DNS-Persist-01: A New Model for DNS-Based Challenge Validation

In the meantime, if you use bind as your authoritative nameserver, you can limit an hmac-secret to one TXT record, so each webserver that uses rfc2136 for certificate renewals is only capable of updating its specific record:

  key "bob.acme." {
    algorithm hmac-sha512;
    secret "blahblahblah";
  };
  
  key "joe.acme." {
    algorithm hmac-sha512;
    secret "blahblahblah2";
  };

  zone "example.com" IN {
   type master;
   file "/var/lib/bind/example.com.zone";
   update-policy {
    grant bob.acme. name _acme-challenge.bob.acme.example.com. TXT;
    grant joe.acme. name _acme-challenge.joe.acme.example.com. TXT;
   };
   key-directory "/var/lib/bind/keys-acme.example.com";
   dnssec-policy "acme";
   inline-signing yes;
  };

  export LE_CONFIG_HOME="/etc/acme-sh/"
  export NSUPDATE_SERVER="${YOUR_NS_ADDR}"
  export NSUPDATE_KEY="/var/lib/bob-nsupdate.key"
  export NSUPDATE_KEY_NAME="bob.acme."
  export NSUPDATE_ZONE="acme.example.com."

  acme.sh --issue --server letsencrypt -d 'bob.example.com' \
        --certificate-profile shortlived \
        --days 6 \
        --dns dns_nsupdate

CAs were already doing something like this (CNAME to a dns server controlled by the CA), so there was interest from everyone involved to standardize and decide on what the rules should be.

Being able to distribute self-hostable software to users that can be deployed onto a VM and made operational literally within 5 minutes is a big selling point. Domain registration & DNS are a massive pain to deal with at the novice end of the spectrum. You can combine this with things like https://checkip.amazonaws.com to build properly turnkey solutions.