Author: Tyler H 2018-04-19 20:15:11
Published on: 2018-04-19T20:15:11+00:00
A proposal called Numerifides has been developed which is committed directly to the Bitcoin blockchain and solves Zooko's triangle (Decentralized, secure and human meaningful). It can use already existing SPV infrastructure for lookups (like DNS requests) and doesn't have the squatting problems of Namecoin. Consensus revocation of names is possible, and if a name is registered that no one cares about, it will not be challenged except to steal locked up funds. The system can be used for any name->data association such as Lightning nodes, DNS, Certificate Authorities, decentralized identities etc. There are concerns regarding the details of implementation like the hash function used for the transaction puzzle, censorship resistance, and privacy concerns. However, the committed data can be encrypted or hashed before being stored as envisioned by the creator, who also suggests a "catchall" unadvertised datatype where anyone can commit anything for any purpose such as for document existence or even committing an encrypted key to some piece of data. The creator does not like the idea of people committing IP addresses of their websites to the blockchain for all time, but perhaps a 2nd-layer "nameserver"-like configuration can be found for less permanent, more ephemeral data like DNS. Feedback on the proposal is requested from the community. Two favorite approaches to the problem of securely advertising human-understandable node names were also discussed in a related thread: Namecoin-style registration and Web of Trust. These approaches have their own limitations and drawbacks.
Updated on: 2023-05-24T22:56:30.571755+00:00