So I'm aware that Gregory Maxwell posted some proposals for improving Namecoin a while back: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/namecoin_that_sucks_less

Unfortunately the proposals are kind of vague (I assume he was writing them in a hurry and not for a general audience).  I'm hoping Gregory is willing to comment on some of them, as the Namecoin dev community has shown some interest in implementing them.

So, here are a few questions.  (I might follow up with more.)

1. For the encryption of values, can you explain how exactly the network verifies that a hash and encrypted value are being stored rather than an unhashed name and unencrypted value?  I don't really understand the P2SH^2 thing, possibly due to my lack of experience with Bitcoin internals.

2. How would hashing names prevent someone from doing a dictionary/bruteforce/rainbow table attack to find most of the names?  Presumably there are dictionaries out there with most of the ICANN domains, which might be an effective starting point.  Is the goal just to give the miners and full node operators some level of plausible deniability i.e. "we choose not to do this attack" rather than actually make the attack very difficult?

3. The provided link on a committed UTXO set doesn't really provide much context, and I don't have enough knowledge to infer the context.  Is the lite resolver an SPV client?  I can't tell from the provided description.  What actually would get done (including crypto) by the full client to get this functionality working?  Is this functionality also proposed for the Bitcoin client?

Thanks!

There is some interest in the Namecoin community in using Armory's cold storage for protecting critical Namecoin names.  I noticed that there are a few references to Namecoin in the Armory source code (I guess Alan wrote parts of Armory with non-Bitcoin chains in mind), so I'm curious how much work would be involved in adding Namecoin support to Armory.  The three stages I can think of would be: (1) send and receive non-name transactions on the Namecoin network, including with offline wallets; (2) handle name operations, including with offline wallets; and (3) generate multiple renew operations for the same name from an offline wallet (maybe with a LOCKTIME), so that e.g. a name could be renewed for 10 years and have the signed transactions stored on an online wallet for queued release to the network.

For each of those 3 stages, is it possible to roughly estimate how much work would be involved in adding this?  I'm aware that the Armory devs have much higher priorities, so I wouldn't expect them to work on this themselves, but if (hypothetically) someone else volunteered to attempt it, would an Armory dev be willing to assist logistically and/or answer questions when necessary?  Would the code be merged by the Armory devs if it were written and tested?

Thanks.

Here's a chatlog from the #namecoin channel... couldn't find anything about this on the forums already, sorry if I missed something:

[2013-08-15 10:19:28] <Jeremy_Rand> okay, so the last 6 blocks have had no transactions in them... anyone know why that might be happening?
[2013-08-15 10:20:11] <c0rw1n> no idea, maybe try to message DrHaribo, he should be on freenode and operates Bitminter
[2013-08-15 10:20:29] <shader> are there no transactions waiting?
[2013-08-15 10:21:11] <Jeremy_Rand> it actually seems to be fairly common... looking at the explorer, it's common for there to be 6 or so blocks with nothing, and then like 20-30 transactions in the next block
[2013-08-15 10:21:27] <Jeremy_Rand> I'm pretty sure that's statistically not by random chance
[2013-08-15 10:21:29] <shader> so, some miners aren't doing anything?
[2013-08-15 10:21:47] <Jeremy_Rand> that's what it looks like to me
[2013-08-15 10:21:51] <Jeremy_Rand> but I'm not an expert
[2013-08-15 10:22:38] <c0rw1n> well i know i'm mining namecoin, but i have no idea what my pool operator's doing
[2013-08-15 10:22:51] <Jeremy_Rand> ok, my transaction just got into a block about 10 seconds ago
[2013-08-15 10:22:57] <Jeremy_Rand> even though it was sent an hour ago
[2013-08-15 10:23:11] <Jeremy_Rand> and there were 158 tx's in this new block
[2013-08-15 10:23:17] <Jeremy_Rand> so a lot of people were waiting
[2013-08-15 10:23:32] <shader> hmm
[2013-08-15 10:23:36] <shader> that doesn't sound good
[2013-08-15 10:23:47] <Jeremy_Rand> agreed
[2013-08-15 10:24:00] <shader> do you think it's possible to track down which miners were responsible for the last few blocks?
[2013-08-15 10:24:14] <Jeremy_Rand> no idea
[2013-08-15 10:25:11] <Jeremy_Rand> I can see their 50NMC tx's to themselves... so we could probably track down the miners via blockchain analysis that way
[2013-08-15 10:25:15] <Jeremy_Rand> but that sounds like a lot of work
[2013-08-15 10:26:46] <shader> that one miner seems to get a ton of the blocks, and doesn't do any transactions...
[2013-08-15 10:26:55] <shader> N4BbUHfarRXx8GBNj9DHAqthhuvxsKpnZE
[2013-08-15 10:27:04] <c0rw1n> wohoha okay, i wanted to see if my pool had minted that 158 tx block, and nope  : we're at 100M PoW and 99.25% CDF, mining for 7 hours
[2013-08-15 10:27:24] <shader> lol
[2013-08-15 10:31:55] |<-- knotwork has left freenode (Read error: Connection timed out)
[2013-08-15 10:32:25] -->| knotwork (~markm@unaffiliated/knotwork) has joined #namecoin
[2013-08-15 10:47:51] -->| SwiftDK (redacted) has joined #namecoin
[2013-08-15 10:53:16] <Jeremy_Rand> of the last 15 blocks, only 3 have any transactions
[2013-08-15 10:54:25] |<-- X-Rob has left freenode (Read error: Connection reset by peer)
[2013-08-15 10:54:35] -->| X-Rob (~Rob7@unaffiliated/x-rob) has joined #namecoin
[2013-08-15 10:55:30] -->| domob (redacted) has joined #namecoin
[2013-08-15 10:55:50] <Jeremy_Rand> and all 12 of the empty blocks are by the same miner
[2013-08-15 10:56:01] <Jeremy_Rand> I believe that would make this a 51% attack?
[2013-08-15 10:58:43] <Jeremy_Rand> is there any way to track down the miner's identity from his payment address?  I'm wondering if it's a pool or a freelancer
[2013-08-15 10:59:14] <Jeremy_Rand> whoever it is probably has the ability to reverse transactions / steal names if I understand the implications of a 51% attack
[2013-08-15 11:05:51] <c0rw1n> ah but
[2013-08-15 11:06:00] <c0rw1n> only the current transactions
[2013-08-15 11:06:17] <c0rw1n> if he wants to screw old transactions, he has to rehash each of the blocks
[2013-08-15 11:06:30] <c0rw1n> AND keep up
[2013-08-15 11:06:44] <Jeremy_Rand> he has 80% of the hashpower, that sounds quite doable for names that were registered recently
[2013-08-15 11:06:57] <c0rw1n> he has waitwut ?
[2013-08-15 11:07:18] <Jeremy_Rand> 12 of the last 15 blocks have their mining payout to the same Namecoin address, i.e. the same miner
[2013-08-15 11:08:53] <Jeremy_Rand> I think this is a Bad Thing (TM)
[2013-08-15 11:09:28] <c0rw1n> i hope it's a bug in a pool and will get fixed soon
[2013-08-15 11:09:29] <c0rw1n> oh yes it is
[2013-08-15 11:10:01] <c0rw1n> namecoin is a solution to so many problems
[2013-08-15 11:10:46] <Jeremy_Rand> I wonder how long this attack has been going on... anyone want to look through the block explorer and see how long he's had this much of the hashpower?
[2013-08-15 11:12:33] |<-- c0rw1n has left freenode (Remote host closed the connection)
[2013-08-15 11:15:32] <mhanne> received 6609 payouts since 12/06/13 02:26:56 (didn't check if all are generations but the vast majority seems to be 50nmc exactly)
[2013-08-15 11:16:15] |<-- domob has left freenode (Ping timeout: 276 seconds)
[2013-08-15 11:18:14] -->| domob (redacted) has joined #namecoin
[2013-08-15 11:19:19] <shader> makes you wonder what they'd want to do it for... I mean, it's not really a very logical attack
[2013-08-15 11:19:45] <shader> most likely they set up merged mining incorrectly or something
[2013-08-15 11:19:48] <Jeremy_Rand> crap, so over the past 9 weeks he's averaged 71% of the hashpower
[2013-08-15 11:19:59] <shader> ...
[2013-08-15 11:20:30] <shader> and the difficulty isn't low either, so they must be one of the mining pools
[2013-08-15 11:21:06] <Jeremy_Rand> if it's a pool, then one of the pool's users should be able to trace his 50NMC generation to their payout, right?
[2013-08-15 11:22:00] <shader> true
[2013-08-15 11:22:17] <shader> are there any tools for tracing transactions?

Sorry if this is a noob post... I'm not really sure what to search for.

I'd like to accept online donations in non-Bitcoin payment systems (so that people without Bitcoins can donate), but I'd like the donations to automatically show up as Bitcoins sent to my BTC address.  CoinPal offered an API for this (so that people could donate in PayPal and it would automatically be paid to a BTC address), but seeing as CoinPal is no more, I'm wondering if there are any services like this left.  I don't really care whether the payment methods are reversible or irreversible (I assume irreversible is more doable due to fraud); just something that's more convenient than Bitcoin for people who've never used Bitcoin and don't want to.  I only care about donations, not payment for goods/services, so I assume that simplifies the system.

Again, sorry if this question is stupid; I have no clue what search terms I would enter, so I wasn't able to search.

Thanks!