Namecoin isn't defunct. In fact, it has several developers. The blockchain has been secured since the incident I assume you are talking about, and there's work

Namecoin isn't defunct. In fact, it has several developers. The blockchain has been secured since the incident I assume you are talking about, and there's work on numerous things ongoing - a lite client, an implementation of Namecoin as a library, a proxy allowing any program to connect to Namecoin domains. There is an IRC channel at [0], a mailing list, and a website with a wiki and forums at [1]. [0] irc.freenode.net#namecoin [1] http://namecoin.info/ http://namecoin.info/