago
Article author here. Just wanted to add that if any of you work for companies that send engineers to the IETF, there is an Internet-Draft RFC that would normalize the use of several P2P pseudo-TLDs such as .gnu, .zkey, .onion, .exit, .i2p, and yes, .bit, which is what Namecoin is squatting on. Would be great to see everybody supporting it. http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-grothoff-iesg-special-use-p2p-names-02 http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-grothoff-iesg-special-use-p...
- sudoquai 13y ago
  Hey Eli, you've got an article as well at Namecoin @ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Namecoin.NMC https://www.facebook.com/Namecoin.NMC Would be nice to get a like back ;)
gdh73 13y ago
Why is it called Namecoin and not something like Bitname or Bitdomain?
- sudoquai 13y ago
  Look at: https://www.facebook.com/Namecoin.NMC https://www.facebook.com/Namecoin.NMC Namecoin is a little bit more than just ... DNS Have a nice day :)
- GigabyteCoin 13y ago
  That's just the name that the original founding coder (vinced from the bitcointalk forums) chose and nobody has wanted or bothered to change it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6017.msg88356#msg88356 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6017.msg88356#msg883... Some chose to refer to it as the dot-bit project as well. I have never seen any arguments over the name. namecoin == nmc == dot-bit
- ghewgill 13y ago
  Namecoin encompasses more than just .bit names.
unlimited_power 13y ago
I'll plug BitShares DNS--a Namecoin competitor I am working on--here: http://nmushegian.github.io/dns/ http://nmushegian.github.io/dns/ Whitepaper and FAQ are not quite up to date but you get the idea. From: https://github.com/nmushegian/dns/blob/master/whitepaper.md#comparison-to-namecoin https://github.com/nmushegian/dns/blob/master/whitepaper.md#... - Namecoin issues new coins to miners as a reward for performing merged mining with the Bitcoin network. The namecoin supply is being inflated at nearly 30% per year for several more months, then over 10% for the next several years. Domainshares only ever shrink in supply, when fees are destroyed as implicit dividends. - Namecoin attempts to service multiple namespaces at once. .p2p is highly specialized for servicing the .p2p TLD namespace. The use case is the same as Namecoin's "d/" namespace, which is used for the .bit TLD. - Namecoin's name registration price is fixed at any given time and is independent of the name itself. Domainshares utilizes an auction-like mechanic to incentivize price discovery for names, making sure the final owner pays what it is actually worth. The majority of the final cost will have gone to the network as dividends by the time the auction is over, with a small fraction having gone to bidders as a reward for price discovery. - As a result of the fact that domains are expensive and there are dividends on shares but not domains, there is a high opportunity cost to squatting: holding a domain without making good use of it.
- michaelt 13y ago
  Domainshares utilizes an auction-like mechanic to incentivize price discovery for names, making sure the final owner pays what it is actually worth. How would this work for, say, google.com ?
  - unlimited_power 13y ago
    We are still working on the exact mechanics (open to suggestions!), but the simple first model is: - The price starts at 0 and people bid it up to the market value - If someone makes a bid B1, then someone makes a next bid B2 = B1 + D, then person 1 receives (B1 + D/2) and the remaining D/2 gets paid as fees to network (and thus become shareholder dividends) - This incentivizes people to bid up the price to what they consider the market value, because of the extra portion they receive when they are outbid - This also disincentivizes squatting because you will pay more for buying and selling the domain than you would have received as network dividends had someone else just bought the domain
thisiswrong 13y ago
"(...) the cryptographic-decentralization Zeitgeist makes it an exciting time to have and use names" Yes. Very true. For anyone interested in the above statment i'd highly recommend checking out http://twister.net.co/ http://twister.net.co/ - a decentralized micro-blogging spin-off of bitcoin. Unbelievable innovation is happening!
stormbrew 13y ago
To me the real problem with namecoin for the purpose stated in the title of this post is that it doesn't emphasize delegation to near the degree necessary to achieve it. The current implementation is much more like the older name system in that it requires the list of canonical names to be distributed as widely as possible. There is a reason the root nameservers only delegate the act of name lookup at the top level. It's just not practical for them to have a complete list, and it's not even particularly desirable for users of it to have their list of names completely public (think internal servers). It is possible to name a delegate nameserver through namecoin, I believe, but last I looked it was a bit iffy and it doesn't require any kind of authentication of results from the delegated nameserver a-la dnscurve.
- Rhapso 13y ago
  The realistic use case is to use a tree-structure similar to the one we have, then use namecoin as verification.
bikamonki 13y ago
Why do we asume that domains have to be 'unique' like trade/brand names? I have a name, shared with my grandfather, father and son; in the right context, you would never confuse one for another. Furthermore, my name is shared by probably thousands in my country; again, I have never been confused with any of them. So, if the whole point is to translate human readable (and memorable) words to IPs, and in the event that the DNS returns more than one result, can't the browser display a search-results-like page letting one know there are options? Wikipedia does it and that is THE descentralized knowledge store of the planet. Maybe if I type homes.com I mean local homes first, like Google rankings, but is ok if someone else is using homes.com elsewhere. Think about it...
- dfc 13y ago
  Does Jon Postel's ghost decide if I want local or non-local homes when I send email to bob@homes.com? Side note: Wikipedia is NOT the decentralized knowledge store of the planet. There is nothing decentralized about wikipedia.
transfire 13y ago
Could we just get rid of naming authorities all together? Why not just let trusted listing agencies handle it and users can simply pick the one(s) they wish to use. For instance, let's say I want to publish a website under the name "sony". Okay, that's fine, but it's going to get a lower priority then the offical Sony, Inc. site b/c any listing agency is obviously going to serve up that site when a user puts "sony" in their browser's address bar. However, a user could opt for an alternate listing agency --maybe one the offers no commercial listings, and then maybe my site would come up through them. Browsers could make it easy to switch between listing agencies and prioritize them.
- olalonde 13y ago
  This is already possible with the current DNS system. The listing agencies are commonly called "DNS servers" and they may chose to disregard the authoritive DNS servers. End users can typically list which DNS servers they want to use by order of priority within their OS/browser DNS settings.

141 points by hoggle 13y ago

dual 13y ago

MeowBit is system service for Windows which allows for resolution of dot-bit domains across all applications. http://meowbit.com http://meowbit.com

ChuckMcM 13y ago

Given the news around bitcoin one could imagine that stealing 'google.bit' out of the google wallet[1] would be a pretty lucrative target. [1] No I don't really think Google would let that happen but Bob's Bakery Buns might and it could cost him his business.

notahacker 13y ago
Bob's Bakery Buns isn't likely to pick a web address that - at this stage - requires potential visitors to his site to download a plugin to find it. I'd be interested to see what percentage of major brands' .bit addresses become owned by the brands rather than squatters. If the latter percentage is sufficiently high you can pretty much guarantee that fear of phishing will make browser vendors very wary of seamlessly integrating .bit resolution into the standard browser build.

ericmsimons 13y ago

How long does it take to resolve a namecoin key=>value pair? Considering the variable speed in these sorts of decentralized networks, is there a noticeable lag when you initially request a .bit website?

1qaz2wsx3edc 13y ago
Sure, decentralized networks can have variable speeds, but you could put a caching layer in front and the problem should be solved, no? The writes will be variable, but reads don't have to be.
wyager 13y ago
It's very fast, and if it's not fast enough, one can build an optimized data structure in another program.
fragsworth 13y ago
Just as fast as a DNS lookup. It can be cached anywhere (even locally, with your own name server on your own machine). It's also almost exactly the same as DNS regarding name changing. You have to wait about 10 minutes for the blockchain to register a name, and then about 24 hours before all the cache servers update it.
gomox 13y ago
The blockchain is only used as an authoritative source. You don't really look up names in the blockchain, you use a vanilla cache for it.
rakoo 13y ago
All the blockchain is local. The time taken to resolve a key->value pair is the time your software takes to decode information from your disk; it's nothing compared to DNS. Change propagation, on the other hand, is as long as blocks can travel from peer to peer.
- VikingCoder 13y ago
  Hmm - if your ISP has a good DNS, and has a cache hit on your DNS request, versus if you have to seek your HD, the DNS might be much, much faster. http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/interactive_latency.html http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/interactive_laten... Round trip in same datacenter: 500,00ns. Disk seek: 4,000,000ns. You have to lean on the numbers pretty hard to make the DNS faster, but it's possible it could be faster than your local disk.
  - al2o3cr 13y ago
    Pretty sure the intersection of the set of people who worry about DNS performance and the set of people who are still running servers exclusively off spinning rust is nigh-vanishing...
  - ferongr 13y ago
    The broadband connection usually has latency depending on the protocol. ADSL2+ with data interleaving can be as high as 32ms. DOCSIS has at least 5ms for the first hop too. And that assumes your ISP's (or whichever) DNS server is close from a network perspective and that it has enough power to instantly send a reply down the wire.

gomox 13y ago

I have been looking at *coins for a while and the implications of the blockchain-based concensus system are interesting. The system really maps the real world onto computers very well, in that it reduces what used to be technical issues to "political" issues. These systems work on concensus, and as such, require a significant amount of interested parties to work in the expected way. They are very much subject to network effects that only occur after critical mass is reached. Namecoin, in particular, was subject to a major security issue last year: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ohyom/fatal_flaw_in_namecoin_found_doesnt_enforce_some/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ohyom/fatal_flaw_i... Blockchains are being used to implement solutions to different problems, and they could really solve some significant problems such as decentralized identity and reputation management (!). The difficulty lies in creating a significant enough "currency" so that miners will become involved and make the blockchain stable and reliable. Bitcoin is a currency in a much stronger sense than namecoin or any other of "not-really-money-coins" around. I wonder if piggybacking on bitcoin might actually be the solution for this situation (i.e introduce other information in the bitcoin blockchain instead of using a brand new one). Sadly, adding external information to the blockchain could be construed as "spamming the blockchain" and therefore not deemed worthy for inclusion in the bitcoin blockchain by miners. So there is a big challenge there. If you are interested in this topic and want to work on related projects feel free to reach out (google my username).

elidourado 13y ago
> Blockchains are being used to implement solutions to different problems, and they could really solve some significant problems such as decentralized identity and reputation management (!). The difficulty lies in creating a significant enough "currency" so that miners will become involved and make the blockchain stable and reliable. Author of the original article here. Namecoin is actually merge-mined with Bitcoin, so miner participation is not a serious problem. There's no way you could have known that without happening to know that, though, and I agree that this is an issue for a lot of new blockchain-based technologies.
- gomox 13y ago
  Maybe I've misunderstood it, but how does merge mining create an incentive to mine namecoins? I figured all it did was make it "cheaper" to mine namecoins by "reusing" work done for the bitcoin blockchain. In order for the namecoin network to function, you still need to actively get involved with it. Here's some information on merge-mining for anyone else involved: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/273/how-does-merged-mining-work http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/273/how-does-merg... http://dot-bit.org/Merged_Mining http://dot-bit.org/Merged_Mining

chime 13y ago

Can I register google.bit, facebook.bit, apple.bit, oracle.bit, and microsoft.bit for a total of $0.25? Can they do anything to get it back?

baddox 13y ago
They can offer you a large amount of Namecoin to get it back.
- zmanian 13y ago
  Does namecoin have an operation for transfer which wallet is bound to the key,value pair? Or do you need to transfer private keys off blockchain?
  - elidourado 13y ago
    Yes, you can transfer names on the blockchain.
GigabyteCoin 13y ago
No, you could not register those names. Because they are already registered. They could ask very nicely for ownership of them, or perhaps send you a court order depending on what country the both of you were located in. But unless you provide them with the private key or fail to renew your registration... nobody should ever gain control of any .bit domain. A Kraken.com dev looking into the namecoin code found a flaw and declared on the Namecoin blockchain that "Namecoin died October the 15th 2013, coinslayer" by re-writing the DNS values for the very first .bit domain ever registered (which is bitcoin.bit). The flaw allowed for some people to "steal" domain ownership, but a patch was put through and everything is back to normal now. As far as I know, all domains are back in the hands of the original registrars. This link shows the entire debacle taking place: http://explorer.namecoin.info/n/1 http://explorer.namecoin.info/n/1
- PeterisP 13y ago
  Okay, so right here you've got a reason why namecoin won't be adopted. There is a critical mass of many, many memorable names. These organizations already have them in the current system; don't have them on the namecoin (since someone likely is squatting on them) and, as you say, have no reasonable way to gain them w/o paying extortion. Due to network effects, namecoin won't replace ICANN without making it better for all those organizations; and due to the core nature of namecoin, it won't be better for them.

doctoboggan 13y ago

I am using namecoin to resolve bittorrent sync secrets in my distributed browser Syncnet: https://github.com/jminardi/syncnet https://github.com/jminardi/syncnet It was fairly easy to integrate

sudoquai 13y ago
Hey nice - i've posted an Article at Namecoin @ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Namecoin.NMC https://www.facebook.com/Namecoin.NMC Support and Like !
higherpurpose 13y ago
Why not use the open source Clearskies instead of BTSync? https://github.com/jewel/clearskies https://github.com/jewel/clearskies
- whyever 13y ago
  AFAIK Clearskies does not have a working implementation yet.
- dfc 13y ago
  Did you intend to link to a repository of markdown files?
  - doesnt_know 13y ago
    I don't know anything about the project but it looks like there is a working implementation of the protocol in ruby in that linked repository (just not in the master branch). There is also an in-progress c++ implementation of the protocol in a different repo [1]. Even so, it's pretty clear that the thing isn't ready yet and even states that it shouldn't be used for anything other than test data. [1]https://github.com/larroy/clearskies_core https://github.com/larroy/clearskies_core
dmix 13y ago
This is interesting. Could the static HTML files connect to decentralized databases?

zimbatm 13y ago

Do namecoins have to be renewed or are we going to have old good domain names infinitely unavailable because someone forgot their key ?

elidourado 13y ago
They have to be updated around every 36,000 blocks (about 250 days), or else you relinquish the name. It can be just a "touch" update, no need to change the information.
- ycombasks 13y ago
  Do you have to pay the 0.01 fee to update?

rakoo 13y ago

Note that you can use namecoin blockchain with your DNS and HTTP tools with dnschain [0]. Check this out: $ dig @dns.dnschain.net okturtles.bit $ curl http://dns.dnschain.net/d/okturtles http://dns.dnschain.net/d/okturtles Both of them will resolve to whatever info is stored in d/okturtles domain. With the (soon-to-be) DANE support (for those who forgot: DANE is about distributing TLS keys through a channel you trust (it comes from the domain you're visiting) but that is not the same as the final application (it's DNS, not HTTP/SMTP/IMAP/XMPP/etc), so you can prevent MiTM), I don't see what's missing technically to have our own internet. [0] https://github.com/okTurtles/dnschain https://github.com/okTurtles/dnschain

nly 13y ago
> DANE is about distributing TLS keys through a channel you trust Only to the extent that you and your visitors already have to trust your DNS provider, your domain registrar, the TLD registry, and the DNS root. Neither DANE nor DNSSEC intrinsically solve anything that hasn't already been solved for end users... particularly when you consider forwarders will have to accept unsigned zones for years to come. Namecoin etc does go some way to "squaring Zooko's triangle" (as many good minds have discussed already) but proof-of-work chains have their own burdens, and are not any more immune to the lure of trading robustness and security for convenience than traditional DNS forwarders, online DNSSEC signing, or webmasters offering up their SSL certificates up to CDNs.
- rakoo 13y ago
  > Only to the extent that you and your visitors already have to trust your DNS provider, your domain registrar, the TLD registry, and the DNS root. Which is not something I want to do, hence my push for namecoin :) > proof-of-work chains have their own burdens Do you have more information about how it can be detrimental to namecoin, specifically distributing DNS information ?

cordite 13y ago

So, what happens if your domain gets hijacked?

GigabyteCoin 13y ago
Domain hijacking is impossible without access to the private key that controls the information written in the blockchain concerning that domain. If somebody gets your private key, they can "steal" your website away from you, sure. Just don't let anybody access your private key.
- PeterisP 13y ago
  So, your answer is - if your domain does get hijacked, then you're out of luck unless you pay the hijacker? That's a serious flaw. Most people don't want their technical infrastucture to be immune to law enforcement, just the contrary.
  - GigabyteCoin 13y ago
    That's not my answer. That's how Namecoin works. Namecoin is just a name/value store system. That's it. It might not be perfect for DNS but it's being used for other things like https://onename.io https://onename.io right now. The public can choose to use it in it's current implementation or build a better way of dealing with domain hijacking should they so choose.
    - PeterisP 13y ago
      Sure, it has a wide variety of niches which it fits greatly, and where it can be successfully used - but if anybody considers it as a solution to obsolete ICANN, as the original article proposes, then it's an entirely different ballpark than being just a name/value store; and rather different criteria for success.
- cordite 13y ago
  As hopeful as people may be, humans don't surround themselves with the best security. Sure, stealing it without the private key may be impossible, but stealing the private key can be very possible.

mrfusion 13y ago

Has anyone created an easy to use name coin registration system so non-technical people can register names? It seems like that would be a good opportunity?

elidourado 13y ago
There is https://dotbit.me/ https://dotbit.me/ , but who knows how reputable that site is? Just as Bitcoin needed something like Coinbase, the Namecoin ecosystem needs a web wallet with reputable backing.
- mrfusion 13y ago
  I guess not necessarily even a wallet. A non technical user shouldn't even have to own or even know about name coins. They simply want a way to register a cheap, non-censorable domain, right? I'm imagining someone would make a service that offers that.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

quasque 13y ago

I expect it will obsolete ICANN as effectively as AlterNIC, New.net, OpenNIC, etc. The technical fact that it is blockchain-based really doesn't make much difference as it's incredibly unlikely to be adopted worldwide, due to the network effect of the already-established domain name system.

brownbat 13y ago
The telegraph, MySpace, and AOL had network effects. It's a hurdle, but it's not insurmountable. The question is whether namecoin provides anything sufficiently more appealing to all players to overcome that headwind...
- quasque 13y ago
  As it stands now, a domain name owner in the current system probably has more risk from domain hijacking than authoritarian censorship. So the main feature of Namecoin - to provide a censorship-resistant, cryptographically untamperable set of domain name records - is also its biggest disadvantage, as recovery of any stolen domain names is entirely up to the goodwill of the thief. This reason alone would make it very unappealing for most domain name owners, because as well as going against the established domain name system, it must also break societal expectations of redressing thefts through legal means.
  - larrys 13y ago
    "So the main feature of Namecoin - to provide a censorship-resistant, cryptographically untamperable set of domain name records" And the above means zilch to the majority (let's pick an arbitrary 95%) of domain name owners (source: I am intimately involved in this business since the start and deal with these owners) Do people seriously think that the millions of existing domain name owners are going to undo years of marketing effort for something that they don't even need? Local restaurant for example has no issues with censorship at least with respect to their website.
    - quasque 13y ago

elidourado 13y ago

Article author here. Just wanted to add that if any of you work for companies that send engineers to the IETF, there is an Internet-Draft RFC that would normalize the use of several P2P pseudo-TLDs such as .gnu, .zkey, .onion, .exit, .i2p, and yes, .bit, which is what Namecoin is squatting on. Would be great to see everybody supporting it. http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-grothoff-iesg-special-use-p2p-names-02 http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-grothoff-iesg-special-use-p...

sudoquai 13y ago
Hey Eli, you've got an article as well at Namecoin @ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Namecoin.NMC https://www.facebook.com/Namecoin.NMC Would be nice to get a like back ;)

gdh73 13y ago

Why is it called Namecoin and not something like Bitname or Bitdomain?

sudoquai 13y ago
Look at: https://www.facebook.com/Namecoin.NMC https://www.facebook.com/Namecoin.NMC Namecoin is a little bit more than just ... DNS Have a nice day :)
GigabyteCoin 13y ago
That's just the name that the original founding coder (vinced from the bitcointalk forums) chose and nobody has wanted or bothered to change it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6017.msg88356#msg88356 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6017.msg88356#msg883... Some chose to refer to it as the dot-bit project as well. I have never seen any arguments over the name. namecoin == nmc == dot-bit
ghewgill 13y ago
Namecoin encompasses more than just .bit names.

unlimited_power 13y ago

I'll plug BitShares DNS--a Namecoin competitor I am working on--here: http://nmushegian.github.io/dns/ http://nmushegian.github.io/dns/ Whitepaper and FAQ are not quite up to date but you get the idea. From: https://github.com/nmushegian/dns/blob/master/whitepaper.md#comparison-to-namecoin https://github.com/nmushegian/dns/blob/master/whitepaper.md#... - Namecoin issues new coins to miners as a reward for performing merged mining with the Bitcoin network. The namecoin supply is being inflated at nearly 30% per year for several more months, then over 10% for the next several years. Domainshares only ever shrink in supply, when fees are destroyed as implicit dividends. - Namecoin attempts to service multiple namespaces at once. .p2p is highly specialized for servicing the .p2p TLD namespace. The use case is the same as Namecoin's "d/" namespace, which is used for the .bit TLD. - Namecoin's name registration price is fixed at any given time and is independent of the name itself. Domainshares utilizes an auction-like mechanic to incentivize price discovery for names, making sure the final owner pays what it is actually worth. The majority of the final cost will have gone to the network as dividends by the time the auction is over, with a small fraction having gone to bidders as a reward for price discovery. - As a result of the fact that domains are expensive and there are dividends on shares but not domains, there is a high opportunity cost to squatting: holding a domain without making good use of it.

michaelt 13y ago
Domainshares utilizes an auction-like mechanic to incentivize price discovery for names, making sure the final owner pays what it is actually worth. How would this work for, say, google.com ?
- unlimited_power 13y ago
  We are still working on the exact mechanics (open to suggestions!), but the simple first model is: - The price starts at 0 and people bid it up to the market value - If someone makes a bid B1, then someone makes a next bid B2 = B1 + D, then person 1 receives (B1 + D/2) and the remaining D/2 gets paid as fees to network (and thus become shareholder dividends) - This incentivizes people to bid up the price to what they consider the market value, because of the extra portion they receive when they are outbid - This also disincentivizes squatting because you will pay more for buying and selling the domain than you would have received as network dividends had someone else just bought the domain

thisiswrong 13y ago

"(...) the cryptographic-decentralization Zeitgeist makes it an exciting time to have and use names" Yes. Very true. For anyone interested in the above statment i'd highly recommend checking out http://twister.net.co/ http://twister.net.co/ - a decentralized micro-blogging spin-off of bitcoin. Unbelievable innovation is happening!

stormbrew 13y ago

To me the real problem with namecoin for the purpose stated in the title of this post is that it doesn't emphasize delegation to near the degree necessary to achieve it. The current implementation is much more like the older name system in that it requires the list of canonical names to be distributed as widely as possible. There is a reason the root nameservers only delegate the act of name lookup at the top level. It's just not practical for them to have a complete list, and it's not even particularly desirable for users of it to have their list of names completely public (think internal servers). It is possible to name a delegate nameserver through namecoin, I believe, but last I looked it was a bit iffy and it doesn't require any kind of authentication of results from the delegated nameserver a-la dnscurve.

Rhapso 13y ago
The realistic use case is to use a tree-structure similar to the one we have, then use namecoin as verification.

bikamonki 13y ago

Why do we asume that domains have to be 'unique' like trade/brand names? I have a name, shared with my grandfather, father and son; in the right context, you would never confuse one for another. Furthermore, my name is shared by probably thousands in my country; again, I have never been confused with any of them. So, if the whole point is to translate human readable (and memorable) words to IPs, and in the event that the DNS returns more than one result, can't the browser display a search-results-like page letting one know there are options? Wikipedia does it and that is THE descentralized knowledge store of the planet. Maybe if I type homes.com I mean local homes first, like Google rankings, but is ok if someone else is using homes.com elsewhere. Think about it...

dfc 13y ago
Does Jon Postel's ghost decide if I want local or non-local homes when I send email to bob@homes.com? Side note: Wikipedia is NOT the decentralized knowledge store of the planet. There is nothing decentralized about wikipedia.

transfire 13y ago

Could we just get rid of naming authorities all together? Why not just let trusted listing agencies handle it and users can simply pick the one(s) they wish to use. For instance, let's say I want to publish a website under the name "sony". Okay, that's fine, but it's going to get a lower priority then the offical Sony, Inc. site b/c any listing agency is obviously going to serve up that site when a user puts "sony" in their browser's address bar. However, a user could opt for an alternate listing agency --maybe one the offers no commercial listings, and then maybe my site would come up through them. Browsers could make it easy to switch between listing agencies and prioritize them.

olalonde 13y ago
This is already possible with the current DNS system. The listing agencies are commonly called "DNS servers" and they may chose to disregard the authoritive DNS servers. End users can typically list which DNS servers they want to use by order of priority within their OS/browser DNS settings.