BitDNS and Generalizing Bitcoin

[tyler]

retarded means "slowed" which ironically is the case here

retard - cause to move more slowly or operate at a slower rate; "This drug will retard your heart rate"

meaning... using a bitcoin based dns will be slow to adopt

[kiba]

retard - cause to move more slowly or operate at a slower rate; "This drug will retard your heart rate"

meaning... using a bitcoin based dns will be slow to adopt

Not really. Since, 144 blocks were generated each day in the bitcoin network, this mean 7200 addresses that can be assigned a domain name. Plenty, if you asked me.

[RHorning]

I've been thinking about your scheme appamato and as we discussed, rejecting invalid blocks and only working on the longest chain is a critical part of the security of these schemes. Therefore all hashing clients need to have the logic to tell the good from the bad. Ths could be done by distributing the appropriate logic for each app as java bytecode or .NET stuff. All clients would therefore understand all apps.

There would have to be some incentive to support an app in this way. Some form of payment.... hmmm

ByteCoin

It is funny how people are thinking about the same issue at the same time.  I have been trying to think of some way that another "chain" using Bitcoin principles of hashing might be able to use Bitcoins as a transaction fee:

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2028.0

The issue here is that you would need some way for those "mining" new blocks into this sort of DNS data block chain (or any other kind of similar data protected by a hash chain with miners) to receive some sort of transaction fee for processing that chain.  In this case, the incentive for processing the DNS entries would be to receive these transactions fees.... which could be quite considerable depending on what people would be willing to pay for a domain name under this system.

I have considered perhaps an alternative, which would have the main Bitcoin miners of the main chain have as "optional" transactions to be processing in such a way that could let the miner itself keep these transaction fees.  My main objection to doing that is that it puts far too much processing into miners and makes a bottleneck that I think we would all rather not have.  Bitcoin miners ought to be for bitcoin transactions alone, but it is at least something to consider.

This thread I mention here goes into the technical details, but it is something that could help with this idea too.  I haven't completely "solved" the problem, but I have at least identified what issues need to be solved.

Besides, it would be nice if there were other ways for those interested in using Bitcoins to be able to earn them since the main mining of coins is now being locked up with with stronger computers and GPU miners of various kind including server farms.

The one advantage here of using a fee is to avoid a tragedy of the commons, where those who want to register a domain or transfer "ownership" of that domain would have to put up real money to do so.  The fees don't go to some central processing bureau or organization, but rather to those who are doing the real work, which is processing the actual domain registrations itself.

[Anonymous]

I find tieing in bitcoins to DNS retarded. There are already some other p2p DNS systems that need help lifting off the ground why make a new one.
http://dot-p2p.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://wiki.opennicproject.org/dotP2PTLD

Bitcoin would be more for buying and selling domains I think. Any profits involved could go to the EFF which already accepts bitcoin donations. In a sense this would tie dns and domain names to the health of the EFF.

   Id like to see the government try and seize domains from those guys ,can you imagine the shitstorm that would create 

[kiba]

How would domain name renewal work? 

[RHorning]

How would domain name renewal work? 

Presumably if the protocol requires a renewal transaction, the identity authentication system (likely a public/private hash key) would allow you to create a new "transaction" on the network submitting the necessary information along with a transaction fee.

[kiba]

Presumably if the protocol requires a renewal transaction, the identity authentication system (likely a public/private hash key) would allow you to create a new "transaction" on the network submitting the necessary information along with a transaction fee.

I see. Then the miners will set the fee for domain renewal.

[RHorning]

Presumably if the protocol requires a renewal transaction, the identity authentication system (likely a public/private hash key) would allow you to create a new "transaction" on the network submitting the necessary information along with a transaction fee.

I see. Then the miners will set the fee for domain renewal.

Exactly!  It would become a marketplace where those people willing to put resources into building this chain would set the fee they think is most appropriate.  I really don't see this happening without fees getting put in at some point.

This is also something where deflation would be dealt with through the marketplace as well, as there would be increased competition if transaction fees started to get a little high where somebody offering to take on perhaps slightly lower transaction fees would push their way into the block making competition.  So if 0.01 BTC becomes worth $100, there might even be many "miners" willing to charge perhaps only 0.001 BTC or an even smaller amount.

[ribuck]

I assumed you would have the domain name forever without further fee. After all, we don't pay an annual fee to keep our bitcoins working.

The fees could come from domain name transfers, and of course the generation of new domain names.

[kiba]

I assumed you would have the domain name forever without further fee. After all, we don't pay an annual fee to keep our bitcoins working.

The fees could come from domain name transfers, and of course the generation of new domain names.

If someone lost their wallet, their domain name stay with them forever, with no way to transfer it.

Eventually, you get a long string of really good domain name that can't be used forever.

[ribuck]

Eventually, you get a long string of really good domain name that can't be used forever.

It's the same as with bitcoins, it just makes the remaining names more valuable.

[kiba]

It's the same as with bitcoins, it just makes the remaining names more valuable.

if sex.bitcoin is lost for example, it can't be used forever. And there is only one sex.bitcoin in the whole universe.

It doesn't necessary make other domain names more valuable. What it does though is make certain resource useless.

[ribuck]

...if sex.bitcoin is lost ... It doesn't necessary make other domain names more valuable

The loss of sex.bitcoin would surely make sexy.bitcoin and xxx.bitcoin more valuable.

I don't argue from a matter of principle, just from a personal preference that I would prefer non-expiring but losable domain names, compared to ones that must be renewed regularly or lost to others.

[kiba]

The loss of sex.bitcoin would surely make sexy.bitcoin and xxx.bitcoin more valuable.

I concede that one.

I don't argue from a matter of principle, just from a personal preference that I would prefer non-expiring but losable domain names, compared to ones that must be renewed regularly or lost to others.

Then this is a matter of competition between various BitDNS system then.

[RHorning]

It's the same as with bitcoins, it just makes the remaining names more valuable.

if sex.bitcoin is lost for example, it can't be used forever. And there is only one sex.bitcoin in the whole universe.

It doesn't necessary make other domain names more valuable. What it does though is make certain resource useless.

In theory you could also put a "lease" on that domain so that after a certain period of time defined within the network protocol the lease would expire.  In this case, if somebody "lost" their wallet the domain could become available after the lease expires.  It wouldn't necessarily make the domain worthless either, as the IP address associated with the domain would still be valid, and the domain would still resolve even after the wallet was lost, but if there was an issue where the person owning the domain switched to another network (and a different IP address) it could be a bit of a problem.

None of these are intractable problems, and IMHO much of this makes domain addresses much more secure than is the case at the moment with domain addresses you get from GoDaddy, Verisign, or ICANN directly.  Social hacking and some other generally minor hacking by somebody with just some casual knowledge about computers is all that is really necessary at the moment to change most domain registrations or "steal" a domain.

[kiba]

None of these are intractable problems, and IMHO much of this makes domain addresses much more secure than is the case at the moment with domain addresses you get from GoDaddy, Verisign, or ICANN directly.  Social hacking and some other generally minor hacking by somebody with just some casual knowledge about computers is all that is really necessary at the moment to change most domain registrations or "steal" a domain.

Can you please explain what you mean by this?

[RHorning]

None of these are intractable problems, and IMHO much of this makes domain addresses much more secure than is the case at the moment with domain addresses you get from GoDaddy, Verisign, or ICANN directly.  Social hacking and some other generally minor hacking by somebody with just some casual knowledge about computers is all that is really necessary at the moment to change most domain registrations or "steal" a domain.

Can you please explain what you mean by this?

What do you need explained?

[kiba]

What do you need explained?

Why is it so easy? How is it done?

[RHorning]

What do you need explained?

Why is it so easy? How is it done?

It depends on the domain registrar and a few other factors.  Back when ICANN ran domain registrations directly, all you needed to do was to simply spoof the e-mail address of the person who made the registration and change the contact information... hoping that the reply from ICANN would get lost in the junk mail with spam and other garbage.  Once you switched the contact information, switching almost everything else was incredibly trivial and a piece of cake.

It is a bit harder now and the domain registrars do require a bit more identifying information, but nothing that a good private investigator would be unable to provide.  Really, the current domain registration is incredibly insecure and there are even "legal" means to "steal domains" that merely need a pretty competent attorney to cover your back if you want to do it through the judicial system.  That is how nissan.com was taken from a small business in southern California in spite of the fact that the last name of the guy really was "Nissan" running a used car business with the name "Nissan Motors" and registered the domain well before the perhaps more famous automobile company got the domain changed.

On top of that, the DNS system itself is very much open to attack as long as you can somehow get trusted as a "peer" by one of the main root servers.  There are various kinds of attacks upon DNS records themselves which can be done, some easier than others and some of them requiring better knowledge about computer networking than others, although there are some "kiddie scripts" and "hackerwarez" that you can get to do all of this is you really want to.  I'd strongly suggest staying away from those program mainly because they are trojan and virus sources if you try to just Google for them.  In other words a good way to get your system rooted and part of a bot net not under your control if that is your goal.  If you want to go the hacker route, learning about the protocol itself and sticking to discussion groups is a much better route to go.

None of this is new to somebody who is familiar with the DNS system, and it really is just a house of cards much flimsier than what anybody can possibly believe if you aren't familiar with how it was all set up in the first place.

My point is that using a simple sort of cryptographic storage for the registration of the information is vastly more secure in terms of making sure the information doesn't get tampered with or manipulated that the current system.  Even DNSSEC, the supposed "savior" of the DNS system to keep spoofing from happening (and largely unimplemented by most ISPs unfortunately even for that level of security) is only as good as the domain registrar's security.  Social hacking can still happen.

It is for this reason that I think a bitcoin-related system would work much better and be insanely simple to operate.  On top of that, there would be no gatekeeper in terms of who gets authority to decide if you get the registration.  You simply apply, throw in the fees for processing the application, and the domain registration gets put into the system.

In terms of the "leasing" option, the only advantage of doing that which I can see is to make sure that the domain itself remains in the "public domain" at some point.  Domain registration is a public service and unfortuantely there are people who have taken domain registrations as a sort of "land grab" where the earliest get the best stuff first.  By putting a leasing ability into the standard (and the "lease" is from all of mankind, not any individual), it forces those who grabbed the domains early on to do some "work" or at least pay up to maintain those leases.  Presumably if maintaining those domains is expensive, they'll simply let them expire rather than having to constantly renew the domains.  It also provides a source of revenue for those who are mining blocks as well so it also maintains the integrity of the database... in other words the chain of blocks being used to keep track of all of this information.

[bober182]

Or all domains expire yearly and will need to be regenerated, but if you send it to yourself before it ends you get to keep it. Like this we fix the issue of lost domains and allow dropping old names for free.