Namecoin and Economic Rent

[phelix]

the network does not and probably can not know the number of lookups

[ribuck]

this ... is less efficient than if we magically knew the economic rent of a name and required name owners to pay it in their transaction fees (or whatever). Unfortunately, I have no idea how to determine the economic rent of a name without a central authority.

Here's a very straightforward non-centralised solution:

The domain name belongs to whoever has submitted the lowest (i.e. most difficult-to-compute) hash for that name. Ownership changes if someone submits a lower (i.e. better) hash, but in that case there is a 90-day delay to give the original owner a chance to submit a better hash and keep ownership of their domain name.

Whoever can gain the most economic value from each domain name, will be the one who can afford to dedicate the most resources towards mining hashes for that name.

Suppose Microsoft Corp wants to hold on to microsoft.com. They might keep a server or two chugging away, regularly submitting lower hashes whenever they find one.

Now suppose Joe Average somehow manages to get a hower hash for microsoft.com than Microsoft themselves have been able to do. Microsoft has 90 days to improve on Joe Average's hash, before they lose the domain. So naturally, Microsoft will dedicate a big server farm to the task, bigger than Joe Average can justify economically.

With this system, no-one can squat a domain name that's more valuable to someone else, because that other person will find it worthwhile to compute enough hashes to gain control of the domain name.

[Gavin Andresen]

Here's a very straightforward non-centralised solution:

The domain name belongs to whoever has submitted the lowest (i.e. most difficult-to-compute) hash for that name. Ownership changes if someone submits a lower (i.e. better) hash, but in that case there is a 90-day delay to give the original owner a chance to submit a better hash and keep ownership of their domain name.

That's a really great idea!

I think that's a type of all-pay auction; I wonder what an economist who's an expert on auctions would think....

[markm]

The hashing devoted to holding names will be that much less hashing power available for securing the entire portfolio of merged-mine-able blockchains though, presumably? Since if you let people use merged-mining to secure their names, all the big pools already merged-mining will have lots of "free" hash-power to use to secure names.

Well maybe that (merged mining to secure the names) isn't really a problem? Maybe all it means is more income for miners at pools as they get shares of what people who value names are willing to pay pools to find them low hashes to secure their names with?

-MarkM-

[phelix]

this has some advantages there are also some disadvantages.

if you register yourself a name for a personal website or small project you are always in danger of some corporate bully squeezing you out of it.

also you could get blackmailed by pools, botnets and the like.

compensation for the yielding party?

[Peter Todd]

Here's a very straightforward non-centralised solution:

The domain name belongs to whoever has submitted the lowest (i.e. most difficult-to-compute) hash for that name. Ownership changes if someone submits a lower (i.e. better) hash, but in that case there is a 90-day delay to give the original owner a chance to submit a better hash and keep ownership of their domain name.

That's a really great idea!

I think that's a type of all-pay auction; I wonder what an economist who's an expert on auctions would think....

What'll happen is people will offer services to do the hashing for you, then sell the partial pre-image to the highest bidder, which is a step away from just saying "why don't we assign the domain to the person who ties up the largest amount of BTC?" or "destroy your btc irrevocably to get the domain" (it's also no-longer all-pay) The selling would be problematic too, as the naive implementation would allow the seller to take back your domain, while at the same time encouraging the situation by effectively making the hash services cheaper than attempting a bid with all-pay. Maybe some multi-sig like system could fix that.

Actually, a btc destruction system could be quite interesting... design a way that the highest bidder loses his btc permanently, while the other bidders keep it. For instance some sort of two-step system where you submit a bid, and then to validate it you have to prove the destruction of the btc. Some thought would be required to prevent trolling of various types of course.

[jancsika]

I have a reply in mind, but it is possible I may not be truly understanding what Namecoin does, so let me ask this question:

Was it designed to be able to gracefully replace the current DNS system, or is it necessarily disruptive?

I'm not sure I understand your question, so, here are a lot of replies :p

- the current DNS system does not allow to be extended to everybody at once without some changes being made at IANA (which controls top level TLDs)
- you can't have .com registered both in namecoin and at ICANN, one must have the priority
- you can add the TLDs you want in namecoin, they will be available on your computer with the IANA TLDs

So :
- you can use both standard DNS + namecoin
- if you want everbody to switch to namecoin only there are 2 solutions :
1. IANA switch one day to namecoin and register all existing domains in namecoin
* this would require some changes in namecoin, but is technically possible (but they won't refuse to get some million dollars :p).
* each people could use namecoin or their normal DNS server and they will have the same results
2. everybody installs namecoin on their computer and use both standard DNS + namecoin for .bit (and any other TLD we decide to add)

Regarding #2: what would be the benefit of installing/using namecoin for .bit over using, say, a Firefox plugin that maps a list of blocked domain names to ip addresses?

[Explodicle]

I have a reply in mind, but it is possible I may not be truly understanding what Namecoin does, so let me ask this question:

Was it designed to be able to gracefully replace the current DNS system, or is it necessarily disruptive?

I'm not sure I understand your question, so, here are a lot of replies :p

- the current DNS system does not allow to be extended to everybody at once without some changes being made at IANA (which controls top level TLDs)
- you can't have .com registered both in namecoin and at ICANN, one must have the priority
- you can add the TLDs you want in namecoin, they will be available on your computer with the IANA TLDs

So :
- you can use both standard DNS + namecoin
- if you want everbody to switch to namecoin only there are 2 solutions :
1. IANA switch one day to namecoin and register all existing domains in namecoin
* this would require some changes in namecoin, but is technically possible (but they won't refuse to get some million dollars :p).
* each people could use namecoin or their normal DNS server and they will have the same results
2. everybody installs namecoin on their computer and use both standard DNS + namecoin for .bit (and any other TLD we decide to add)

Regarding #2: what would be the benefit of installing/using namecoin for .bit over using, say, a Firefox plugin that maps a list of blocked domain names to ip addresses?

As each list becomes more popular, it also becomes more likely that the maintainer would become a target for coercion.

"Pssst, Neo! Redirect silkroad.bit on your list to my mirror instead and I'll give you 1000 BTC!"
OR
"Mr. Anderson, you are hereby ordered to redirect silkroad.bit to gotcha.gov for national security reasons. From now on you work for us."

We want just one list that's the same for everyone, so we need to define which list in a way that doesn't put all the power in the hands of one entity.

[Gavin Andresen]

What'll happen is people will offer services to do the hashing for you, then sell the partial pre-image to the highest bidder

What partial pre-image?  I assume the message being hashed is "Transfer THIS domain to THAT public key." (with probably a timestamp thrown in there that can't be too far ahead or behind current network time and, of course, a long nonce)

I imagine the hash-for-hire services would just ask their clients for the public key; I know I wouldn't want a hash-for-hire service to have access to my site's private key, they could sell it out from under me!

RE: a personal website or small domain being evicted: yep. You should offer to sell out for a couple bitcoins less than it will cost that big, evil corporation to find an eviction hash so at least you get compensated. There's very little difference between "legitimate little guy who's last name happens to be Ford" and "domain squatter."

[Explodicle]

If we're willing to do an all-pay auction, then we could layer on top of an existing blockchain.

First claiming a name:
Send a satoshi to an address (A) made using the hashed name + checksum. This address is for record-keeping only and doesn't need a private key.

Bidding on a name:
Send a satoshi to address A, with your bid as the transaction fee.

Checking who owns a name:
Calculate A yourself, see if it has any transactions.
If so, use whatever rules we agree upon to determine the latest owner.

[Bitcoin Oz]

I have a reply in mind, but it is possible I may not be truly understanding what Namecoin does, so let me ask this question:

Was it designed to be able to gracefully replace the current DNS system, or is it necessarily disruptive?

I'm not sure I understand your question, so, here are a lot of replies :p

- the current DNS system does not allow to be extended to everybody at once without some changes being made at IANA (which controls top level TLDs)
- you can't have .com registered both in namecoin and at ICANN, one must have the priority
- you can add the TLDs you want in namecoin, they will be available on your computer with the IANA TLDs

So :
- you can use both standard DNS + namecoin
- if you want everbody to switch to namecoin only there are 2 solutions :
1. IANA switch one day to namecoin and register all existing domains in namecoin
* this would require some changes in namecoin, but is technically possible (but they won't refuse to get some million dollars :p).
* each people could use namecoin or their normal DNS server and they will have the same results
2. everybody installs namecoin on their computer and use both standard DNS + namecoin for .bit (and any other TLD we decide to add)

Regarding #2: what would be the benefit of installing/using namecoin for .bit over using, say, a Firefox plugin that maps a list of blocked domain names to ip addresses?

As each list becomes more popular, it also becomes more likely that the maintainer would become a target for coercion.

"Pssst, Neo! Redirect silkroad.bit on your list to my mirror instead and I'll give you 1000 BTC!"
OR
"Mr. Anderson, you are hereby ordered to redirect silkroad.bit to gotcha.gov for national security reasons. From now on you work for us."

We want just one list that's the same for everyone, so we need to define which list in a way that doesn't put all the power in the hands of one entity.

What if the list was maintained by the block chain ? 

[Explodicle]

Regarding Namecoin simply overriding blocked .com sites...

What if the list was maintained by the block chain ?

Different sites will be blocked for different miners, and previously blocked sites might become unblocked.

If you want to be certain your blockchain stays valid, it can't depend on external information.