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Opera adds native support for blockchain domain names

blogs.opera.com

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Re: Opera adds native support for blockchain domain names

#3
So we need blockchain because google controls the emails of his kids that he has set up. What?

If you want you data to be safe, then host your data yourself and make backups.

Yet another "we had a blockchain and did not know what to do with it" solution that nobody needs.

I think I lost IQ points reading this nonsense.

Re: Opera adds native support for blockchain domain names

#5
post #3

So we need blockchain because google controls the emails of his kids that he has set up. What? If you want you data to be safe, then host your data yourself and make backups. Yet another "we had a blockchain and did not know what to do with it" solution that nobody needs. I think I lost IQ points reading this nonsense.

This.

Re: Opera adds native support for blockchain domain names

#6

Not sure about others, but I've paid thousands of dollars for ICANN renewal fees over the last decade... love the idea of "owning" real estate on the internet vs. merely renting it (and having prices go up every few years).

Presumably you need to pay every time you want to update where the domain points, no?

https://docs.unstoppabledomains.com/domain-registry-essentia...

From the docs it seems like you can "hardcode" IPs or...a traditional dns cname.

At $40/domain, if you update your DNS records once every two years, you're really only just breaking even.

Also, from the FAQ:

> Trademark holders with proof of ownership can apply to claim ownership of trademarked names. If a trademark name has already been sold, then it will be refunded. Note - this process ends once domains have been distributed. Unstoppable Domains does not have the ability to move a domain once distribution has occurred.

Seems like a less-than-agreeable policy for most folks. Unless you're a scalper.

Re: Opera adds native support for blockchain domain names

#7
post #3

So we need blockchain because google controls the emails of his kids that he has set up. What? If you want you data to be safe, then host your data yourself and make backups. Yet another "we had a blockchain and did not know what to do with it" solution that nobody needs. I think I lost IQ points reading this nonsense.

Yeah I'm kinda confused as to why he went through all the effort of setting up email addresses rather than throwing them in a folder and backing it up to as many off-site storage providers as needed to make him comfortable.

I get that sending an email might be easy but so is uploading to Dropbox or Nextcloud if it must be self-hosted. And you don't have any storage limits.

Plus having blockchain domain names does nothing for the storage. IPFS is great but he still have to keep seeding it or it will go offline eventually. He still needs backups!

Re: Opera adds native support for blockchain domain names

#8
All you need to know:

> Will My Life Change?

> Yes, my friend! It will because you can easily build your own decentralized website and simplify your cross wallet crypto payments, share music and photos (not just of my kids), start a business, secure and verify your identity “on chain”, or showcase your brilliant NFT art gallery.

Re: Opera adds native support for blockchain domain names

#9
Why on earth do you want to decentralize personal belongings? I absolutely want my possessions centralized, in storage locations I own. That is the much more obvious solution than putting personal possessions on a blockchain. If you want to store digital tokens for your kids that you can be reasonably assured will still be there when they become adults, use thumb drives. Keep them in a fireproof safe if you're really worried. Somehow, my mom has managed to keep all the videos and photos of key events in my childhood safe and intact for 40 years without having to put them on a public distributed ledger. When betamax went obsolete, she transferred to VHS. When that went away, to DVD.

I really don't understand what this woman thinks she is buying. I guess this is a better storage medium for precious moments and collectibles than sending copies of everything to gmail, but so is almost any other way of storing something.

Re: Opera adds native support for blockchain domain names

#10
Domain name/identity and key pinning has always been the only useful use of NFTs that I can think of.

Today, to encrypt your communications with people, you use something like PGP or Signal which rely on "trust on first use (TOFU) but verify", in practice people don't really verify so it's more like TOFU. This means that if someone compromised the session at the moment where it was created (or re-created), then your communication are being snooped on.

Today, to encrypt your communication to websites, you use HTTPS which rely on a vast network of certificate authorities. Any of these actors misbehaving leads to potential attacks. Because of that, the Certificate Transparency project was created to _potentially_ catch bad actors, that is if you check for your own domains regularly.

Using a consensus-based registry, you can prevent (better than detect) attacks in both of these scenarios. Let people register their identity or domain name, and associate a public key to it that can be used to encrypt communications with the identity/domain, as long as the number of dishonest actors remain under a threshold no attacks are possible.

The only (albeit not small) downside is that by taking middle men out of the picture, the naive approach prevents account recovery from happening. So to be practical, you need to find the right middle ground.

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