Comment by jongjong | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jongjong | Hacker News Reader

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This is great. Would you be interested to add support for a custom blockchain-based DNS instead of the current centralized hierarchical mess? I've been thinking about this a lot and it's clear that a multi-blockchain-based solution would be perfect for this (and far simpler than the current system). Each blockchain could have its own top level domain. People would buy domains using the blockchain's own tokens on the blockchain itself. The browser would just discover its own peers and query any node in the blockchain to convert domain names into IP addresses. The browser could check the results against known public keys on that chain to verify that the record is legitimate.

Blockchains are great for this use case as they are infinitely scalable in terms of reads (since you can always add more nodes which are exact cryptographically-verifiable replicas). While blockchains are constrained in terms of writes, this problem is dealt with via a transaction fee which increases with demand so it is naturally DoS-resistant and doesn't require special skills or trusted parties to operate.

Anyway, the current centralized DNS system of hierarchical resolvers is also constrained in terms of writes but it feels ad-hoc with many centralized entities which are given a substantial amount of trust.

Blockchain is a solution looking for a problem. DNS isn't it.

Sorry

Yet Bitcoin's market cap is $500 Billion and has a trading volume is over $10 billion per day and has been outperforming the markets for over a decade.

If the financial system is fine, then how is it possible that a 'scam' is worth $500 billion? What kind of financial system allows such scam to exist for over a decade and keeps attracting investors year after year?

If the financial system is not fine, then how could you say a blockchain like Bitcoin is a solution looking for a problem?

That position doesn't make sense from any angle.

And anyway, I've explained clearly what is the advantage of blockchain:

- It's a system which supports unlimited reads at scale.

- Spam-resistant when it comes to writes.

- Its data can be verified independently so there is no need to trust service operators.

Those are the most important characteristics of a DNS. Sadly the current system is missing the third point and that's why nobody truly owns their domain names. Everyone is merely renting from a TLD provider and hope that the laws of whatever country it's in are going to respect your claims.

I said Blockchain, not Bitcoin.

Bitcoins "value" it that it's a pyramid scheme along time, early "investors" profit when they get out. Market cap means nothing when you run out of difficulty ;)

Anyhow I'll leave you to your delusions and get on with my life. Toodle-oo!

>I'll leave you to your delusions and get on with my life

That's easy to say when you are living in a country with access to a healthy financial system, this is a luxury, not norm.

Thankfully you don't have any idea of my (current) location.

I could be anywhere in the world. Even nextdoor to you ;)

You and GP still would be deluded however.

> Blockchains are great for this use case as they are infinitely scalable in terms of reads (since you can always add more nodes which are essentially replicas).

Oh, right. Maybe they should modify the current DNS setup to allow for more than 1 node.

Current system does have many nodes in a hierarchy but they are operated by trusted entities and there is not much fluidity. Also nobody owns their domain names; just renting from the centralized providers and you just have to trust them with everything.

With a blockchain, you would provably own your domain name and nobody would be able to change your 'zone file' aside from you since they wouldn't know your private key. I mean it would be physically impossible even if they wanted to do it illegally (or if the TLD operated under a crooked government).

BTH, this has already been done by Unlimited Domains (.eth TLD) but for some reason it still hasn't been integrated into major browsers (aside from Brave which has it disabled by default though it definitely works).

The fundamental point blockchain fans miss is that most people don’t mind having centralized trusted entities. The fact that humans can intervene to change the owner of a domain name is a feature, not a bug, at least in non-authoritarian countries.

You also need some way to, you know, recover control of a domain after you lose your private key.

IMO, not being able to recover a lost private key is an acceptable tradeoff for fully owning your own domain in perpetuity. If we encounter a de-globalization event and international law starts to break apart, we would see a lot of value in not being beholden to foreign entities operating under foreign laws.

> IMO, not being able to recover a lost private key is an acceptable tradeoff for fully owning your own domain in perpetuity

You can hold that opinion and others like it, but the vast majority of other people don’t, which is why the only applications of blockchains that have ever become mainstream are (1) buying things that are illegal, and (2) speculating on token prices.

> If we encounter a de-globalization event and international law starts to break apart, we would see a lot of value in not being beholden to foreign entities operating under foreign laws.

If this prepper fantasy comes to pass I am going to have bigger things to worry about than a foreign country stealing my domain names.

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