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Decentralized Naming and Certificate Authority

handshake.org

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Re: Decentralized Naming and Certificate Authority

#111

Post by stubish »

troquerre wrote: post #95

PSA if you had over 15 followers on GitHub by August 2018 you were likely included in the Handshake airdrop. Basically they developed a way to give each dev in the airdrop 4662 coins each (worth a lot since current market price is $0.50[1]). These instructions walk through what the claiming process is like, which can only be done after block 2016 in a day or so https://namebase.io/airdrop . [1] https://namebase.io

Interesting they are soliciting personalities, rather than infrastructure, sysadmins and others who might have more power to push Handshake. Leaves out a lot of the Great Old Ones too, like say a big hunk of Debian and Ubuntu developers. Or Firefox devs, who have a lot of power here. Lots of projects predate Github. When I looked, I'm honestly surprised how many followers I have there - why would you follow me personally? Rather than the projects? I wouldn't follow me. Seems rather creepy.

Edit: I see elsewhere there have been cash drops to Debian, Arch and probably some other projects. Which makes sense.

Re: Decentralized Naming and Certificate Authority

#112

Post by wtmt »

danShumway wrote: post #56
wtmt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Names have to be renewed bi-annually. You don't need to pay a fee, you just need to submit a transaction to prove you still have access to the private key. When talking about email alternatives here, I see a lot of comments strongly suggesting owning a custom domain and using it. If the domain cannot be renewed and kept alive in advance for a few years, the bus factor of being the only technical person in the famil…

I'm not affiliated with Handshake in any way. But my assumption is that there would still be registrars that can handle this sort of thing for you, in the same way that a service like Netlify can handle setting up a static site server and renewing LetsEncrypt certificates. It's just that if you wanted to do it manually, you could.

Thanks. That makes sense. For some reason I didn’t think of concentrated service providers because I was too focused on decentralization (and to think of it, such concentrated providers are everywhere in decentralized platforms).

Re: Decentralized Naming and Certificate Authority

#113

Post by wtmt »

troquerre wrote: post #84
danShumway wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not affiliated with Handshake in any way. But my assumption is that there would still be registrars that can handle this sort of thing for you, in the same way that a service like Netlify can handle setting up a static site server and renewing LetsEncrypt certificates. It's just that if you wanted to do it manually, you could.

Exactly. We built a registrar for Handshake ( https://namebase.io ) and our service will automatically handle renewal transactions. That said, anyone can still manage their keys and submit renewal transactions on their own if they want to do that, similar to how you can use Coinbase vs a desktop wallet for Bitcoin.

Thanks. I’m still wary of the bi-annual renewal requirement. If I register a name today, can I renew it one year later from today to stretch it to two years from then (which would be three years from now) or would I be able to renew it for two years only near the end of the two year period? In other words, can I perpetually have it renewed to approximately two years in the future at all times? If not, that brings the same risk I talked about in my comment above (where families may not have enough time to figure things out and handle it).

Re: Decentralized Naming and Certificate Authority

#114

Post by withinboredom »

wtmt wrote: post #113
troquerre wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. We built a registrar for Handshake ( https://namebase.io ) and our service will automatically handle renewal transactions. That said, anyone can still manage their keys and submit renewal transactions on their own if they want to do that, similar to how you can use Coinbase vs a desktop wallet for Bitcoin.

Thanks. I’m still wary of the bi-annual renewal requirement. If I register a name today, can I renew it one year later from today to stretch it to two years from then (which would be three years from now) or would I be able to renew it for two years only near the end of the two year period? In other words, can I perpetually have it renewed to approximately two years in the future at all times? If not, that brings the…

It's not even that. It reads like it's a cliff. Currently under ICANN, if you fail to renew a domain, you have ~90 days to figure out that you didn't renew it before it's lost forever. Even if it's scripted to renew, it could fail for any number of reasons (lack of fiat currency, transient network failures, lack of crypto-currency, etc).

Re: Decentralized Naming and Certificate Authority

#115

Post by rwiggum »

xoa wrote: post #98
troquerre wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any name up to 63 characters (normal domain name characters, unicode gets converted to punycode) can be registered. The difference with Handshake is that users get to choose how they store their names. There's a spectrum of convenience and self-sovereignty. In traditional DNS the existing system makes that choice for you, whereas Handshake is creating a system where individuals get to choose based on their preference…

> Any name up to 63 characters (normal domain name characters, unicode gets converted to punycode) can be registered. But how does that square with the 52-week staggered release bit? If I wish to go register my domain right now, what happens? I don't see anything on namebase that would simply allow entry of an arbitrary domain, instead the "bid soon" seems to just be a bunch of dictionary words. There is an invitatio…

>But how does that square with the 52-week staggered release bit?

It's random, but distributed over 52 weeks because the hash function has psuedo-random output. It's quite clever, IMO. That's what "Determined by hash(name) % 52" means. You want to register "meow" today? Well, then check if hash("meow") % 52 That's my understanding, but I haven't actually read any docs.

Re: Decentralized Naming and Certificate Authority

#116

Post by sdtsui »

danShumway wrote: post #88
rasengan wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally to combat squatting, to register a name, one needs to go thru a Vickrey auction and bid on a name after it is released. Bidding continues for about 5 days thereafter and there are 10 days to reveal the bids. The winner pays the second highest bid.

Wait, what? That seems like it could have a lot of unintended consequences, to the point of invalidating all of the benefits from having tons and tons of new names. I have a lot of follow questions about the potential for abuse. From the squatter/troll angle: if I'm a troll or I'm trying to steal good names before anyone else can get them, what stops me from monitoring the current auctions and stealing domains by bid…

> I can't imagine using a DNS registrar that made me wait 5 days to discover whether or not I got to have the domain, or that made me guess how much it would cost at the risk of losing the entire domain.

That's fair - may help to compare this with the current tld system, not just the regular domains (x.com). Right now, getting a new tld takes months and a six figure investment. Here it is 5+ days.

After that tld is claimed, it's up to the owner to administer it and make a profit on selling the names, or not.

Re: Decentralized Naming and Certificate Authority

#117

Post by SkyMarshal »

jspaetzel wrote: post #107
pinhead26 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 num…

Well. That's a nice publicity stunt. lets see how they get their investment back. It's nice that this project does some good. https://github.com/handshake-org/hsd/blob/56c83ca7344def512e... So if I read this right Creators get: 102mi coins Sponsors get: 102mi coins they are airdropping about 952mi coins to users on github to the tune of 4,246 per user. So they're collecting about 20% of all coins initially dropped. T…

>how an end user will use these names

It’s aimed at open source developers who will be able to figure out how to use the system, not mainstream non-tech normies. As evidenced by the large airdrop to Github.

Re: Decentralized Naming and Certificate Authority

#119

Post by SkyMarshal »

stubish wrote: post #111
troquerre wrote: post #95

PSA if you had over 15 followers on GitHub by August 2018 you were likely included in the Handshake airdrop. Basically they developed a way to give each dev in the airdrop 4662 coins each (worth a lot since current market price is $0.50[1]). These instructions walk through what the claiming process is like, which can only be done after block 2016 in a day or so https://namebase.io/airdrop . [1] https://namebase.io

Interesting they are soliciting personalities, rather than infrastructure, sysadmins and others who might have more power to push Handshake. Leaves out a lot of the Great Old Ones too, like say a big hunk of Debian and Ubuntu developers. Or Firefox devs, who have a lot of power here. Lots of projects predate Github. When I looked, I'm honestly surprised how many followers I have there - why would you follow me person…

It’s not soliciting personalities but rather developers who have made things useful to at least 15 other developers, at least on Github.

They also needed exposed public keys to airdrop to, which limited the airdrop to Github and the WoT strong set.

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