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Decentralized Naming and Certificate Authority

handshake.org

21–30 of 128 posts

Re: Decentralized Naming and Certificate Authority

#21
Shameless plug - if anyone wants to try using Handshake, we built a registrar for Handshake domains and an exchange for Handshake coins (HNS) at https://namebase.io. We just launched last week but there's already been a lot of usage so it'll be interesting to see what people do with their Handshake domains when they become available.

Re: Decentralized Naming and Certificate Authority

#22
post #17

Does putting self-signed certs on a blockchain really solve the problem?

Everyone can put self-signed cert on a blockchain. You need to prove that you control the domain. Easiest way to prove that is to ask your registrar. And if your registrar will sign this fact you don't even need to ask him. So you naturally will come to DNS and DNSSec. And all standards are already here: deploy DNSSec, put TLSA record and it's done. It's a solved problem, just not widely supported.

Re: Decentralized Naming and Certificate Authority

#23
post #7

They've somehow managed to make the two least optimal choices of language possible. The full node daemon, hsd, is written in Javascript. A non type safe language with poor package management for consensus critical code. We also have a light client, hnsd, which is written in C A non memory safe and error prone language for client code people would run on their systems as root.

Well at least you don't have to worry about package management, all the dependencies are built by the organization either from scratch or with vendored code.

Re: JavaScript, you should take a look at the code in repo, it's excellent. There is a such thing as great Javascript code and bcoin/hsd are prime examples.

Re: Decentralized Naming and Certificate Authority

#24

First impression: Great another ICO. Second impression: Not a wildly outlandish idea but im not sure if it's a good idea either. Decentralized and automated registrar with a concept of renewals. Nifty. I'm not really sure how the economics here work out.. Could I scoop up a few million names early on and then hold them forever? Has that already happened? Could this enable anonymous registration? Would these things ma…

The project raised $10M and then gave 100% of it away to open source projects. They receive some HNS tokens in return. There is a massive airdrop of coins to hundreds of thousands of guthub users, spreading out the money supply to people who might be the most interested in using the system. In other words, this is the least ICO-y new blockchain in a decade.

Names roll out over 52 weeks: HashName(name) % 52 = week number that a name is available. So that should attenuate squatting. Also bidding on names locks up coins for something like 2 weeks, so it's hard to bid on too many names.

Re: Decentralized Naming and Certificate Authority

#25

First impression: Great another ICO. Second impression: Not a wildly outlandish idea but im not sure if it's a good idea either. Decentralized and automated registrar with a concept of renewals. Nifty. I'm not really sure how the economics here work out.. Could I scoop up a few million names early on and then hold them forever? Has that already happened? Could this enable anonymous registration? Would these things ma…

Handshake didn't do an ICO. They raised $10.2m from institutional investors like A16Z, Sequoia, Greylock, and Founders Fund, and then donated all the money they raised to non-profits and open-source projects. Here's a notice from the free software foundation when they received $1m from Handshake https://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-foundation-receives-1...

Re: Decentralized Naming and Certificate Authority

#26

This has been tried. It's called Namecoin and it failed to get much traction. I suspect that using Bitcoin instead would improve adoption dramatically instead of creating yet another token. This can be done using sidechains or something similar.

ENS is running on top of ethereum just fine

Re: Decentralized Naming and Certificate Authority

#27
post #9
post #3

I don't see information on how names are handled. I know Zeronet started the entire .bit (which can be purchased with NameCoin). Are there reserved TLDs for handshake? Has ICANN said anything about .bit or .onion TLDs? I suspect TOR is big enough they won't touch .onion, but if they sell .bit, you'll then have some name overlap/conflicts.

The handshake namespace overlaps with the normal domain name system, but they reserve the top 100k domains for the current owners. My only concern is the long term sync between DNS and the old system. But I like the project and I think it’s a good way forward for replacing the current centralized DNS and PKI system

I'd say it extends more than overlap: If a name is not found on the Handshake chain, the resolver "falls back" to legacy ICANN DNS. Since all current gTLDs are reserved as well as the top 100k, there won't be any overlap for a while.

Re: Decentralized Naming and Certificate Authority

#28
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The handshake namespace overlaps with the normal domain name system, but they reserve the top 100k domains for the current owners. My only concern is the long term sync between DNS and the old system. But I like the project and I think it’s a good way forward for replacing the current centralized DNS and PKI system

That's just an immediate non-starter then. Nobody is following all of these esoteric systems in the case that one of them gains marketshare, it guarantees that people will be phished and defrauded as soon as they use it. We had this issue with namecoin already, where people went and registered names of prominent people and tried to use that to solicit fraudulent donations.

That’s a fair point and I share the same concern. I would have allowed anyone that owns a domain and can prove it, to get their domain for free in the new system. You could do the proof similarly to how Let’s Encrypt does it

Re: Decentralized Naming and Certificate Authority

#29

This has been tried. It's called Namecoin and it failed to get much traction. I suspect that using Bitcoin instead would improve adoption dramatically instead of creating yet another token. This can be done using sidechains or something similar.

ENS is running on top of ethereum just fine

[deleted]

Re: Decentralized Naming and Certificate Authority

#30
post #7

They've somehow managed to make the two least optimal choices of language possible. The full node daemon, hsd, is written in Javascript. A non type safe language with poor package management for consensus critical code. We also have a light client, hnsd, which is written in C A non memory safe and error prone language for client code people would run on their systems as root.

We have a Rust implementation in the works: https://github.com/UrkelLabs/rsd

It's not a full node implementation yet, but will be there soon!

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