Author: Justin Newton 2015-07-17 00:58:10
Published on: 2015-07-17T00:58:10+00:00
The Wallet Name Service has always been built on open standards and has never pushed a closed-source, centralized system. It is a decentralized and distributed service that allows users to maintain control over their own data. The system works by allowing anyone to serve names or do lookups without touching their servers or even knowing they exist. They have always used open source tools for all lookups against DNS records and the blockchain, never any proprietary servers or interfaces on their side.In terms of the format being open, they have already made several extensions and modifications as a result of conversations with industry participants to ensure that what they are building meets the needs of the community at large. However, they want to work with the community to find a common standard but there are some places that would cause hesitation in "just implementing" the Open Alias standard. They believe that having one unified effort will benefit everyone involved and make it easier for users to adopt a universal naming system for digital currency addresses. They can see places where bringing the formats together to one standard could have strong benefits, such as formatting the record as a key value pair with versioning. On the other side, they think the two-level lookup provides a lot of value at scale over trying to send back a bunch of text records when only a small portion of the data is used. Regarding DNSCrypt, they were concerned about broad interoperability and easy broad distribution of hosting, so they decided not to use it. Although they appreciate the thought behind using DNSCrypt, they believe that the centralization trade-offs required to use DNSCrypt today outweigh any perceived privacy benefits it provides. For highly privacy-conscious individuals, they can do their DNS lookups over a non-logging VPN connection without forcing everyone else through a handful of centralized servers.The Wallet Name Service has the option of storing a URL rather than just a wallet address in the TXT record. This allows a second-level lookup against the URL to get back a unique HD Wallet address or Payment Request each time, further protecting user privacy and security. They believe that this provides an auto audit of the end-to-end DNS SEC process, and if the path were somehow compromised, the signature on the payment request can provide an additional check.They are always open to feedback from industry participants and have made modifications to how things work before as a result of feedback from the community. They are currently looking at whether they want to make DANE optional or mandatory since it is not widely available for folks using services like Cloudflare, Akamai, etc., for their DNS. In conclusion, they are thrilled to have conversations with the community to come up with the best standard possible, ensuring that they are building something that everyone needs.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T02:34:32.413511+00:00