Supply Bitcoin addresses in DNS records

[MegaBrutal]

Hello,

I have an idea. I'm not sure if it's already discussed, sorry if it's redundant. I'd post it in the appropriate section, but I can't, because I'm still a newbie. If an admin finds this thread worthy, please move it to the appropriate section.


Proposal:

Store Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency addresses in DNS records.

• You wouldn't need to copy/paste Bitcoin addresses, you could just easily memorize a name.
• The DNS system is already established for the purpose of assigning names to addresses.
• Some people bring up the e-mail system for an analogy to Bitcoin addresses. Take this analogy further: like MX records assign receiving mailservers to domain names, Bitcoin address records would assign Bitcoin addresses to them.
• You could also propagate Bitcoin addresses in Namecoin chains for .bit domains, if you like.

Example:

Somename has a blog at somename.tld, and he wants to receive Bitcoins on this domain name. He also has a Litecoin address, just in case.

Code:

; Syntax is inspired by the SPF record syntax, but the actual syntax is really open to discussion.
somename.tld        IN        TXT        "v=Bitcoin addr=18nAftZTnH4LjY9fPPow1aF5tGD1JiF7ZH"
somename.tld        IN        TXT        "v=Litecoin addr=LV9MiA3iPVUm8qRFYbLkARuoYwvmHwhWaC"

Then, User wants to send Bitcoins to Somename. He just opens his Bitcoin client and types "somename.tld" as recipient, instead of copy-pasting lenghty string. His Bitcoin client would look up the appropriate TXT record and obtain Somename's Bitcoin address.


Possible problems/vulnerabilities:

• The DNS has known vulnerabilities, such as cache poisoning, domain hijacking, etc.. To minimize risks, Bitcoin address records could be protected by DNSSEC or could be signed by other methods.
• Since the client doesn't get the Bitcoin address from the user directly, the Bitcoin client couldn't check the typed address if its a Bitcoin or other kind of address. For example, if the user starts his Litecoin client instead of his Bitcoin client by mistake, he would possibly send Litecoins instead of Bitcoins, because the Litecoin client would also accept the domain name, since it also has a Litecoin address record.

Tell me your opinions!


MegaBrutal

[1715002916]

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[1715002916]

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[1715002916]

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[hamdi]

we totally need this.

[Stephen Gornick]

Tell me your opinions!

This really only works for donations and where there is no need to know who the sender is.

Related:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3779.0
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=31716.0

[FreeMoney]

Tell me your opinions!

This really only works for donations and where there is no need to know who the sender is.

Related:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3779.0
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=31716.0

This is my first thought, but then, what about a plugin or something that when you send the bitcoin you also sign and email a message to the domain "I just sent you those coins from address 1blahblahblah". Doesn't work from web wallets, at least until they add that functionality, there might be stickiness there, but the wallet did just sign a tx, they could sign and send a message if they were willing, no?

glasses of wine = 4

so respond accordingly.

[Stephen Gornick]

This is my first thought, but then, what about a plugin or something that when you send the bitcoin you also sign and email a message to the domain "I just sent you those coins from address 1blahblahblah". Doesn't work from web wallets, at least until they add that functionality, there might be stickiness there, but the wallet did just sign a tx, they could sign and send a message if they were willing, no?

Well, the right way of knowing who sent you bitcoins it to provide a unique Bitcoin address for each payment. 

You could use the "sign message" to prove the address is one from your wallet, but that is out of band, and does not work when the payment is from an EWallet.

[clay584]

Hello all,

Been lurking for a while, but this peaked my interest, so I figured I would chime in.  Let me know what you all think about this.

The two issues I find with linking DNS into bitcoin addresses is that you lose a certain level of anonymity and DNS is something that governments can and will shut down.  Here is my proposed solution.

1)  Bitcoin already uses it's own P2P network to distribute the transaction log, therefore why not utilize that same mechanism to host a forward and reverse DNS zone file to keep track of name --> bitcoin address and bitcoin address --> name.  Everyone would synchronize like they do the transaction log and be able to resolve names to addresses and vice versa.  You still achieve anonymity and the zone files cannot be removed by governments or other entities.

2)  Users would be able to create their own unique name from the bitcoin client to correspond to their address.  Again, using the same mechanism that bitcoin already utilizes to track what wallet owns what bitcoins could be used to track what wallet owns what name.  For instance, I create the name johndoe, that name is now mine forever because it it linked to my bitcoin address.

3)  To overcome namespace exhaustion due to lost wallets (similar to bitcoin depreciation), bitcoin developers could code only a few top level domains at a time, and when those reach a level of exhaustion, then more could be created.  For instance, you could create the tld .bitcoin first and then as that reaches exhaustion, create .bitcoin2, etc. etc.

From a technical/cryptography perspective I do not know if this is achievable, but that's why I am throwing it out on the forum.