Someone is massively registering multiple *.eth domains | Hacker News Reader

Someone is massively registering multiple *.eth domains

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35 pointswslh42 comments

Can someone tell me why I'm seeing so much about ethereum on Hacker News lately? It's starting to feel like a concerted marketing push, the same way that the latest Kardashian outrage is a non-event most people don't care about, but they sure make it look like news...

I guess it is because many people on HN own ether.

I don't understand why domain squatting in general isn't considered more of a problem. I tried a couple different times to get a .link domain for my blog and just about anything short/meaningful on the obscure tlds are taken, but none of them are actually used for anything. They wanted $5k for sym.link...WTF?!? I actually sort of appreciate the logic behind the .sucks tld managers if not the intent. You can't squat everything if the registration actually costs something semi significant.

I agree with you. But what do you expect from a system that allows you to create real-estate out of thin air?

Insert "cash" for "real-estate" and we have a very ironic statement.

It isn't really comparable, as domain names are the epitome of non-fungible.

I recently had a communique with a domain squatter who held myname.com, wanted $100k for it. I actually asked if he was on drugs.

According to the wayback machine that domain has been parked since 2002. 15 years of annual renewals, never been sold apparently, never actually held a website (or seemingly any services) yet somehow that equals $100k.

Domain parkers should be booted from the Internet. It's the most useless, scummy form of business.

If you are friends with a registrar 15 years of renewals is less than $150. So $100,000 against $150? I expect that if you offered them $10,000 for it they would take it, but they want to 'set the bar' high so that you'll not waste their time offering them a few hundred dollars for it.

And to put that in context, if you said "Invest this $150 and 15 years from now it will be worth $10,000!" you would jump on that right? Even if it were only worth $1,500 it would be 10x on your money in 15 years.

There is nothing good about the way f doing business that you describe. Like the GP, I have neither the time nor the desire to negotiate with people like that; I'll just ignore them and do something else, and they'll never get anything.

I'm not altogether against domain squatting - it is a scummy practice but I don't blame people for taking advantage of the opportunity. But this business model of huge asking prices and 'make me an offer' ? Fuck that. I'm in favor of a Georgist approach to domain names, use it or lose it, either by fiat or a tax on speculative investments. This way of doing business is shitty and has to go.

If I use it, but you want it, then it seems reasonable for me to want to be compensated for that loss. The utility value can be much greater than the cost - like if I had livery for that domain, commercially that could make replacing it a multiple £10k cost.

Except the whole reason it's outrageous is that the domain is not being used other than to market the domain as a for-sale product.

To start with $150 and 15 years later have $10,000, the principal would need to double 5 times to achieve 64 times return.

How could you possibly convince a registrar of that?

The $150 arises from renewing a domain for $9.99 every year for 15 years.

Many people have registered hundreds of domains on the assumption that at some point, someone will want to 'own' them and will be willing to pay for that. When I was VP of Ops & Eng at Blekko I would get an email probably a few times a month from someone or another trying to sell me some domain they were squatting on. This sort of 'investment' is a thing is all I'm saying.

The registrar just gets their annual fee, they don't have to be convinced of anything.

Maybe by replicating this scheme, investing in multiple domains, hoping one of them will succeed enough to make up for the added cost.

How would you manage it? I have a domain I'm using and someone wants it ... Would you stop them from paying me (then I could make a company to sell it), how do you see it working?

I think the way to fix domain squatting is just to enforce a larger annual ICANN* fee. I would set it just above what someone can likely make a year via a link farm. Say for instance $500. If you really want a domain for your business, etc. that isn't an unreasonable amount. If you want it as a link farm, you are de-incentivized. If you have the next twitter.com, then speculate if you'll get your $100K or more.

I would then take this extra money would get used to support research and development for internet related things like protocols, exploits, etc. so it is a net win for everyone. Also, we then have less companies with names made up of bad spellings.

That would wipe out any chance I could buy a domain without being guaranteed to make money on it - like the domain I use for my blog. I'm probably relatively well off compared to internet users as a whole.

It seems anti-democratic to do this to me, it may solve the problem but the cost being that ordinary users can't afford domains is too high IMO.

I don't think you need a $500 buy in. Most register for less than a dollar, so maybe a fee in the $20-50 range? You won't discourage everyone but the number of domains squatted will be a fraction of the current number (something like 80% of the new TLD domains registered are for squatting)

The amount people can pay to get a business domain off of a squatter won't increase (since this is all artificial anyway) but you cut into the profit margin of maintaining millions of registrations pretty quickly.

Yeah, I don't know what the right amount is but it could also be by suffix. Maybe make .com more expensive like $1K and .blog cheaper like $50 a year or something. This might be a better mapping to real life. Most people can't afford ocean front property (.com) but can afford a house in the suburbs (.blog or .info) and you could also make .org even cheaper (but maybe require tax exemption status documents to buy). I'd just like to see there be a higher barrier to entry to squatting. The cost is so low right now that there is no reason not too. It is already hard to find "word1"+"word2"+".com" for any pair of words and this will only get worse.

25 days ago someone brought 600 domains that does not exist. That is not a news.

Yeah, I was expecting hundreds of thousands based on the title. This doesn't seem like news.

this is the 'cocacola' problem. No strong name system can work in the real world if cocacola has no legal right to their name. Sue a smart contract, lol!

Considering cryptocurrencies supposedly 'square' zooko's triangle, a fraud namespace like this eth registration can not survive the real world.

I guess we won't see massive migration from DNS usage to ENS usage in a matter of days. I foresee we'll have mixed usage decentralized and centralized naming systems for a long time until people start seeing the advantages of the former. By that time, CocaCola will just have to buy the domain from the squatter instead of registering themselves (too big to fail, on this matter).

I agree, there will be both central and decentralized namespaces; I do love the idea of decentralized, but I am realistic about the limitations. CocaCola can ether buy the keys (or have a court requisition them from something.. ) Now, this relies on the keys that registered this domain still existing!

No court in the world can force a deleted key to be transferred to CocaCola. Likewise any cryptocurrency cannot be forceably stolen by the threat of state violence -- the math does not permit it.

So either, cocacola has to have cocacola1.eth (lol), or they have to institute a court ordered hard fork to recover the keys.

Both seem undesirable!

No, I think it can work in another way: at the end the descentralized system is connecting to a protocol outside the blockchain, this is the weakest link. You can contact the legal entity using ETH and sue them in the country they operate. Switzerland? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETH_Domain

So the scenario becomes: a) use DNS b) use "central"-ENS, but if the domain is already registered now I have to sue some .ch organisation to unregister it. c) use regular ENS and live with whatever namespace entries are free

a) offers everything b offers, but its likely cheaper and has a real-world dispute resolution process.

Take a look at the grandfather of decentralized DNS namespace; .bit from namecoin. After 6 years it has not found its place in the internet name ecosystem.

> Likewise any cryptocurrency cannot be forceably stolen by the threat of state violence -- the math does not permit it.

You're underestimating violence. They just need the key: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/security.png

Of course that's going to be harder if you don't know who holds the key, but judging from all the raided darknet markets it's definitely not impossible to figure that out.

Yeah; I mean if the key does not exist, as in the registration party deletes the key after it has been created.

Of course the state can torture a person until they hand over the key -- if it exists.

They'll be happy to torture you regardless. The Soviets did it all the time--take people in and beat them senseless for no reason other than to intimidate others into compliance. The Chinese do it, probably the US 'intelligence' agencies, too.

> or they have to institute a court ordered hard fork to recover the keys.

And if they can pull that one out, ETC will overtake ETH.

There was an XKCD that demonstrated how crypto fails in the real world--if a state wants something, they either beat it out of you or threaten to harm your family members, friends, your dog, destroy your ability to earn income, etc. Cryptocurrency does not solve the problem of monopoly of violence. The math may not permit it, but the math has no say.

It's not unfair if he is paying for them.

Do you think every company is aware of this service?

According to [1], it's minimum 0.01 ether for one year. That's around $2.24, so not that cheap for mass-registration.

[1]: https://registrar.ens.domains/

It's 2017. Stop letting users pick their own identifiers.

lol wut...

As opposed to?

Wait, let me guess, UUIDs right?

Actually, yes, UUID's would be ideal. Then we'd just a public registrar of some sort to index them with a more human-readable name.

I hope this is sarcasm. The human readable IDs would than be squatted upon.

Don't feed the troll

Yes it was sarcasm :D. I wouldn't insult anyone's intelligence here by adding a /s

Did you pick your HN id?

No. I do not know how this name was chosen.

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