61–70 of 86 posts
How long have we wait after registration ? It seems interesting...
It still seems bizarre to me that this system lets people register arbitrary TLDs. If nothing else, sooner or later a new ICANN gTLD will conflict with a Handshake registration. At that point, Handshake will no longer be a backwards compatible extension of the existing DNS, so systems will have to choose one or the other. Maybe the Handshake authors think that when that day comes (and it's probably not that far off),…
> I want to support decentralized name systems This isn't a coherent thought, which illustrates why they fail. A name _system_ is something you have exactly _one_ of, because otherwise they conflict. To support more than one is to give up altogether, it might actually be slightly worse than just not caring at all. So you'd need to pick one and then, even if clearly better alternatives are subsequently proposed, you _…
Saying conflicts are inevitable/unavoidable between name systems seems simplistic: it's a problem to solve. Not necessarily easy, but I know of no hard law making it implicitly insurmountable.
Why does changing name system destroy all value? Sure, changing any system is disruptive and can be relatively destructive; such changes must be weighed against benefits of change, but I see no reason choosing generally better alternatives must destroy all value.
I'm not a blockchain expert (or DNS, for that matter), but my reckoning is that alternatives to public-key infrastructure involving such things as identity-based and attribute-based encryption are a more promising way to get rid of CAs. Tackle it at the level of the trapdoor function, as this is, at least, mathematically robust. The mathematics of networks is less so.
"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…
Author of the post here. My aim was to keep this post focused and cover the differences between Handshake and previous blockchain DNS attempts in a separate post. The keyword here is attempts: previous projects like Namecoin and ENS haven't really taken off. I think the reason has to do with the underlying technology and the go-to-market strategy (or lack thereof) of the projects. On the technology front, Handshake i…
How about the risk of parking TLDs on Handshake? Say, by taking every .{lastname} out there just in case someone wants it in the future...
Could certainly happen, but there's a couple mechanisms that mitigate this: 1) The network will only allow you to bid on a name if it has been at least `hash(name) % 52` weeks after mainnet launch. Squatters cannot purchase all of the good names on day 1. 2) The network limits the total number of domain renewals that can occur each block. Eventually this will lead to fee pressure and make renewing 10,000s of domains…
isn't dns already decentralised? (apart form everyone basically using the same server(s) / google ?) you can just set up your own dns if you want to have your own mappings of ip->dn and vice versa. just set your dns to the server you prefer?
The actual zonefile is hosted by a group of volunteer organizations. The variety, and the use of anycast means that the root zone is fairly stable and as reliable as any other distributed system (i.e. cloud). You can even download the root zone and run it locally if you want.
Handshake is interesting, but it conflates DNS and the CA ecosystem. They are different and used for different things. Most of the big issues around DNS isn't about the protocol, but the policies and legal issues around domain names and their ownership.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 rollout…
There are very good public safety reasons to allow lifting domains from their current owners. Like if someone owns Microsift and puts a phishing page on it. What about botnet C2 servers?
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There are many instances where an intolerant minority is able to get a neutral majority to adopt their will. Nassim Taleb describes this as the minority rule. It’s the same reason why all lemonade is kosher* A small minority of people NEED censorship-resistant and seizure-resistant DNS, and the bet is that they can get the majority to adopt Handshake. The key is that Handshake is backwards compatible with existing DN…
It’s true that a single static IP address is easy to block, but what is stopping an oppressive regime from building tech specifically designed to block Handshake? Correct me if I’m wrong, but Handshake still functions over IP and as such a government could potentially block all IPs associated with Handshake via similar mechanisms that are used to block a single IP. If there exists some kind of public list of all Hand…
It runs over https so it would be difficult to distinguish between a legitimate https packet and a handshake one, you would need to do deep packet inspection which is difficult.
Being distributed it uses multiple ips lots, these ips change lots, this is called churn and keeping track of it is a problem for distributed systems. The swarm is segmented and the segments are usually randomised to the individual for better distribution this is supposed to make it difficult to get all the ips to ban them all but easy to get at least one unbanned ip.
> Oppressive regimes will adapt.
Yes they will but they will have to publicly invest significant money and years of time into a project that can only be used for censorship.
> And DNS as it stands is fairly seizure resistant as long as -sic- the customer services folks don’t get tricked into resetting your account or something.
This happens constantly, its probably the biggest security issue that faces dns, just phone up some level 1 tech and grab yourself a new domain.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I want to support decentralized name systems This isn't a coherent thought, which illustrates why they fail. A name _system_ is something you have exactly _one_ of, because otherwise they conflict. To support more than one is to give up altogether, it might actually be slightly worse than just not caring at all. So you'd need to pick one and then, even if clearly better alternatives are subsequently proposed, you _…
I'm not seeing any explanation behind any of your attestations. Are they assumptions? Saying conflicts are inevitable/unavoidable between name systems seems simplistic: it's a problem to solve. Not necessarily easy, but I know of no hard law making it implicitly insurmountable. Why does changing name system destroy all value? Sure, changing any system is disruptive and can be relatively destructive; such changes must…