The founders of Namebase criticized social networks and centralized domain name management systems. Let's see what the essence of their own initiative is, and why not everyone likes it.
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What happened
The campaign for an alternative implementation of the namespace has been actively promoted since last year. Came out the other day with detailed explanations of critical assessments, proposals for global decentralization, necessary requirements for the project and its potential.
We analyzed the article and the discussion around it on thematic platforms. We share the main findings, additional materials and opinions on this topic.
What are they criticizing for?
On the companies there are references to the problem of excessive centralization on the side of "technological monopolists", national and international organizations - from to social networks.
The founders of Namebase question how such structures (and even states) manage the rights to free speech and ownership of digital assets such as profiles, usernames and domain names. In their speeches, they often cases of theft, blocking and removal of such "assets" without due process or explanation.
What proposals are put forward
On enthusiasts of this topic, in order to move away from all sorts of complexities towards a universal, stable and decentralized namespace, you will need:
- Make sure the new system is decentralized.
- Leave only the key functionality.
- Ensure low resource consumption and trustless availability.
- Maintain compatibility with the overall network infrastructure.
- Provide for the possibility of updating at the protocol level.
The first and second requirements can be implemented using a dedicated (the company called him ). Thus, the developers plan to eliminate the risks of system destabilization due to the actions of stakeholders or any external factors.
In their opinion, designing on the basis of already existing blockchains will not allow to achieve such an effect in the long term, which is a determining factor for the smooth operation and updating (the fifth point of requirements) of “IT standards” of this level.
In response to the third requirement, developers propose to store namespace data in so-called designed specifically for this task. They are an alternative in Ethereum, but with nodes of 32 (leaf/sibling nodes) and 76 bytes (internal nodes), and the PoW weight here does not exceed a kilobyte even if there are tens of millions of “leaves”.
So the team is trying to optimize the time and resources needed to resolve names. In addition, she opened and "easy" in C - it deals exclusively with DNS tasks.
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If we talk about compatibility (the fourth point), according to the founders, the project is aimed at expanding the capabilities of existing IT standards, and not at their displacement. The developers are sure that “network users should have more opportunities to maintain control and make sure that this or that name belongs to them”, and continue to develop their product (the main information on it is , , ).
What are they criticized for?
Hacker News gave a link to , based on Handshake, and . But there were also those who expressed that the vendor is just trying to be just another registrar operating with names in a slightly updated format. The independence of such projects has also been called into question. on data on the distribution of mining pools.
At some point, the discussion went sideways - one of the residents of the site even the idea of a similar "revival" -an ecosystem that could be a decentralized answer to the monopolized social media market. But here - as in the situation with Handshake - everything rested on the issue of monetization and the degree of elegance of its resolution. As is known, DNS projects already tried , but this process did not go as smoothly as their founders would like.
Now Handshake and Namebase have several alternatives at once - from Unstoppable Domains () to Ethereum Name Service (). Whether they will be able to compete with existing approaches to managing domain names and become massive, time will tell.
PS Additional reading in our habrablog - .
Source: habr.com