It would actually make sense to have ICANN create an official TLD for Handshake.
Handshake: Decentralizing DNS to Improve the Security of the Internet
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Re: Handshake: Decentralizing DNS to Improve the Security of the Internet
#12Also posted on reddit with the owner trying to answer some questions: https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/d5iv4y/decentralizi...
Author of the post here. The r/netsec community brings up good points. One thing that's come up frequently is the question of trademark disputes. Handshake does have mechanisms in place to protect a good number of existing trademarks (only the domain owners of the top 100k Alexa domains can register their names as TLDs), and it also has mechanisms to prevent early squatting through the 52 week period for name rollouts.
These mechanics protect trademarks in the short term, but in the long term anyone can bid on an unregistered name in the open auction system that Handshake created. My perspective on this is that there isn't an inherent reason why a naming system needs to deal with trademark issues — there are pros and cons to names being registered in an open auction, just like there are pros and cons to Bitcoin being a store of value that's difficult to censor and seize.
Re: Handshake: Decentralizing DNS to Improve the Security of the Internet
#13I never imagined someone would write a recursive DNS sever in javascript. Have they explained why they chose javascript? It can't perform well nor scale and they even sort of admit that:
Re: Handshake: Decentralizing DNS to Improve the Security of the Internet
#14I never imagined someone would write a recursive DNS sever in javascript. Have they explained why they chose javascript? It can't perform well nor scale and they even sort of admit that: https://github.com/handshake-org/hsd#unbound-support
It’s a blockchain: JavaScript is the least of their worries.
Re: Handshake: Decentralizing DNS to Improve the Security of the Internet
#15It would actually make sense to have ICANN create an official TLD for Handshake.
We've spoken with people involved with the ICANN and I think that'd be unlikely. In a sense, ICANN is the incumbent that Handshake is trying to unseat, so it's not surprising that they don't like it. There have also been numerous alternative root projects in the past that all failed, so when ICANN people see that aspect of Handshake they quickly dismiss it. Interestingly, we've had conversations with Vint Cerf who invented TCP/IP and he actually liked the properties that Handshake provides (wasn't a fan of the blockchain implementation though). Vint proposed a system with similar properties in the past as well: https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2018/12/232883-self-authentic...
Re: Handshake: Decentralizing DNS to Improve the Security of the Internet
#16Author of the post here. If you have any questions I'll be online for a while to respond to them. We're serious about attempting to improve the security of the internet, so criticisms are welcome too.
Re: Handshake: Decentralizing DNS to Improve the Security of the Internet
#17I never imagined someone would write a recursive DNS sever in javascript. Have they explained why they chose javascript? It can't perform well nor scale and they even sort of admit that: https://github.com/handshake-org/hsd#unbound-support
Basically, only the root record parsing is done in JS and then passed to unbound for resolution. Though it is possible to run a pure JS resolver, it's not really recommended.
There's also a more portable authoritative & recursive [resolver in C](https://github.com/handshake-org/hnsd).
Plus, the whole protocol for node communication and name resolution & proofs is so simple, that it's pretty easy to reimplement in any language.
Re: Handshake: Decentralizing DNS to Improve the Security of the Internet
#18"Blockchain-based alternative to CAs" has been discussed before there even was the word blockchain (it was called sovereign keys, at least it's pretty close to a blockchain).
I'd expect someone trying at least discussing why that didn't make it. Also I'm really annoyed by the "there was a problem with CAs in 2011, this system is really bad"-tune ignoring what has been changed since then. (E.g. the "You don’t know who all these CA intermediates are" may be true, but that's your problem, because you very well could know, the information is there.)
Re: Handshake: Decentralizing DNS to Improve the Security of the Internet
#19Author of the post here. If you have any questions I'll be online for a while to respond to them. We're serious about attempting to improve the security of the internet, so criticisms are welcome too.
Isn't this just basically Namecoin but with venture capital money?
Re: Handshake: Decentralizing DNS to Improve the Security of the Internet
#20I never imagined someone would write a recursive DNS sever in javascript. Have they explained why they chose javascript? It can't perform well nor scale and they even sort of admit that: https://github.com/handshake-org/hsd#unbound-support
Basically, only the root record parsing is done in JS and then passed to unbound for resolution. Though it is possible to run a pure JS resolver, it's not really recommended. There's also a more portable authoritative & recursive [resolver in C]( https://github.com/handshake-org/hnsd ). Plus, the whole protocol for node communication and name resolution & proofs is so simple, that it's pretty easy to reimplement in a…
Right, thanks. And I hope my question does not sound too critical. I was just genuinely curious why JS was used.
I think JS is fine for small to mid-sized tasks, prototyping and testing ideas. However, for real DNS servers, used by a lot of clients, I believe C, C++, Go or Rust would be an absolute requirement.