Does Namecoin solve the backing problem?

[BeeCee1]

So what about using namecoin blockchain to record land/property title deed ownership?

The recent rush to centralise property/land ownership records in databases and obsolete land deed titles makes me nervous. (It's like pulling teeth if you ask the lawyer to see the actual title these days)

Not to mention avoiding all the shennigans that went during the mortgage debt boom, CDO's etc.

I doubt you'd ever see a government agency using it to record legal records.  You might be able to use it for contracts though.  You could encode the contract conditions right in the message. (I know there is a thread about contracts going on now for regular bitcoin but I think it requires you to specify the contract out-of-band).

[bitlotto]

The following will hash a file to a bitcoin address. Any BTC sent to it will be lost forever but it does prove the file has existed at least since a set point as it's permanently stored in the blockchain.

From grondilu:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
# 
# Timestamping program
# Returns a valid bitcoin address made from stdin
# To timestamp, just send tiny BTC to this address
#
# Requires bc, openssl, xxd
#

base58=({1..9} {A..H} {J..N} {P..Z} {a..k} {m..z})

EncodeBase58() {
    # 58 =0x3A
    bc <<<"ibase=16; n=${1^^}; while(n>0) { n%3A ; n/=3A }" |
    tac |
    while read n
    do echo -n ${base58[n]}
    done
}

checksum() {
    xxd -p -r <<<"$1" |
    openssl dgst -sha256 -binary |
    openssl dgst -sha256 -hex |
    cut -d\  -f2 |
    sed -r "s/^((..){4}).*/\1/"
}

Hash160() {
    openssl dgst -sha256 -binary |
    openssl dgst -rmd160 -hex |
    cut -d\  -f2
}

Hash160ToAddress() {
    printf %34s "$(EncodeBase58 "00$1$(checksum "00$1")")" |
    sed "s/ /1/g"
}

Hash160ToAddress $(Hash160)

[sunyag]

Interesting indeed. As far as just the domains go, is there any reason that Namecoin could not serve as a wholly alternate domain name system...and not just limited to .bit? If so, perhaps one could make a 'market cap' valuation argument, which would further support the 'backing' notion.

Yes, namecoin is essentially a re-invention of RealNames , but decentralized and using bitcoin ideas:

In effect, to users of Internet Explorer, RealNames became a domain registry which was capable of registering names that worked without needing to belong to a top level domain such as ".com" or ".net". RealNames and its backers expected this to be a lucrative source of income, and it raised more than $130m of funding for its venture.

So are you talking about generic terms (keywords) or domains with extensions?

If 'keywords', I can understand how this (RealName analogy) would be very compelling for both Namecoin and those vendors who acquired the keyword (which would route to their website) but would that create a compelling utility for the end user...as opposed to say googling the keyword, (which would return results much richer)?

Say for example a Firefox app stepped in to handle this (where RealNames failed by being dependent on Microsoft), how would this be presented to the end user? Ostensibly a Namecoin-DNS 'lookup', correct? Other ideas?

I suppose that adoption along these lines would be a function of the vendor's, and their customers, "motivation" to be liberated from central authorities...indeed, including their software doing auto queries to the blockchain.

[vinced]

The following will hash a file to a bitcoin address. Any BTC sent to it will be lost forever but it does prove the file has existed at least since a set point as it's permanently stored in the blockchain.

Rather than burning coins, why not put the doc hash into the output script, like Namecoin does?  That is covered by the tx hash just as well.  Then you can just send the BTC to yourself, and the only cost is miner fees if any.