Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Decentralized DNS with the Handshake Naming System

privateinternetaccess.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 75 posts

Re: Decentralized DNS with the Handshake Naming System

#61

Post by troquerre »

oauea wrote: post #35
pinhead26 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Handshake TLDs need to be renewed every two years or the names go back up for auction. Renewals must include a recent block hash to prove that the name owner is still active and has _recently_ signed the renewal transaction. - Yes, names are rolled out over 52 weeks based on the hash of the name (modulo 52), which was designed to prevent squatting. The auction & renewals processes should help as well. - Yes, Handsh…

> Handshake TLDs need to be renewed every two years or the names go back up for auction. Renewals must include a recent block hash to prove that the name owner is still active and has _recently_ signed the renewal transaction. Can't this just be automated?

Yes! Another comment mentioned that you’ll need to keep keys online to do this, which is not completely true. You can also create a key that can only be used renew your names that’s separate from your master key.

Re: Decentralized DNS with the Handshake Naming System

#62

Post by troquerre »

theamk wrote: post #31
danShumway wrote: post #9

The article and Namebase faq go into some details, but just so I understand, what are the practical effects of this beyond decentralization? - If I buy a TLD, will I own it in perpetuity, even after I die? - If we're encouraging people to register their own TLDs, won't we run into the same limited-name/squatter problems as normal domains? I get that names are being released at a trickle, but that seems like it would…

I have only skimmed the whitepaper, but I did not notice any mention of handling of the loss of the private key. Sooner or later, any servers get hacked, and attackers can get the private data stored there. If this happens, is there any way to recover the TLD? Or are we going to end up with a network where many names point to ransomware pages?

There’s a mechanism that prevents this. If your key is stolen you can submit a transaction that opens your key for public auction again, so an attacker would have to outbid you in the auction to win the name. This will prevent most ransom attacks.

Re: Decentralized DNS with the Handshake Naming System

#63

Post by troquerre »

YCuN4M00v33odS wrote: post #57
troquerre wrote: post #30

As an FYI for HN, many of y'all are probably eligible for $400-800 of Handshake coins (HNS). Handshake is airdropping coins to open-source developers to incentivize them to check out the project. If you have over 15 followers on GitHub you can use this tool to claim coins. This is a no-strings-attached giveaway so if you want to you can also sell your coins but it'd be worth it to bid on your name before you do. You…

Where do I get this bech32 address?

You can generate one with a Handshake client. If you’d like help with the process and an easy way to use your coins ping me at Tieshun at Namebase.io

https://github.com/handshake-org/hsd

Re: Decentralized DNS with the Handshake Naming System

#64

Post by troquerre »

justinmchase wrote: post #39
mugsie wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The DNS ROOT becomes controlled by the people instead of ICANN - it’s the end of ceased and censored domains. Good luck with that. If there is no way to have a US court take ownership of a domain (or force someone to handover a bad faith registration), someone will either end up in jail for contempt, or it will just be banned. > Additionally, HNS also fixes the problems the CA system has today. CAs can generate cer…

But you first have to figure out who to put in jail for contempt and in order to ban it you'll have to take down the entire block chain. I'm not totally sure how this one works but with ENS there are key holders that theoretically have the ability to do operations on any entry but it takes a certain number of them to all coordinate and agree.

ENS has only 6 root key holders which not that many from a security perspective. Handshake has no root key holders — it’s secured by every fullnode supporting the blockchain. That’s what makes bitcoin so difficult to shut down.

Re: Decentralized DNS with the Handshake Naming System

#65

Post by troquerre »

mugsie wrote: post #43
justinmchase wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you first have to figure out who to put in jail for contempt and in order to ban it you'll have to take down the entire block chain. I'm not totally sure how this one works but with ENS there are key holders that theoretically have the ability to do operations on any entry but it takes a certain number of them to all coordinate and agree.

Right, so you threaten all of them with jail until they hand over the keys to a US Court to continue to do the takedowns for copyright enforcement / ISIS website / scam site pretending to be Amazon / the new Silk Road / $reason. We have seen this before, where people who run these services are personally held in contempt until they comply with the order.

There’s no one to threaten. You may be able to find one or two people running the fullnode but it’d be immensely difficult to find everyone running a fullnode around the world and threaten them.

Re: Decentralized DNS with the Handshake Naming System

#67

Post by troquerre »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #56
linsomniac wrote: post #4

Namecoin seemed like an interesting idea for decentralized registration, has it gone anywhere in the years I haven't been following it?

Not really. One problem is most of the good names got taken by squatters right out of the gate, like hundreds of thousands of them - irl trademarks, all the nouns in the dictionary bought by one guy, etc. Mainstream business will never adopt it for that reason, so its growth is inherently capped and most crypto natives ignore it.

I work at Namebase, which is a domain registrar and on-ramp for Handshake. That’s what makes Handshake so compelling imo. There are a lot of mechanisms that prevent squatting: bids are locked up until auctions finish, so squatters need to pick and choose where they allocate coins. Furthermore, names are rolled out over a 52 week period (hash of the name mod 52), which means that there will still be a lot of good names available 6 months into launch. And the Alexa top 100k domains have been pre-registered, in addition to the blacklisted ICANN TLDs, so that only facebook.com can register .facebook. Finally, 70% of the coins are being airdropped to developers so the bidding power will be evenly distributed from the start — it’ll be difficult for a whale to buy up $10mm of Handshake coins and outbid everyone.

Re: Decentralized DNS with the Handshake Naming System

#68

Post by troquerre »

zeroxfe wrote: post #18
briatx wrote: post #6

DNS has always been decentralized. I mean, first sentence on wikipedia: > The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and decentralized naming system for computers, services, or other resources connected to the Internet or a private network.

Decentralization can occur across many axes -- our public DNS infrastructure, for example, does not have decentralized registration or governance, which is what matters for things like privacy or censorship resistance.

I work at Namebase. This 100%. Importantly, the root of trust for SSL is not decentralized. Any one of the 600 CAs your computer trusts can compromise your HTTPS requests. The most interesting thing about Handshake from a security angle is it shifts the root of trust from the CA hierarchy to a decentralized blockchain system, which can significantly improve the security of SSL.

Re: Decentralized DNS with the Handshake Naming System

#69

Post by xur17 »

troquerre wrote: post #60
LyndsySimon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have over 15 followers on GitHub, you can claim around $400-800 of Handshake coins (HNS) with no strings attached. How will one go about this? I'm interested, if only for the purpose of claiming a few domains that I have a personal interest in.

You can use https://github.com/handshake-org/hs-airdrop to claim your coins on the testnet. You’ll have to repeat the process once the mainnet launches. If you want an easier way to claim and use your coins I can also add you to our private beta for Namebase.io. Just ping me at tieshun at namebase.io.

There was a post on HN about a year ago announcing Handshake, with an option to signup for the airdrop with your github account, irc account, etc.

Do you know if these users will still receive the tokens they signed up for? Should these tokens show up on testnet?

Re: Decentralized DNS with the Handshake Naming System

#70

Post by troquerre »

xur17 wrote: post #69
troquerre wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use https://github.com/handshake-org/hs-airdrop to claim your coins on the testnet. You’ll have to repeat the process once the mainnet launches. If you want an easier way to claim and use your coins I can also add you to our private beta for Namebase.io. Just ping me at tieshun at namebase.io.

There was a post on HN about a year ago announcing Handshake, with an option to signup for the airdrop with your github account, irc account, etc. Do you know if these users will still receive the tokens they signed up for? Should these tokens show up on testnet?

You should have received a seed phrase as part of that airdrop. You'll be able to use that seed phrase to claim your tokens on the testnet and mainnet. Ping me at tieshun at namebase.io if you want to try things out on testnet — I'm happy to walk you through it.
Post reply on HN