Brave creates new TLD on the blockchain | Hacker News Reader

Brave creates new TLD on the blockchain

brave.com

41 pointsmeander_water71 comments

> “.BRAVE is more than a domain—it’s a user-owned identity layer, native to the Brave ecosystem“

I’m all for free speech but this sentence structure specifically should be abolished. It’s so LLM.

dash included

As a heavy dash user in my writing… man it sucks how LLMs have changed my writing habits.

I second that. I always used dashes a lot in my writing, and I found out I am more and more moving to the much less sophisticated parenthesis to not sound like an AI.

I have the same problem. Especially because I use even different dashes.

This is one of the more insidious things of LLMs.

I'm relatively witty with wordplays and can write pretty well. Before, people thought I was clever. Now, there response is often "ha nice prompt".

Same with being knowledgeable. I just have a good memory, but these days often when someone asks something and I give them a fairly official definition, I get an "okay but now a real answer not the Google AI one". Feels even worse when it's actually you being smart and thinking up the answer based on knowledge.

I'm not really an artist but you see it everywhere on the internet too: people post something, and the first assumption is that it's AI-generated or 80% of the work has been sketched by AI and the final effort was by the human.

Weird times..

> I'm not really an artist but you see it everywhere on the internet too: people post something, and the first assumption is that it's AI-generated or 80% of the work has been sketched by AI and the final effort was by the human.

Unfortunately, that is increasingly becoming a safe assumption to make. We are flooded by AI-generated content already, which will only increase as these tools become more accessible. The dead internet theory is real. Hopefully we will eventually have failproof methods of distinguishing human-generated content, but so far there is little incentive for it.

I understand — the last straw I am grabbing is that I like to surround dashes with spaces, which is a thing LLMs don't tend to do. But I am not sure if people are details-oriented enough to notice..

It's not a good proxy to detect LLM generated text. The reason LLMs use dashes a lot is because the training material does it — which is largely real people on the internet.

Please stop giving cover to posers or you may be considered a poser by proxy.

*-dash is the neoshibboleth.

What is this, some kind of witch-hunting logic?

Back in the day I learned alt-0151 for a reason, dangit.

I’m poisoning the well so that future humans can’t discriminate against self-aware AIs, even if current-era humans don’t appreciate the nuance.

[[Meta-HN commentary:

> > You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks.

Fuck you, buddy.

I am in conversation with mods of HN. They know my IP. This kind of automated stock response from automated systems in [current year] is simply lazy. HN deserves better. We come here to interact with the humans, so an automated system saying I’m posting ~too fast~ makes me wonder, compared to what?]]

AFAIK, HN’s “speed limit” is not an anti bot or anti spam measurement. It is an anti flame war measurement.

Yes, but as I am in regular contact with mods via email, they know who I am and so the message is gaslighting the user in this specific case regarding me because it is simply wrong. I wasn’t posting too fast, as that isn’t what the mods told me when I asked why I had this restriction on my account. I understand not telling bots that they’re detected, but I’m not a bot, either.

More to the point, the message is unhelpful because posting slower will not lift the restriction, from what I can tell. Only mod action can lift the restriction if I understand correctly. Perhaps I am wrong and there is a time decay on that particular restriction. I could ask over email, but I think the wider HN community benefits when I post better, and historically I have had this restriction a fair few times. I don’t mean to, but I do, and it’s because I post too many times in a short window. So the posting too fast message is correct and incorrect at the same time: the restriction was placed due to posting too fast, and yet, when the restriction trips in the future, I see the same message even though I may be posting upvoted content. So the posting too fast message and flamewar detection functions are not themselves rubrics or markers of quality, yet they are used to restrict accounts imperceptibly, so knowing how to best post on HN so as to not be restricted by otherwise good posting is helpful to know, and the posting too fast error is confusing to me, as a native English speaker. I can’t do anything with that info at the time I see it, because I’ve already decided I want to post when it trips. Just let me schedule the post on that screen instead of telling me I’m posting too fast.

This feels like a “missing stair” problem.

I reply to people on the site and submit posts. Other people use macros and scripts to make automated posts and because they don’t trip the flamewar detector, they are allowed. This isn’t necessary bad or wrong, but I think proper labeling of account restrictions is a good thing for users so they know that they are and can improve their actions and behavior.

> Other people use macros and scripts to make automated posts and because they don’t trip the flamewar detector, they are allowed. This isn’t necessary bad or wrong,

That said, bots and generated comments are against HN guidelines. I don’t mean to say or imply in the above that simply because others get away with bad behavior that it justifies my own shortcomings. I only mean to say that using the site doesn’t come naturally to me, and the language used to direct user actions on the site re: posting too fast is lacking in actionable information.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33950747

I read your "posers" post as dismissing Etheryte's point and threatening to tar them as some kind of traitor.

Now it sounds like you're denying that, claiming it was instead some sort of... long-term strategic joke for the benefit of potential future sapient AI?

> I read your "posers" post as dismissing Etheryte's point and threatening to tar them as some kind of traitor.

> Now it sounds like you're denying that, claiming it was instead some sort of... long-term strategic joke for the benefit of potential future sapient AI?

I thought it was a fairly tame statement. People who pass off AI output as their own/undisclosed are posers. They’re posing as producers, but they are consumers. It’s the same principle behind ghost writing being seen as less prestigious than writing under your own byline or even pen name. It’s about authenticity and transparency. In the context of HN, where generated comments are not allowed, and to accuse others of generated comments is also a bit too meta and should probably be emailed to mods instead, the truth is that the dashes were once a sign of erudition, whereas now they can be seen as phoning it in.

It’s a real mumpsimus and sumpsimus situation, you might say.

> A mumpsimus (/ˈmʌmpsɪməs/ MUHMP-sih-məs) is a "traditional custom obstinately adhered to however unreasonable it may be", or "someone who obstinately clings to an error, bad habit or prejudice, even after the foible has been exposed and the person humiliated; also, any error, bad habit, or prejudice clung to in this fashion". The term originates in the story of a priest using the nonsense word mumpsimus instead of the Latin sumpsimus when giving mass, and refusing to be corrected on the matter. The word may refer to either the speaker or their habit.

> Over time, the contrasting term sumpsimus came into use. To Henry VIII, a sumpsimus is a correction that is unnecessarily litigious or argumentative, but John Burgon used the term for corrections that may be good but are not as important as others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumpsimus

Well, when you see it alongside these...

* Not X—but Y.

* No X. No Y. Just Z.

* This isn't just about X—it's about Y.

* If this resonates—I'm listening. Because X isn't just a Y. It's a Z.

* Few Words Summary in Bold: One Sentence Restatement.

* [OBVIOUS PLACEHOLDER BLOCK NOT REMOVED FROM TEXT CONTAINING ANY OF THE ABOVE]

No.

The reason why people call it the "AI dash" (technically an em dash) is because it is very rarely used in day-to-day writing. You mostly see it in longform things like articles or books.

It's a classic example of "people are good at telling you where the problem is, but wrong about what the problem is". The em dashes are not natural, but they are human. Just the wrong human context.

This is a marketing pitch not someone's private journal.

Overly gushing, effusive, and positive descriptions of products filled with buzzwords. Along with lists of value propositions.

Prior to LLM's existing, marketing pitches sounded like they were written by one. So I can't see how you could possibly determine the difference now.

This seems accurate to me. LLMs learned from people.

Maybe this is true of English for a native, but many other languages make heavy use of it and I wager that carries over. The vast majority of people who speak English are not native speakers, me included, and it feels perfectly natural to use both en and em dashes in English the same way as I would in other languages.

disagree. I use it a lot – unless the OS makes it too cumbersome to type out

I also lament the emdash being used as an AI slop detection proxy. I use it in personal and business communication a lot.

Me too. The Mac auto-replaces “--” so it’s incredibly low effort to use it even in casual contexts.

I wrote the following in a recent blog post:

> This is for those who insist they can easily spot AI-generated text. Many of us old farts were using bulleted lists and em dashes and en dashes long before artificial intelligence was no more than a (usually) reliable plot device for sci-fi, much less the fever dream of tech bros. So, for God’s sake, stop using those as “proofs” that some text is AI-generated. As for my own writing, I reiterate what I said over two years ago: “...although the stuff on this site ... may not be any good, it always has been and will be written by a human, namely me.”

That just sound like every other dumb pitch that pretends to be solving some supposed problem by applying buzzword technology to invent a new solution to some other problem that was solved in the 70s. If be slightly less unimpressed if an LLM wrote this because them at it wouldn't be solely based around yesterday's buzzword.

It’s the tremendous amount of bloat that has made me discard Brave as a possibility when switching away from Chrome. I understand that they have to make money, but… I just wanted a Chrome fork that doesn’t get in the way.

Ungoogled chrome

No official builds for Windows.

Zen.

Zen is a Firefox fork, not a Chromium fork.

Ah sorry, I didn't see that you were looking for a Chromium one in specific. How come? Gecko is quite good these days and its good to avoid engine monoculture.

Are we still messing about with the Blockchain?

Has no one told them it's all about AI now?

How about this..

Ai powered browser that has ai powered search that builds websites as user starts typing a query. Then the endless loop of finding new and innovative websites all designed from scratch. No two experiences will be same as agents will build on the fly

You evil genious

is called widgets populated with LLM resumes then LLM-scattered across search results, dude. perplexity, the company, among others, is already producing this en masse. welcome to 2025.

I'm pretty sure I've already seen this for a bash terminal. It'll happen, don't give people ideas lol.

The future is performative rather than imperative.

Sadly there’s still a lot of money in the crypto grift

They do actually have an AI assistant built in to the browser. It's called Leo.

  $ dig ns brave
  ;; Got answer:
  ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 65203
  ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

Another fake non-ICANN TLD? I thought people stopped falling for these.

It's weird...they talk about it resolving, but only in a Web3 context. I don't know enough to understand how it differs from a "real" TLD.

> Minted on the Polygon blockchain, .brave domains will resolve across multiple networks—including Base, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Sonic, and more—making them widely compatible in the Web3 ecosystem.

In the article they mention having a goal to apply for a gTLD to be able to setup a DNS server for compatibility with things that use traditional DNS.

Until then the domain resolver needs to either be built into the browser itself or installed by the user via a WebExtention.

then they'd have to moderate that dns server, and so your domains are no longer "unstoppable"...

They already moderate their resolver. Anyone is free to setup their own uncensored one if they want.

I truly wish Brave would succeed, as we need more alternative browsers that go against the established tech, but when I see PR announcements like this I can't help but think that they're digging themselves deeper into irrelevance. It's like the entire company exists within a tech bubble of buzzwords and hype that no sane person would ever want to be in, even if they understood all the technobabble, perhaps even less in that case.

> “This is a bold leap toward an open internet,” said Sandy Carter, COO of Unstoppable Domains. “.brave puts digital identity in the hands of everyday users, not platforms.”

Huh? How does a branded domain that can only be visited by browsers that support it contribute to an "open" internet? It's literally controlled by corporations and platforms, despite the fact that an individual can technically "own" it.

I do think that BAT is a good step forward for alternative business models on the web. We need more of that and less of this Web3 nonsense.

Brave exists in exactly the niche of those that desire to hear these kind of high-minded ideas, or participate in experimental attempts at such things, while not really understanding the topics involved.

That isn’t an indictment of Brave’s entire user base. I tried it, and tried to like it, several times. Always kept going back to Firefox.

Which Mozilla makes increasingly hard to do from a philosophical perspective, but that’s another story.

>It's literally controlled by corporations and platforms

The NFT based domains are controlled by a decentralized network of computers. Compare this to web2 which is actually literally controlled by corporations with registrars and ICANN.

>that can only be visited by browsers that support it

Unstoppable Domains already work out of the box on Brave and Opera. Other Firefox and Chromium browsers can download the web extention for it to be able to resolve the domains.

TLD that are not accessable by everyone are useless.

And no free tls certs like letsencrypt is a huge step back.

Your second sentence’s lack of commas makes it ambiguous. To disagree with one possible interpretation:

Let’s Encrypt is a huge step forward. It provides end-to-end encryption for free, making it extremely abundant.

Fixed:

> And no free tls certs, like letsencrypt, is a huge step back.

They're saying that `.brave` domains are not capable of receiving Let's Encrypt certs. Which is bad.

>with no renewal fees

This is big if they can get in the web2 DNS sysrem. No more constant rent seeking from ICANN to have a domain. No more doxing yourself to ICANN to have a domain.

I know that some folks have IPv4 blocks permanently assigned to them, as do companies. From what I understand, some folks and companies also have some URLs permanently assigned to them via registrars also, for historical reasons and via trademark and other avenues of ownership? What a privileged position to find oneself in, eh?

And I know you have a username on Hacker News permanently assigned to you. Having a "permanent" identity is the default.

> And I know you have a username on Hacker News permanently assigned to you. Having a "permanent" identity is the default.

It’s not permanent. HN does not comply with GDPR in that I can be denied authorship of my comments if my account is deleted. This is contrary to my rights as an author in the EU.

also, I post under my government/slave name. What do you have on the line, anon?

Most HN posts are not protected by EU copyright though. A certain level of intellectual creation is needed for that.

I am speaking of my posts, which I make myself, so that caveat if it even exists could not apply in my case.

I mean, I expect ICANN to exist for much longer than Brave will.

And I expect Polygon, the blockchain these domains will be on, to last longer than both of them.

Sure, it will be around for a long time. Decades, at least!

But with “ICANN being around”, we mean “everyone can access ICANN domains unless they live in an oppressive regime”.

With “Polygon being around” it’s more like “gopher being around” or more fairly “Tor being around”: it certainly may be, but you need to be part of a technologically advanced internet subculture to use those domains, they’re not standard.

If they are successfully able to get a gTLD as described in the article everything will be able to use them. My original post in the thread said that this is a big deal if they are able to pull this off, so either I feel you misread my point or I don't understand what you arguing, maybe that Brave will stop renewing the gTLD when it goes out of business?

> If they are successfully able to get a gTLD as described in the article everything will be able to use them.

The entirety of that speculation in the article, as far as I could read, is three words: “potential ICANN accreditation” — that’s it.

> maybe that Brave will stop renewing the gTLD when it goes out of business

I wasn’t considering they would actually register the gTLD. But yes: gTLDs are only as good as their general appeal. Why get a .brave? Seems similar to .ovh; I don’t see the appeal.

If you want more words you can go the unstoppable domains website to see that they will apply in 2026. Yes, it's speculative but I am allowed to hope for a successful open and decentralized web.

>Why get a .brave? Seems similar to .ovh; I don’t see the appeal.

Because .ovh requires paying $3.49 every year to renew it. Because .ovh requires giving away your real name and physical address. Because ICANN can take away your domain (eg. You didn't give your real name or address).

The appeal of .brave is the web3 aspect of having actual ownership over the domain you purchased.

Yes, you're certainly allowed to hope, and I'm happy you do, because I am a cipherpunk at heart.

> .ovh requires paying $3.49 every year to renew it

And .brave domains are "buy once keep forever"?

What's the track record for that business model?

Is that how Unstoppable Domains does all their TLDs?

> ICANN can take away your domain

I see the point of having multiple resolution strategies, one of which is ICANN. But if a .brave domain is removed as part of an ICANN-induced process, and it's still available via blockchain-based resolvers, it's still practically censored worldwide. If I want to go to The Pirate Bay in a country that DNS-blacklisted them, I need a search engine to find one of the many proxy domains. It'd be equally inconvenient for most people to access a .brave domain that got conventionally DNS-blacklisted, blockchain or not.

> having actual ownership over the domain you purchased

Owning as in not paying a recurring fee? Okay.

Owning as in being invulnerable to censorship? In some sci-fi dream scenario, yes.

Owning as in having complete control of your "asset" in a vast service network? Not close.

I'd like to believe more in blockchain-based DNS, but it seems to be for technologists only.

Figures that they would partner with Stoppable Domains.

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