I'm
slowly starting to suspect that maybe having human-readable names for domains is a mistake.
Partially because phishing domains is already kind of easy (the rapid increase in tlds isn't helping), partially because the race to grab and hold names has been having increasing negative effects, and partially because (aside from domains) many actual URLs are already impossible to remember. We're running into the same problem with SSL certificates -- the position of LetsEncrypt is now that they shouldn't be used for identity verification.
There would be some awful challenges if we got rid of the human-readable part of domains, but the benefits of moving to something like a unique hash or key instead:
- instantly getting a domain for anything and have it be permanent, without any renewals.
- getting rid of most name-squatting.
- being explicit and up-front with consumers about the dangers of phishing, and the need to build separate identity-verification infrastructure that couldn't be beaten with dumb attacks like the `rn m` trick.
I dunno. It could be a really bad, stupid idea, but I want to start thinking about if there are ways we could share domains in a hashed form on podcasts/posters/etc... that would mitigate some of the obvious downsides to having them be difficult to remember or type.
I know IPFS and DAT are using hashes for everything, but as far as I know they're both falling back on stuff like IPNS and human-readable aliases when URLs get shared, and to me those have the exact same downsides as the domain system we're already using today. I'm not necessarily advocating anything, it's just less obvious to me today that a naming system that uses actual words provides more benefits than downsides.