[announce] Namecoin - a distributed naming system based on Bitcoin

[PrimeHunter2023]

One more funny/sad/ironic twist about tor, since somebody brought it up.

Drug dealers are pretty safe on tor nowadays since it has become such a useful tool in busting snowden wannabes.

All the major news outlets tell people to submit corruption, misconduct etc stories via tor.
\
Somebody submits stuff that's too sensitive though and they are picked up and an agent assumes their tor identity to clean things up.

Just like in the old Soviet Union, it will be decades before we hear the stories of those people and their 'Patriot Act Provision" trials.

That's not even counting sites like The Intercept that work directly with authorities to bust leakers.


~

Schaeffer Cox for president, except he is in a Communication Managed Prison.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_management_unit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkHt6dkHiMw

~

~

Status: Unable to connect
Error reason: Happy Eyeballs MITM Failure
Error code: CF_HAPPY_EYEBALLS_MITM_FAILURE

[PrimeHunter2023]

One of several comments by others that asks the question more articulately.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6017.1780

........claims that only the functionality is important.........yet for many years I have personally seen no functionality, even to try it in the nightly build  tor browser is almost impossible. Mayor exchanges have been delisting NMC do to low volume and lack of interest, I have been holding this coin for three years also thinking about its functionality but only have seen my investment been reduced 10 times, there seems to be no limit to how low the price of this coin can go, something is definitely not working. If there is something in all these years I have noticed is that when Bitcoin pumps, Namecoin bleeds, and when Bitcoin dumps, Namecoin bleeds even harder. If functionality was the only important thing, then why not just create a non-monetary domain blockchain, its like saying that you only care about the functionality of your bicycle but that the roads you ride in are of no importance because they are unpredictable and irrational.

Obviously something is going on with Namecoin that is not quite right.

If somebody believes that groups should not have the ability to form computer networks unless they are monitored by authorities then please say that and we can discuss the pros and cons of each side.

The silliness about

Namecoin's main purpose is (unlike most other altcoins/tokens) not to be an investment, but to be actually useful as decentralised domain name and general naming system

and

It's not particularly surprising that newcomers to cryptocurrency don't have much interest in Namecoin.  Namecoin is derived from the culture that permeated the Bitcoin community in 2010-2011, which was a culture that was here for the tech, not to make easy money.  Today's cryptocurrency culture doesn't look much like that (sadly), so Namecoin is of little interest to them.  On the other hand, there's plenty of interest in other areas, e.g. in the Tor community.  Even a bit of media coverage now and then.

Real cypherpunks don't worry about whatever market fads are en vogue now.  Cypherpunks write code.

doesn't fly.

Namecoin could be a useful project.

~~~~

So the question, again.

Looking back over Namecoin's history, a common thread seems to be a subtle misdirection of any effort to bring the coin to a wider audience.

Would anybody speculate on the view that Namecoin is being carefully used, not to encourage a decentralized naming system, but to prevent one?

For example there are thousands of devs working on thousands of coins. But a person does not see devs offering to work on the first altcoin after Bitcoin?

Have any other developers been directly discouraged from working on Namecoin?

[paramind22]

One of several comments by others that asks the question more articulately.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6017.1780

........claims that only the functionality is important.........yet for many years I have personally seen no functionality, even to try it in the nightly build  tor browser is almost impossible. Mayor exchanges have been delisting NMC do to low volume and lack of interest, I have been holding this coin for three years also thinking about its functionality but only have seen my investment been reduced 10 times, there seems to be no limit to how low the price of this coin can go, something is definitely not working. If there is something in all these years I have noticed is that when Bitcoin pumps, Namecoin bleeds, and when Bitcoin dumps, Namecoin bleeds even harder. If functionality was the only important thing, then why not just create a non-monetary domain blockchain, its like saying that you only care about the functionality of your bicycle but that the roads you ride in are of no importance because they are unpredictable and irrational.

Obviously something is going on with Namecoin that is not quite right.

If somebody believes that groups should not have the ability to form computer networks unless they are monitored by authorities then please say that and we can discuss the pros and cons of each side.

The silliness about

Namecoin's main purpose is (unlike most other altcoins/tokens) not to be an investment, but to be actually useful as decentralised domain name and general naming system

and

It's not particularly surprising that newcomers to cryptocurrency don't have much interest in Namecoin.  Namecoin is derived from the culture that permeated the Bitcoin community in 2010-2011, which was a culture that was here for the tech, not to make easy money.  Today's cryptocurrency culture doesn't look much like that (sadly), so Namecoin is of little interest to them.  On the other hand, there's plenty of interest in other areas, e.g. in the Tor community.  Even a bit of media coverage now and then.

Real cypherpunks don't worry about whatever market fads are en vogue now.  Cypherpunks write code.

doesn't fly.

Namecoin could be a useful project.

~~~~

So the question, again.

Looking back over Namecoin's history, a common thread seems to be a subtle misdirection of any effort to bring the coin to a wider audience.

Would anybody speculate on the view that Namecoin is being carefully used, not to encourage a decentralized naming system, but to prevent one?

For example there are thousands of devs working on thousands of coins. But a person does not see devs offering to work on the first altcoin after Bitcoin?

Have any other developers been directly discouraged from working on Namecoin?

There are many "failing virtuous systems," a phrase I coined.  

Traffic exchanges and safelists are a technology that has been around for about 25 years, and could be used as a grass
roots network larger than facebook, but very few have adopted them, although they are still actively used.

https://www.paramind.net/paramindtrafficexchanges.html
https://www.paramind.net/paramindsafelists.html

Those resources are not that current but about 80% of the sites listed are working sites.

Another virtuous system that is failing are the low cap coin staking wallets.  There were about 20 good coins/decent teams
that have essentially failed in the last two years, some of these coins were 7 years old (hobotoken).  They still are an easy
way to produce Bitcoin on a cheap computer for a low investment, but you need to know which coins are still alive.

https://telicalbooks.com/Staking_Book_RSPearson.html

I'm not sure about the overall virtue of Namecoin, I just meant its inclusion in the light of the fact it was the second cryptocurrency in existence.

[PrimeHunter2023]

There are many "failing virtuous systems," a phrase I coined.  

Traffic exchanges and safelists are a technology that has been around for about 25 years, and could be used as a grass
roots network larger than facebook, but very few have adopted them, although they are still actively used.

https://www.paramind.net/paramindtrafficexchanges.html
https://www.paramind.net/paramindsafelists.html

Those resources are not that current but about 80% of the sites listed are working sites.

Another virtuous system that is failing are the low cap coin staking wallets.  There were about 20 good coins/decent teams
that have essentially failed in the last two years, some of these coins were 7 years old (hobotoken).  They still are an easy
way to produce Bitcoin on a cheap computer for a low investment, but you need to know which coins are still alive.

https://telicalbooks.com/Staking_Book_RSPearson.html

I'm not sure about the overall virtue of Namecoin, I just meant its inclusion in the light of the fact it was the second cryptocurrency in existence.

It's notclear to me exactly what you mean.

The traffic exchanges seem to be a sort of technical way to build a business network more than anything?

Low cap, or any cap, staking coins are producing a token that has whatever value users agree on, but has no other real utility, i.e., no intrinsic value.

Those coins, like bitcoin, are good for learning about digital currency, plus they feature something likely to be important in coming cbdc's, but nothing of value can be done with them aside from that.

Namecoin was the second recent cryptocurrency after bitcoin, so it has that sort of novelty or celebrity appeal for bitcoin types.

Also though there were dozens of digital currencies before bitcoin going back to the early 1990s.

Bitcoin is unique in that once most of the coins had been mined, i.e., after the first halving, it was slickly promoted.

The real value of namecoin is that it creates both an internet and an associated economy, that can be cloned by any group that does not want to be limited by icann or their local government.

If the internet/economy had been in that form much earlier it might have given survival chances to some groups that vanished.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_extinct_languages

In the last hundred years Australia and the United States have led the world in exterminating ancient cultures / languages / tribes.

Europe has been carefully walked into a system that is likely to become authoritarian as it gets weaker and there will be fewer liberties at that point to develop tools for groups.

Namecoin could be adapted so that a clone can only be used by people who speak a certain language...
it could use one time cyphers instead of flawed cryptography, so you have a thumb drive with gbs of random data and you cannot get on the local version until you physically meet and provide data for communication to somebody who speaks that language and is on that network...etc.

Other possibilities too such as already discussed incorporating 'human mining' along the lines of hunter, hathor, etc, and using that mining to produce an actual digital commodity like 'science ai' instead of pissing energy into oblivion like with bitcoin.

[paramind22]

"Low cap, or any cap, staking coins are producing a token that has whatever value users agree on, but has no other real utility, i.e., no intrinsic value."

The only value they need to have is produce BTC.  If you believe in BTC, they work.  They just need to do it right to stay alive, which about 25 have done so far. 

[nutildah]

You're just refloating the same conspiracy theories without providing any sort of tangible evidence to back them.

"If you look, you'll see..." isn't a convincing argument to anybody in a position to take any sort of rational action when it comes to Namecoin, or most things.

[biolizard89]

You're just refloating the same conspiracy theories without providing any sort of tangible evidence to back them.

"If you look, you'll see..." isn't a convincing argument to anybody in a position to take any sort of rational action when it comes to Namecoin, or most things.

It's also entertaining (at least to me and my colleagues) that PrimeHunter2023's wild speculation is exactly the opposite of the conclusions anyone who's remotely paying attention to Namecoin would draw. Case in point: "But a person does not see devs offering to work on the first altcoin after Bitcoin? Have any other developers been directly discouraged from working on Namecoin?"

Our team actually *has* been growing, and it's primarily because Namecoin devs (including but not limited to me) are recruiting new developers (and finding funding for those new developers), and those new developers decide they like our community and choose to stick around. (Robert and Rose are two recent team additions; Robert joined circa January 2023 and Rose joined circa January 2024.) None of this is a secret; we talk about this publicly all the time.

It's well known that cypherpunk communities attract mentally unwell people who are prone to all kinds of weird conspiracy theories. (I've coined "Rand's Law of Weekends" to describe how most of them vanish from the Tor IRC channels during the work week.) I'm pretty used to it by now; it doesn't actively bother me, and generally I find them entertaining. Nevertheless, "Jeremy is working with Chinese intelligence to stop the public from finding out that they have a backdoor for RSA and EC crypto, and Namecoin is actually a sheepdog project to stop endangered natural languages from being saved from extinction" certainly takes the cake for the wildest one I've seen in recent memory. v0v

[PrimeHunter2023]

"Low cap, or any cap, staking coins are producing a token that has whatever value users agree on, but has no other real utility, i.e., no intrinsic value."

The only value they need to have is produce BTC.  If you believe in BTC, they work.  They just need to do it right to stay alive, which about 25 have done so far.  

Satoshi Nakamoto has a website that discusses the basics of economics.
\edit Thought https://nakamotoinstitute.org/ had a long blog on economics, but cannot find it now.

First you need to accurately understand what a commodity is i.e., a useful product which has limited supply.

From there you can go in the wrong direction and create a useless product which has a limited supply, e.g. a ledger system like bitcoin.

Or you can find a way to transfer actual commodities digitally e.g. commodities created by computer work.

Bitcoin p/o/w. = not a useful commodity, no intrinsic value.

Science ai p/o/w, primecoin is the simplest example = a useful commodity with actual value in terms of other commodities.

To look at it another way, there are an endless number of possible bitcoins, such as hobotokens, ltc etc. In rich times we can play like they are commodities, but when a storm hits you should have a more real thing, not a 'pseudo' commodity.

Namecoin can solve several upcoming problems if it is developed well and not cornered by a gang or interest group.

~

Add a separate relevant point/

Every person, belief, etc is on a continuum of globalist/tribal.

For example the productivity software you sell is on the extreme globalist end of the continuum, it could be called meta globalist even.

Your opinions on bitcoin likewise are at the globalist end of the continuum or spectrum.

I have no idea if you are interested in the opposite view, but I'll mention it in case you are.

A tribal group that has security eventually sacrifices defenses in favor of sciences. The example of Tibetan sciences was given before. Tibetans were securely defended by mountains and drifted away from martial skills towards sciences. The Chinese then attacked and the Tibetan sciences now are being destroyed, vanishing.

Marshall Island wave piloting is another well known example. Marshallese had liberty/security to develop that fascinating science. A hundred years ago anybody could go there and witness it. Then the Japanese attacked them. Then the U.S. began playing with nukes there. Today nobody really knows if wave piloting is really possible i.e., look at a patch of ocean and identify the bordering land masses by distance and size etc. In a hundred years it will be considered a fantasy science that never actually existed.

The opposite of those real sciences are globalist things masquerading as science, things intended to consolidate already existing sciences.

For example Einstein is called a scientist, but what he actually did was consolidate/globalize what already existed. He was not a scientist but a technician.

Likewise the specific productivity software. It consolidates, reshuffles the same deck.

The problem is that many globalists do not understand that there are alternate worldviews.

They are trained to pretend that they do, but they are dangerous because actually they do not.

The 'pretending' is seen as, or called, 'virtues', by some people, which makes it even more dangerous.

With regard to tribal groups the first virtue is survival. No globalist virtue exists if that first tribal virtue does not.

[PrimeHunter2023]

You're just refloating the same conspiracy theories without providing any sort of tangible evidence to back them.

"If you look, you'll see..." isn't a convincing argument to anybody in a position to take any sort of rational action when it comes to Namecoin, or most things.

Not sure what you are quoting, but more than one person believes there may be an organized effort to make sure ICANN and national governments maintain control over domains.

Supposing that is accurate, and there is a lot of evidence for it, the smart next step is to determine which side has the best position.

You believe namecoin should not compete with bitcoin. Correct? Do you believe that?

[PrimeHunter2023]

You're just refloating the same conspiracy theories without providing any sort of tangible evidence to back them.

"If you look, you'll see..." isn't a convincing argument to anybody in a position to take any sort of rational action when it comes to Namecoin, or most things.

It's also entertaining (at least to me and my colleagues) that PrimeHunter2023's wild speculation is exactly the opposite of the conclusions anyone who's remotely paying attention to Namecoin would draw. Case in point: "But a person does not see devs offering to work on the first altcoin after Bitcoin? Have any other developers been directly discouraged from working on Namecoin?"

Our team actually *has* been growing, and it's primarily because Namecoin devs (including but not limited to me) are recruiting new developers (and finding funding for those new developers), and those new developers decide they like our community and choose to stick around. (Robert and Rose are two recent team additions; Robert joined circa January 2023 and Rose joined circa January 2024.) None of this is a secret; we talk about this publicly all the time.

It's well known that cypherpunk communities attract mentally unwell people who are prone to all kinds of weird conspiracy theories. (I've coined "Rand's Law of Weekends" to describe how most of them vanish from the Tor IRC channels during the work week.) I'm pretty used to it by now; it doesn't actively bother me, and generally I find them entertaining. Nevertheless, "Jeremy is working with Chinese intelligence to stop the public from finding out that they have a backdoor for RSA and EC crypto, and Namecoin is actually a sheepdog project to stop endangered natural languages from being saved from extinction" certainly takes the cake for the wildest one I've seen in recent memory. v0v

You quote  "Jeremy is working with Chinese intelligence to stop the public from finding out that they have a backdoor for RSA and EC crypto, and Namecoin is actually a sheepdog project to stop endangered natural languages from being saved from extinction"

You are suggesting I said anything like that?

Why don't you copy/paste something I actually said?

Regarding your funding/etc, I have noticed that when there are questions raised about namecoin on social media it is sometimes followed by a high profile grant by some organization pretending they are giving namecoin money to harden the internet or whatever.

You seem to have indicated that you do not want namecoin to be used widely because you believe real cypherpunks don't care about money or something? Is that a fair characterization of your view, quoted several comments up?

It's not particularly surprising that newcomers to cryptocurrency don't have much interest in Namecoin.  Namecoin is derived from the culture that permeated the Bitcoin community in 2010-2011, which was a culture that was here for the tech, not to make easy money.  Today's cryptocurrency culture doesn't look much like that (sadly), so Namecoin is of little interest to them.  On the other hand, there's plenty of interest in other areas, e.g. in the Tor community.  Even a bit of media coverage now and then.

Real cypherpunks don't worry about whatever market fads are en vogue now.  Cypherpunks write code.

clarify a point/
The vast majority of people who do the work of governments and gangsters do it because they like the reflected glow of power, not because they are employees of a gang or government.

John Gotti had loads of people who would cover for him for free just because of who he was.

A guy who built a social media presence criticizing Assange would say "You probably think I work for the cia" but no, the vast majority of people who do the work of groups like that are doing it on their own because siding with the powerful is smart.

Elon Musk could sacrifice puppies to satan and there would be legion of people saying he is so wise for doing it, and they would cough up explanations of how puppy blood can do this and that.

~

The actions, comments, opinions of developers on namecoin are very definitely aligned with the view that governments should maintain control of domains.

Whatever the belief system behind that should be discussed.

Any explanations given so far do not hold water.

As somebody else said

If functionality was the only important thing, then why not just create a non-monetary domain blockchain, its like saying that you only care about the functionality of your bicycle but that the roads you ride in are of no importance because they are unpredictable and irrational.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6017.1780

The belief that namecoin should be restricted, not promoted, is clear.

What is behind that belief?

[nutildah]

Not sure what you are quoting, but more than one person believes there may be an organized effort to make sure ICANN and national governments maintain control over domains.

OK so when you say something like this you should present some kind of evidence along with it to support your claim. You can't expect any critical thinker to take you seriously without it.

You believe namecoin should not compete with bitcoin. Correct? Do you believe that?

No, that's not what I believe. Regardless, it was never meant to compete with Bitcoin. It was meant to extend the functionality of the blockchain. The intentions for what Namecoin was meant to be are spelled out in the OP:

It is inspired by the bitdns discussion and recent failures of the DNS.

[PrimeHunter2023]

Not sure what you are quoting, but more than one person believes there may be an organized effort to make sure ICANN and national governments maintain control over domains.

OK so when you say something like this you should present some kind of evidence along with it to support your claim. You can't expect any critical thinker to take you seriously without it.

You believe namecoin should not compete with bitcoin. Correct? Do you believe that?

No, that's not what I believe. Regardless, it was never meant to compete with Bitcoin. It was meant to extend the functionality of the blockchain. The intentions for what Namecoin was meant to be are spelled out in the OP:

It is inspired by the bitdns discussion and recent failures of the DNS.

You and biolizard typically are in lockstep.

Both of you have slyly discouraged any efforts to bring namecoin to a wider audience.

I'd love to hear suggestions on how we could do a better job on this.

Perhaps, some additional work on the features of the coin, that would appeal to the greater audience. If there is no displeasure with the idea of the more "financial" coin.

I don't see much reason to try to compete with Bitcoin, if that's what you mean by "financial".  Bitcoin already works extremely well at what it does.  Remember the Unix philosophy.  

It seems like a good idea to figure out what is going on, why certain people on the inside do not want namecoin to be used widely.

Nobody is accusing anybody of working for any spy agency but it is being directly pointed out that there has been a very carefully implemented effort to make sure namecoin does not threaten icann/government dominance.

What is your philosophy with regard to domain naming?

Do you believe it is best if icann competition is limited to academic exercises?

Our team actually *has* been growing, and it's primarily because Namecoin devs (including but not limited to me) are recruiting new developers (and finding funding for those new developers), and those new developers decide they like our community and choose to stick around. (Robert and Rose are two recent team additions; Robert joined circa January 2023 and Rose joined circa January 2024.) None of this is a secret; we talk about this publicly all the time.

Something is definitely off.

How is it that the first coin, bitcoin, has supposed vast public interest, but the second coin, namecoin, has almost none?

Please don't repeat that silliness about 'we are cypherpunks we aren't interested in being popular'.

Would the new developers mind sharing their philosophies, using screen names like 'nmcdev1', 'nmcdev2', and how they found out about namecoin?

Was their hiring related to their sharing biolizard's and nuthildah's 'vision' for namecoin?

Were they approached by nmc or did they solicit the job?

As mentioned before, large so called 'grants' to namecoin seem to coincide with, or follow, social media questions being raised about namecoin. Would somebody give a running tally of grants namecoin has received?

~

https://namecoin.com/bounties

"We're sorry, but something went wrong."
"If you are the application owner check the logs for more information."

[nutildah]

You and biolizard typically are in lockstep.

Both of you have slyly discouraged any efforts to bring namecoin to a wider audience.

LOL bro that is simply hilarious. Wat???

biolizard has done more for Namecoin than almost everybody on the planet, and I've been a fan of it since 2014.

If the current audience isn't wide enough for you, you commit the efforts. I don't think you appreciate the technical challenges of maintaining or improving something of this nature. Am not really interested in chatting with you anymore until you can say something of actual substance.

[PrimeHunter2023]

You and biolizard typically are in lockstep.

Both of you have slyly discouraged any efforts to bring namecoin to a wider audience.

LOL bro that is simply hilarious. Wat???

biolizard has done more for Namecoin than almost everybody on the planet, and I've been a fan of it since 2014.

If the current audience isn't wide enough for you, you commit the efforts. I don't think you appreciate the technical challenges of maintaining or improving something of this nature. Am not really interested in chatting with you anymore until you can say something of actual substance.

You are very clever at redirecting an issue so that people are confused into supporting your view.

The issue is not how long you and biolizard have been working with namecoin.

The issue is whether your goal is to promote the use of decentralized naming...or prevent it.

My opinion is that you two, and others, do not support the use of a naming system outside of govt/icann control.

That's what the evidence seems to point to, read previous posts.

Answer this question directly if you don't mind.

Do you believe it would be better or worse if domains were entirely decentralized outside govt/icann control?


I'm sorry if my curiousity makes the thread uncomfortable but it seems like a reasonable thing to try to figure out what's going on.

Others have expressed similar concerns on this thread and elsewhere.

~

There are other issues too that make a person wonder. I'll give an example before you ask.

Namecoin devs seem to have a relationship with monero devs.

You must remember the absolute scumbaggishness of Monero's beginning, flat out gangsters harassing and spamming in a very high dollar campaign...but here is the example...

A while back I used to trade small coins on Cryptsy to make a little money.

One coin was bte bytecoin made by user maria2.0 or something like that. I googled the coins I traded almost daily looking for info that might affect trading.

One day, suddenly, there were two bte's.

One was the coin I was trading.

The other was a coin that did not exist one day, but literally had a multi year history on Google the next day.

So I started with a well founded mistrust of bte then watched the absolute crookedest gangsterish coin gang i.e., monero, ooze out of that swamp.

So I am a little curious about the genesis of the nmc monero relationship.

My guess is that once pkc is discredited the gang will promote the ring signature algorithms, overnight btc will be trash and the ring sig gangster swine will be wealthy. Just a guess.

Are these gangsters associated with a govt? My educated guess is that they are.

There are other examples I could give.

Let's start with the question in bold type asked above.

~

ETA forgot to address your second point, "why don't I promote it."

Any person does what they can.

If I were a developer I certainly would use that skill, after I figured out first what is going on.
I'm not a developer and not technically inclined nor even educatable some would say.

If I had resources I would certainly use them, after I first figured out what is going on.
I'm not rich. If I sold everything I had it would not pay my back taxes and credit card debt.

If I had a bit of common sense I would try to find the terminal flaw that prevents the coin's success, and address it.
*bing*
I have a bit of common sense...hence I try to find out what is going on.

[biolizard89]

Regardless, it was never meant to compete with Bitcoin. It was meant to extend the functionality of the blockchain. The intentions for what Namecoin was meant to be are spelled out in the OP:

It is inspired by the bitdns discussion and recent failures of the DNS.

I think we're in agreement, but FWIW it's useful to be careful about falling into the "Vincent's Vision" trap. (This, incidentally, is a nice advantage that Namecoin's community has over Bitcoin's -- "Vincent's Vision" is generally only used as the punchline of jokes, whereas the cult of personality surrounding Satoshi is not healthy, to put it mildly.) There have been a variety of efforts over the years to introduce new use cases for Namecoin that aren't directly related to DNS censorship. Most of these efforts can be traced in genesis to an anonymous IRC user circa 2012 who suggested using Namecoin as a PKI (e.g. for TLS). These efforts quickly gained the support of the Namecoin community without Vince's help, and by now they're a core part of what Namecoin does. (I joined Namecoin dev in 2013 specifically because I was interested in the TLS PKI use case.) There have also been various less-well-received proposed use cases ("Let's make an on-chain version of Bitmessage! Surely that won't have technical problems!"), but those were rejected by the community because we all determined that they were a bad idea, not because we thought Vince would disapprove. Generally speaking, the Namecoin community likes new ideas that are technically sound, and we don't evaluate technical soundness in terms of anything Vince wrote.

I think an argument could *maybe* be made that Vince's initial non-inclusion of AuxPoW (Namecoin didn't become a Bitcoin sidechain until chain-hopping by miners crippled the Namecoin blockchain) meant that he intended it to compete with Bitcoin (at least in some sense, e.g. competing for hashrate). Vince isn't around to comment on that now, but in any event I don't think anyone really cares: Namecoin is a sidechain now, and we're not going to undo that, just like we're not going to compete with Bitcoin in any other way. You could maybe make an argument that we should get rid of the NMC token and allow name registration with BTC using a pegged sidechain, and that our failure to do so means we're competing with Bitcoin. While I am sympathetic to this argument in principle, the reality on the ground is that no one knows how to make decentralized pegged sidechains work properly, and I don't have any interest in speculating on a research area that hasn't presented a concrete proposal that I can audit for safety.

[PrimeHunter2023]

Regardless, it was never meant to compete with Bitcoin. It was meant to extend the functionality of the blockchain. The intentions for what Namecoin was meant to be are spelled out in the OP:

It is inspired by the bitdns discussion and recent failures of the DNS.

1..........it's useful to be careful about falling into the "Vincent's Vision" trap. (This, incidentally, is a nice advantage that Namecoin's community has over Bitcoin's -- "Vincent's Vision" is generally only used as the punchline of jokes, whereas the cult of personality surrounding Satoshi is not healthy, to put it mildly.

2...........the Namecoin community likes new ideas that are technically sound, and we don't evaluate technical soundness in terms of anything Vince wrote.

3....I think an argument could *maybe* be made that Vince's ........meant that he intended it to compete with Bitcoin (at least in some sense, e.g. competing for hashrate).


4.......and we're not going to undo that, just like we're not going to compete with Bitcoin in any other way....

1) See number 3 below

2) You have driven away most namecoin supporters by pretending you are "the namecoin community".

3) Vinced was a bountyhunter not a visionary. But if Satoshi can be George Washington then sure, let's make vinced Thomas Jefferson. Make him spiritual advisor to the pope, give him a billion dollar yacht, an 11 inch dick and use a ouiji board to communicate with him.

4) Who is not going to compete with bitcoin? The namecoin community?

Namecoin is experimental software created for a payment. It's main improvement since it began is additional software created by domob. Numerous other people have sounded out creating more functionality, but "the namecoin community", both of you, or however many there are, shut them down.

What is your motive?

~~~


Are there any people willing to take a side on the issue?

Both sides have been represented from the beginning, but recently only one side is represented by devs.

Side 1 // devs //
Namecoin should not compete with bitcoin. Number of users is not important. Value of the coin is irrelevant to followers of the ethos, and those interested in the value of the coin should be discouraged.
/includes or parallels the belief that the 'main' internet should be centralized, and decentralized internets should not compete with the centralized one.

Side 2 // dissidents //
A widely used coin would attract more developers who would add features that could be useful in a decentralized internet such as internet over shortwave, and other things.

~~~~

The main political factor is the simple reality that the West cannot compete with China's centralized economy. Many people believe that Europe is being led into a 'permanent war footing' that will allow more authoritarian measures soon to make the economy more competitive. Once that process reaches a certain stage software like namecoin could be restricted.

Is anybody willing to say they prefer one side or the other? Or to correct me if I misrepresented either side?    

[PrimeHunter2023]

Can a person ask how much funding namecoin has received?

..................

While I'd love to see better public relations effort for Namecoin, our previous experiments with having technically non-proficient people do marketing on our behalf ended up doing more harm than good.  So I don't foresee that happening again.  Technically proficient people tend to perceive development as more productive (or just more fun) than marketing, so the technically proficient Namecoin community members haven't done a lot of marketing work.  I'd love to hear suggestions on how we could do a better job on this.

~

...

To quote from the net: "If upgrades never happen, progress in Bitcoin will stagnate, and developers will migrate to other ecosystems." The same applies to the Namecoin.

 

Given that Namecoin activated a softfork in the last month, I don't think we're particularly at risk of never upgrading.  More developers/volunteers wouldn't hurt though.  (I suppose more funding wouldn't hurt either, though that's harder.)

~

Like many others who tried to improve Namecoin, sqbit deleted his or her posts and profile after you told him or her to move on.

~

Namecoin Receives 29,895 EUR in Funding from NLnet Foundation's Internet Hardening Fund

That one is 29k euros. As I recall there were other donations. How many were there, if you don't mind?

Is there an effort to prevent namecoin from competing with govt/icann?

Let's start by looking at funding.

Is it okay to ask about funding?

Do you mind listing publicly all donations over 10,000 Euros "the Namecoin community" has received so far?

Is it unreasonable to ask where the money goes?

Can anyone, who owns a working account at

https://forum.namecoin.org/

post a message there or contact an admin directly, that the namecoin-forum is totally useless for new members?

I created several accounts at forum.namecoin.org in the last few days and it is NOT possible to reply to messages, it is NOT possible to create new threads and it is NOT possible to send PMs!

Moreover, there exists a list of the forum members (Quick links -> Members), which can be ordered with respect to the date a person joined the forum. It seems that everyone, who joined after 2017-11-30, is not able to post messages.

With such a non-working/dysfunctional/broken namecoin-forum, it is not surprising, that the namecoin community seems dead.

[PrimeHunter2023]

So developers would prefer not to list the donations over 10,000 Euros so far. That is understandable. Several are listed online, and a few more are implied including ongoing grants, and there are references to other sums, but I'll avoid that subject.

One other odd subject is the strange notion of namecoin developers that it is a good thing to have less people use namecoin.

Many rationales have been presented, none of which withstand scrutiny.

Most recently

...we're not going to compete with Bitcoin in any other way...

There are literally thousands of coins which compete with bitcoin.

In fact even Satoshi was clear in several different ways that he was not trying to make a clay god. If a person misses that philosophical point they can just look at how bitcoin was instamined. Satoshi would not have done that unless either a) he was a scammer or b) he wanted to be clear the coin was temporary.

So namecoin developers using the rationale of 'not competing with bitcoin' to explain why they discourage new users and volunteers is odd.

There is not a whole lot that a person without developer training or resources can do. But it seems proper to at least ask the developers to clarify their motives.

Are any Namecoin developers willing to explain why Namecoin should be prevented from wide use? If NMC had not been hobbled it would have had all sorts of features by now.

Or explain why it should not compete with other coins?


Why would developers spend a small fortune to make an electrum which could have been made by a volunteer, but spend no money at all on adding or bountying internet features?

VinceD said

.........

.....

The next steps for the project are:

- - building more client side tools, including an easy to use resolver drop in
- - better registration tools
- - public relations
- - marketing to distributions (Debian), ISPs

Maybe somebody with dev skills will create a new Namecoin, and focus on making a better internet, instead of preventing it.
https://github.com/vinced/namecoin

[PrimeHunter2023]

One last point until there is some response.

Nobody is accusing anybody associated with Namecoin of working for any police or spy group.

All that is being pointed out is that there are people who clearly are trying to prevent a decentralized internet from developing.

What are their motives? I ask.

A possibility /

"We have some strategic notion that this kind of thing has to be delayed until.........."

Another possibility /

"Drug dealers and all sorts of similar types would......"

Many other possibilities.

If somebody provides their rationale it is possible I might agree with it and say that yes, we should sabotage a free internet, or I might present an argument that convinces others that maybe a decentralized internet is better.