BitDNS and Generalizing Bitcoin

[ribuck]

The reason for halving bitcoins over time does not really exist for bitdnscoins.

Good. Something everyone completely agrees on!

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[RHorning]

Exactly.  My points exactly.  The reason for halving bitcoins over time does not really exist for bitdnscoins.

Wondering aloud even more, what need do we have for a fractional bitdnscoin?  I could imagine having a little bit of "change" but is there going to be any need for more than about three or four decimal places?

This is essentially the same issue just thought through from another perspective.  Right now I think it is about 100 million "bitcoins" to the smallest unit as defined in the Bitcoin protocol.   We really don't need that many decimal places even for trade purposes.  I still like the uint64 structure used in the Bitcoin protocol, but with a mild sort of inflation happening to the currency (relative to Bitcions) I don't see any major deflationary pressure pushing the value down like I see for Bitcoins.  Again, I am not an economist and this is going to take some hard economic theory and guessing which way even this currency might go in that perspective.  The only other "currency" to make a real comparison about here is the coins on the test network, and the main thing there is that those coins aren't being traded... which makes even that a bad example.

I don't know of any other currency that uses this sort of allocation system even remotely.  Of course that is why this is so groundbreaking.

[kiba]

Good. Something everyone completely agrees on!

So the formula for creating problems and adjusting difficulty will be the same?(Forgive my ignorance)

[RHorning]

I also had an idea last night of how/where to tie this into the existing DNS.

I know this discussion is going like nuts here.  I think this is a very good idea and should be fleshed out much more.  If you have some experience or knowledge about local domain name servers, your expertise here would be invaluable.  I know just enough to get myself into trouble on that matter and to debate the policy questions, not enough to really dig into the guts of them.  I've operated a domain server for a brief period of time and have experimented with OpenNIC myself.

[bencoder]

Anyway, I have registered domainchain.org, in case people like it.

Care to stick a wiki up on there?

[RHorning]

Good. Something everyone completely agrees on!

So the formula for creating problems and adjusting difficulty will be the same?(Forgive my ignorance)

I don't see any reason why we should try something different.  If it breaks for us or for Bitcoins, one or both projects should get the issue fixed with an alternative solution.  There certainly are strong reasons to keep this system, as Satoshi's white paper points out in pretty good detail too.

[Anonymous]

The only real problem I see is that it sets up a situation where this kind of currency could supplant the main Bitcoin for intrinsic value.  Not overnight, but gradually.

Well people couldnt say domaincoins werent backed by anything.  

I like the idea of a constant block rate.

[Hal]

On the question of how many domain names to create per day:

http://www.domaintools.com/internet-statistics/

There are about 100 million active domain names, and 400 million expired ones. About 300,000 changes occur per day, divided equally between creation, expiration, and transfers.

If we create only 50 domains per block, 6 blocks per hour, that is 7200 domain names per day. At that rate it would take like 50 years to create 100 million domains. So it seems necessary to make names faster.

[kiba]

If we create only 50 domains per block, 6 blocks per hour, that is 7200 domain names per day. At that rate it would take like 50 years to create 100 million domains. So it seems necessary to make names faster.

100 domains per block is 25 years.

150 domains per block is 18.5 years.

200 domains per block is 12.5 years.

Personally, I don't feel like I am a rush to do a lot of domain registration fast. 15 years is good enough for me. We don't need to register tons of domain within a few short years, since not everybody will be willing to switch from central to decentralized.

Also, the population of humanity ain't likely to grow forever... So we can expect that growth at some taper off at some point in the future.

However, this generation rate have the potential to spark a long debate..so we need a method that let us decide quickly somehow.

[RHorning]

On the question of how many domain names to create per day:

http://www.domaintools.com/internet-statistics/

There are about 100 million active domain names, and 400 million expired ones. About 300,000 changes occur per day, divided equally between creation, expiration, and transfers.

If we create only 50 domains per block, 6 blocks per hour, that is 7200 domain names per day. At that rate it would take like 50 years to create 100 million domains. So it seems necessary to make names faster.

The question as to how many domains to include in a block ought to be something dependent upon the miner alone.  This certainly is a useful point to bring up and likely an early "reference implementation" limit will be 50 domains per block merely to increase scarcity.  Still, that up to 300k changes might happen eventually with this system, perhaps more considering that the cost is likely going to be considerably less than the current domain registration system.

----

I have a few other thoughts about this now that we are getting to something a little more concrete in terms of the software architecture.  Would it be reasonable to expect the cost of a domain registration to be 1 DCC (Domain Coin Currency)... at least as the "default" cost expected by the miner to "register" a domain?  I think that would establish at least an initial value to the currency and help to self-regulate those who want to jump in early and grab up a whole bunch of domains early on.  I might even go so far as to say 2 DCC for registration and 1 DCC for information changes.  If you run your own miner, you can "tweak" this if you want to be more competitive, but this is the way that you can spend the currency and what it is based upon and a fair benchmark.

In terms of a social effect that may be negative (depending on your viewpoint) some of the country code TLDs represent a substantial source of income for some of countries involved.  One in particular, the country of Tuvalu, has only a little over 12,000 citizens and is the smallest member-nation of the United Nations in terms of population and pretty close to that in terms of land area.  Only the Vatican has a smaller population in terms of a sovereign state.  Its current TLD (*.tv) is currently run by a company in California but a significant portion of the revenue from that domain goes to the country's government under contract.

On the topic of small countries and their "country codes", it seems like if we could get this software rather stable, we might even want to offer this "service" to some of these smaller countries for their domain registrations, where I'm pretty sure that this would be cheaper than whatever contract they currently have with their current service provider.  That goes under "marketing", but something else to think about.  I certainly think that it would be awesome if we could get a whole country like Tonga to switch to Bitcoins as their national currency, and is much more likely to happen than the major western countries like America or the EU.  Just dreaming there.

[chaord]

I would like to ask for some clarification on exactly what we are proposing here.  From reading this (lengthy) thread, I gather that we are proposing:

• A decentralized domain registrar that maps a friendly human readable name (ie: chaord.btc) to an ip address
• A parallel network bitcoin which will have it's own token currency (represent addresses).  Rather than mining bitcoins, you mine top-level address rights.  Is this correct?

Am I understanding all this correctly? If so, it seems as if in this brave new digital world, bitcoins (BTC) represent a commodity like gold, and domaincoins (DCC) represent real estate.

Lastly, I'm sure this has been discussed, but is there any way that the two system can be combined?  Can the domaincoin system accomplish all things bitcoins can, in addition to domain registration, or no?  IMO the best of both worlds would be if, somehow (not sure how), the domain coin system could use bitcoins as its underlying backing (or vice versa).

Honestly, I feel that something like DomainCoins is the "missing link" that this community is searching for.  Because the data behind DomainCoins actually represents something (an IP address mapping), I think this could be the use-value that something like bitcoin needs to propel it to success!

[RHorning]

Honestly, I feel that something like DomainCoins is the "missing link" that this community is searching for.  Because the data behind DomainCoins actually represents something (an IP address mapping), I think this could be the use-value that something like bitcoin needs to propel it to success!

I think you got the ideas down.  The role that the "DomainCoins" (DCC) are playing here is to give a financial incentive to "miners" who are creating a cryptographically secure domain registration database.  It is also a work-around due to the fact that we can't seem to figure out a way to accomplish the goals of getting Bitcoins directly to the miners, so instead we are going to be using an alternative currency which can be traded for mining.  To me, the only reason for putting any sort of coin generation into the blocks is simply to "prime the pump" to get some DCC put into circulation.  Hopefully what will normally happen is that DCC will be exchanged for Bitcoins in both directions:  Some folks will "buy" some DCC with Bitcoins (or LR Dollars or whatever) so they can pay for domain registrations and the miners will "redeem" the DCC for Bitcoins as earnings.

Trade between DCC and BTC will be almost insanely easy by design and the exchange mechanisms may even be put right into the GUI interface.  I could even see custom clients that might even combine transactions for both "currencies".

This same system could be used in a number of other similar situations, such as an idea I floated about creating a Bitcoin-based Stock Exchange.  If such a stock exchange is set up, a similar parallel currency may have to be implemented to also pay for mining the transaction blocks.  I can see many other kinds of "databases" set up which would require some sort of cryptographic time-stamping.  Something I played with a while back that could be useful here would be "timestamping" police evidence (especially digital evidence such as a dashboard camera video feed from a police vehicle) in a chain of custody system.  An engineering company could set up a custom "bitcoin" system to keep track of engineering documents to be used as a defense against a patent lawsuit to both show date of creation and prove that the document file hasn't been tampered with since its inclusion into the database.  Seriously, this system is something that has a whole bunch of possibilities that I can't even start to describe the kinds of things that would be useful and we are just scratching the surface.

[kiba]

Wait, I am a bit confused. Alternative currency for DomainChain?

Oh, these represent addresses?

[Hal]

Actually I am concerned that transactions between BTC and DCC may not be simple. Because both currencies tend to be anonymous, it is hard to make the two transfers in a coordinated way. If Anne wants to sell Beth 1 DCC (allowing 1 domain to be created) for a certain number of Bitcoins, then Beth must send Anne the Bitcoins via the Bitcoin block chain, while Anne sends Beth the DCC on the DomainChain. If the two are anonymous to each other, it seems there must be a trusted third party like a reputable exchange. It seems hard to do peer to peer.

[kiba]

Actually I am concerned that transactions between BTC and DCC may not be simple. Because both currencies tend to be anonymous, it is hard to make the two transfers in a coordinated way. If Anne wants to sell Beth 1 DCC (allowing 1 domain to be created) for a certain number of Bitcoins, then Beth must send Anne the Bitcoins via the Bitcoin block chain, while Anne sends Beth the DCC on the DomainChain. If the two are anonymous to each other, it seems there must be a trusted third party like a reputable exchange. It seems hard to do peer to peer.

Doesn't seem hard to me. It's a normal trade to me.

[Anonymous]

Wait, I am a bit confused. Alternative currency for DomainChain?

Oh, these represent addresses?

A coin would represent a domain. I think that is the proposal.

Could ip addresses themselves be managed by this system?  The ipchain would prevent anyone having duplicate addresses. This removes central control of ip address allocation and the ability to track individual machines. Ipv6 has a privacy issue doesn't it?   They stuffed ipv4 because address allocation became a scarce resource by bad management.


Does .dnc = domain name coins?

We could co-opt the democratic national convention lmao.

[Anonymous]

Actually I am concerned that transactions between BTC and DCC may not be simple. Because both currencies tend to be anonymous, it is hard to make the two transfers in a coordinated way. If Anne wants to sell Beth 1 DCC (allowing 1 domain to be created) for a certain number of Bitcoins, then Beth must send Anne the Bitcoins via the Bitcoin block chain, while Anne sends Beth the DCC on the DomainChain. If the two are anonymous to each other, it seems there must be a trusted third party like a reputable exchange. It seems hard to do peer to peer.

Doesn't seem hard to me. It's a normal trade to me.

So you need two clients running?

edit:never mind...

[RHorning]

If the two are anonymous to each other, it seems there must be a trusted third party like a reputable exchange. It seems hard to do peer to peer.

Doing peer to peer currency exchanges is beyond the scope of this project.  If there is going to be some sort of peer to peer currency exchange (I think it might be possible, especially for non-reversible currencies like Bitcoins and Liberty Reserve Dollars), it should be in a completely different project.  All that I'm suggesting is that some sort of API be set up so one or more "trusted exchanges" can be selected to facilitate the "purchase" or exchange of these "coins" for some other currency.  I just don't see too many people going through the hassle of trying to obtain these "domain coins" by selling other services in these coins, even though that would in theory be possible.

If we could dump this idea of another currency, I'd be all for it.  I just don't see how to do that though.

On the positive side, the fancy API and GUI exchange methods won't be strictly needed at all at least initially.  We could even use essentially the existing bitcoin software where all we would do is to simply "tweak" the low level features so we would be including the domain information into the blocks.  If we did that as a quick bootstrap of the network, websites like Mt. Gox could use the same JSON API system for Bitcoin on this system as well, particularly as the exchanges wouldn't have to play with the domain information but rather just the coin trading mechanisms.  Exchanges would want to get into the act as there certainly are arbitrage opportunities between the DCC and BTC currencies.

Our hard part is to define the "rules" of what domain information needs to be present, and when a block can be rejected because of mal-formed domain data.  That is where I think it would be wrong to put this more directly into the Bitcoin block chain, as rejecting Bitcoin blocks because of a malformed domain record seems to be harmful to Bitcoins.

[RHorning]

Wait, I am a bit confused. Alternative currency for DomainChain?

Oh, these represent addresses?

A coin would represent a domain. I think that is the proposal.

A coin would represent the work or effort to administer the database.  That is the "reward" a miner gets for processing the domain records.  That it might cost 1 DCC to enter a record into the database is just the "fee" to play the game, where you are buying the effort from previous record keeping efforts.

[Anonymous]

Wait, I am a bit confused. Alternative currency for DomainChain?

Oh, these represent addresses?

A coin would represent a domain. I think that is the proposal.

A coin would represent the work or effort to administer the database.  That is the "reward" a miner gets for processing the domain records.  That it might cost 1 DCC to enter a record into the database is just the "fee" to play the game, where you are buying the effort from previous record keeping efforts.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Anything is better than buying another domain from godaddy .