Bitcoin Forum

I know namecoins are only "meant" for registering domain names... but what if people start to use them like bitcoins? Or is that impossible since there is an unlimited supply of namecoins? iirc

It's very much possible, but at the same time it's not a bad thing.

Not for anybody but the early adopters and their current bitcoin wallet value I suppose.

bitcoin wallet value?
why does it help, or hurt you in namecoin, if you have a big, or small bitcoin wallet?

the fact that domain-names get cheaper and cheaper over time dont actually hurt late namecoin adopters,
the later you grab a name, the less NC you have to pay for registration (but maybe your favourite name is already taken by then).

i don't really see any reason, why namecoin should become a thread to the bitcoin blockchain.

currently, namecoins are more profitable to mine than bitcoins (according to the exchange-rates one can see on the forums),
its >300times harder to generate 1BTC, yet you only get <100NC for 1BTC,
CPU, or low-end GPU users should mine some namecoins, sell NC4BTC and make >100% average, instead of joining a bitcoin-pool and make way below 100%, although i've no idea about the current demand for namecoins, probably quite low, which makes it not worth it for big GPU clusters.
it's surely needs more adoption.

Well, its not, cose in current state namecoin project is not interesting.
After some headache with DNS user opens *.bit - and what it see ? That adress points at some IP where server hosted. Not on some fake ip generated from namecoin addres, but  exactly the same addres as in case of normal DNS resolving. What for? For fancy "bit" on the end ?

From other point:
After huge headache, web service owner establish *.bit. Now it should to convience user to use some special DNS settings. (how ?) What he gets ? Fancy "bit" on end of his address.

Thats maybe only my opinion, that i am made from reading info on that project.

I am will be glad to hear where mistake is in it

.bit might not be as popular an alternative TLD as .sex and some of the others supported by altDNS projects the adult site industry convinced large numbers of adult site surfers to adopt but maybe its popularity could be increased by buying .but at the varous other altDNS systems so it could be reachable using their nameservers too?

(Do they even still have lots of users after all these years? I don't know...)

-MarkM-

P.S. is bitcoin a possible threat to the namecoin blockchain?

So what we have ? Another altDNS project ?

Not really, no, since the altnet or alternet or outernet or whatever projects never limited themselves to a single top level domain, on the contrary the product they offered was any top level domain of your own that you want except those already assigned by the Assigned Names Authority or whoever it is that decides when all of a sudden .doctor or .professional or .sex or .porn subdomains will be put up for sale by a "registrar". In the alternet systems you basically chose what new top level domain you wanted to be registrar of.

-MarkM- (markm@markm.markm on some such net someday maybe? ;))

(I didn't like those projects as they refused to honour the .fnord domain I'd already set up my own root-servers for...)

that's not going to work, even a few competitors can lower this price down to fair levels.

What's the diff on the namecoin chain right now?

1264.49395237

i think you totally missed the point of namecoin.
it's not to get a fancy "bit" on the end (btw, .bit is only the first used TLD, nothing stops us from using different/more TLDs),
it's all about control.

like bitcoin gives people control over their money, namecoin gives people control over their domain-names.
no government, or central authority can shut down your domain for whatever reason.

The Origin of Money and Its Value (http://mises.org/daily/1333)

If Bitcoin is a good currency, then Namecoin should evolve into a currency too, according to the Austrian School.

Namecoins are destroyed in the process of domain registration. So, i` am have doubts, that they can serve as money.
And thanks for "its about control" pointing.

For people who wants to know where namecoin came from and what problem does it try to solve: http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/technological-jailbreak-bitcoin-to-namecoin

Question: what would happen if Tycho temporarily turned the entirety of Deepbit to the Namecoin blockchain (for 20 minutes, say) and produced a ridiculous number of Namecoins at the 1000x easier difficulty level? 20 minutes without a block is not outside the range of ordinary probability (and so would not be noticed) and he'd only be out maybe 20 BTC for those on Pay-Per-Share, which he could easily cover with his current pool fees. Is the work completed for Namecoin compatible with current Bitcoin mining software?

Why would that be a problem?  They are redeemed for something valuable in the process of domain registration.  But before registration, they can be stored and traded indefinitely.  Nobody is forced to redeem them, and some people might end up just trading them without ever purchasing a domain name.  Think of them as vouchers or certificates, which certainly can serve as money.

Yes, cos they are can be used for something useful (not like BTC - it`s  fiat). They are not competitors maybe, but they are a niche product.

Imagine a world where lots of people start their own Xcoin block chains, where X = a word designating the usage of coins generated (for example, Namecoin). Purchasing coins in different chains would be like having coins redeemable in multiple ways, such as being able to register a domain, since each chain would have innovative technological features that give them value. The original Bitcoin has great features in itself and has a level of trust that no other block chain will ever achieve. So I think that the original Bitcoin will be valuable regardless of competition since it has this high level of trust. But nothing is stopping anyone from creating a new type of coin with additional features in a new block chain. Coins with useful features will succeed and have value, while less useful coins will garner less interest. New types of coins and original coins can both be valuable.

There could be a problem.  The issue is that difficulty would go up, but once difficulty goes up too much, it never comes back down.  Because it's not worth it to mine, and difficulty only resets after ~2000 blocks.

It might be better if the difficulty were to adjust every N days or M blocks whichever comes first, but that's not the case now (with BTC or namecoin).

That's a pretty good idea.

I haven't think about that problem before.
A supercomputer could slow the bitcoin chain by mining a lot one week and then stop doing it.
Your solution should work though.
Are developers aware of this?

It's countered by people's greed and transaction fees.

Basically, imagine a pool got a large number of miners intent on doing something like this, so they say they are going to remove their pool from the network for a week so that less blocks are created.

There are three problems with this:
1) The incentive of remaining miners increases, meaning they will bring more hashing power to the network if they have any on reserve.
2) The incentive of those transferring Bitcoin to add transaction fees increases, because they will get confirmations quicker.
3) The incentive of those participating in the boycott to "cheat" by connecting to an existing pool still on the network increases because they will make coins both before and after the difficulty reassessment whereas the miners sitting out will only make coins afterwards.

I didn't mean a pool. Just a non profit attacker. Maybe a bitcoin competitor? I don't know, paypal, facebook, the fed, the ecb...They would just set the difficulty too high.
The time limit for readjusting makes a lot of sense to me.

This is a very good idea and worth some more discussion. I don't see a downside icbw ... belt and braces approach.

For namecoins there is as upper limit to the increase and a lower limit to the decrease of difficulty adjustments. The upper is 4x and the lower us divided by 4. So you can't increase difficulty any faster that 4 times per 2016 blocks and the difficulty can't decrease more than 4 times per 2016 blocks.

Difficulty can increase 4x at most per 2016 blocks. This is in the code.

Who says they're meant only for registering domain names? There's even a poker site to gamble them. Namecoin is everything Bitcoin is, but with additional features. Even if those features never take off it's still at least equal to Bitcoin.

Just to stop all the FUD spreading. Namecoins are not unlimited supply, in fact they are in MORE limited supply than bitcoins.

They have the same 21 million coin issuance algorithm AND some coins are spent out of existence (63,000) in the early days to prevent domain name squatting and hoarding by early adopters.



tl;dr  Namecoins are more scarce than bitcoins.

Indeed.


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It would be great if there were a pledge/bounty just for the sharing work between chains only and not for the whole namecoin project. That feature will be useful not only for namecoin but for any alternative chain.

Also, is there a market to trade namecoins for bitcoins?
Is there a GUI client that allows you to manage your bitcoins and your namecoins altogether?

Yes there is a market, bit still not GUI interface in final stage...

Actually merged mining is already available on the testnets, no bounty needed.

See here (http://dot-bit.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=217&start=10#p1242) and here (https://github.com/vinced/namecoin/blob/mergedmine/doc/README_merged-mining.md).

NMC/BTC exchange: https://exchange.bitparking.com/main

You can also trade NMC for BTC and USD on BTCex but I'd be very careful cause they don't have a good reputation.

Whats wrong with that..