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This seems to propose that the namecoin block chain could be used as an alternative to root certificates, but without the client needing to participate in the block chain. But this means you have to trust a third party service (and your connection to it) to serve you correct information from the block chain. How exactly does that work?

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For that case you're right, the scheme suffers from the same concerns as the CA scheme. The difference is that there is room to move forward, in that you can host the namecoin chain yourself and be sure of its accuracy. I think we could even have browsers have it built-in that they host a copy of the chain (the whole chain doesn't have to be downloaded, nor does all that's been downloaded need to be in memory).

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