
Namecoin - rfreytag
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecoin
======
JacobAldridge
At the risk of hijacking yet another cryptocurrency thread, this is an
opportunity to note how valuable I believe HN to be when it highlights primary
sources.

Secondary sources - whether it's lazy journalism, blog-jacking, or Wikipedia,
engages us here in a discussion already framed through another person's or
group of people's editorial eyes. Is there no better overview of Namecoin than
its Wikipedia page?

~~~
bachback
[http://namecoin.info](http://namecoin.info)

This is where it started:
[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.0)

satoshi's comment on the matter, posted 4 days before he left the forum.

"I think it would be possible for BitDNS to be a completely separate network
and separate block chain, yet share CPU power with Bitcoin. The only overlap
is to make it so miners can search for proof-of-work for both networks
simultaneously.

The networks wouldn't need any coordination. Miners would subscribe to both
networks in parallel. They would scan SHA such that if they get a hit, they
potentially solve both at once. A solution may be for just one of the networks
if one network has a lower difficulty.

I think an external miner could call getwork on both programs and combine the
work. Maybe call Bitcoin, get work from it, hand it to BitDNS getwork to
combine into a combined work.

Instead of fragmentation, networks share and augment each other's total CPU
power. This would solve the problem that if there are multiple networks, they
are a danger to each other if the available CPU power gangs up on one.
Instead, all networks in the world would share combined CPU power, increasing
the total strength. It would make it easier for small networks to get started
by tapping into a ready base of miners."

"@dtvan: all 3 excellent points. 1) IP records don't need to be in the chain,
just do registrar function not DNS. And CA problem solved, neat. 2) Pick one
TLD, .web +1. 3) Expiration and significant renewal costs, very important."

~~~
baddox
JacobAldridge asked whether there is a better overview of Namecoin than it's
Wikipedia page. Having read the Wikipedia page and the Namecoin homepage you
linked, I can confidently say that the former is a much more detailed and
informative overview.

~~~
bachback
strangely enough there are a million people who know about this project and
1-2 actually participate. it's a wiki and opensource project, so everyone in
the world is free to contribute. same with bitcoin. roughly 5 active
developers at the moment, working mostly in their spare time.

~~~
wcoenen
Look at the list of contributors at the end of the release notes of the
upcoming 0.9.0 release of the bitcoin reference client[1]. Or look at the
activity of other projects, e.g. the bitcoinj google group[2]. There's a lot
more than 5 people working on bitcoin.

[1]
[https://bitcoin.org/bin/0.9.0/test/README.txt](https://bitcoin.org/bin/0.9.0/test/README.txt)

[2]
[https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/bitcoinj](https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/bitcoinj)

~~~
bachback
the number of people contributing is extremely small compared to the people
who know about it/make money of it/are enthusiastic about it/could contribute.
There is not a deep bench of developers. Many open issues which don't get
solved because the 3-4 main devs (laanjw, sipa, gavin) are to busy. look at
coinbase: they get rich of it, take 1% fees and add nothing back whatsoever.

------
Sanddancer
I like the idea of namecoin -- uncensorability is pretty cool from a
technological standpoint -- however the other flaws of bitcoin make me wary of
basing any sort of serious DNS replacement on it. Given that there's no plans
to increase the number of namecoins in circulation, and that creating a domain
by its very definition destroys namecoins, that 50nmc cost to buy a domain
becomes increasingly expensive over time as people buy namecoins, peoples'
wallets get lost, fraud occurs, etc. I'd be more interested if they did
something like dogecoin and reated some sort of inflationary method to
counteract this, so that we don't end up with the same mess DNS is in, only
with slightly different bad actors.

~~~
walden42
Namecoin is not controlled by anyone in particular. If it grows in demand and
people want the inflationary feature (or anything else), it will be
implemented by the network.

~~~
bachback
no, money supply is fixed. changing money supply like doge did is possible,
but risks destroying the network.

~~~
kushti
Money supply is fixed but prices for database record insertion/update could be
changed painlessly.

~~~
sillysaurus3
If the money supply is fixed, then people will have a harder time acquiring
namecoin after all the namecoin is generated. People will have to buy it, and
since it's a scarce resource, it may become extremely expensive. Especially if
namecoin exploded in popularity.

I suppose if it becomes expensive then the namecoin admins could lower the
cost of database inserts/updates. But it seems like that would prompt the
price per namecoin to rise accordingly, because the value of namecoin is a
single database insert or update.

------
thefreeman
I'm confused as to why this is suddenly at the top of HN? Were people not
aware of one of the original "alt" cryptocurrencies?

~~~
bachback
silicon valley found out about it. several tweets of major figures last week.

~~~
based2
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7401999](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7401999)

------
al2o3cr
"On October 15, 2013, a major flaw in the namecoin protocol was revealed by
the Kraken exchange COO, Michael Grønager. The exploit allowed any user to
freely steal any domain from any other user.[34] A temporary fix was deployed
which prevents fraudulent name transactions from affecting the name database
without requiring miner intervention, and a long-term fix which rejects blocks
containing such transactions is scheduled for block 150,000 if a majority of
miners upgrade.[35]"

Well, I'm sure stoked that we're building the future infrastructure of the Net
on something that we're pretty sure doesn't have a ginormous security hole
_anymore_...

------
FredericJ
If you don't know about Namecoin here are too additional ressources you might
want to check out: "OkTurtles + DNSChain" (working Namecoin + DNS
implementation): [http://okturtles.com/](http://okturtles.com/) and "Providing
better confidentiality and authentication on the Internet using Namecoin and
MinimaLT" :
[https://github.com/FredericJacobs/safeweb/blob/master/paper....](https://github.com/FredericJacobs/safeweb/blob/master/paper.pdf?raw=true)

------
bachback
There are currently 1-2 developers working on Namecoin (mostly Khan, another
core developer died recently). Namecoin itself has quite a few issues. The
design is only the beginning.

~~~
appleflaxen
Can you elaborate on the issues you allude to? The "criticism" section on
wikipedia is pretty thin.

~~~
bachback
well, at the moment there is not much reason to use the system. if you
register a ".bit" then you have to get your users to install complicated
software and in the end what you are getting is very similar to ".com". There
are major benefits, which are not explored yet. rolling out a world wide
nameservice is not trivial. at the moment it's not even used by the
underground. onename.io is the first application I have seen.

------
teach
This article has more citations per sentence than anything I have ever seen on
Wikipedia.

~~~
jebus989
Citation spam is usually an attempt to prevent article deletion, especially
pertinent as it's been deleted [0] and merged into bitcoin [1] in the past.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Namecoin)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Namecoin_\(2nd_nomination\))

------
jabgrabdthrow
I'm working on an alternative to namecoin with the following features:

* Profitable (what? profitable cryptocurrency? what?) * Powerful disincentives for squatting * Lots of funding for the project, which means we can actually push towards critical-mass adoption

More will be available at domains.bitshares.org within ~2 weeks.

~~~
rictic
Count me as interested. I've been trying to think of a distributed solution to
squatting and fraud but I've had very little luck coming up with anything
workable.

------
rumcajz
I don't get why it doesn't use bitcoin's block chain. That would give it a
strong existing infrastructure of users, miners etc. This way it is on its
own.

~~~
aaron-lebo
The Bitcoin devs don't really want the blockchain used for non-financial
transactions.

If makes sense if you think about it. The current BTC blockchain is gigabytes
of data. Add text information to every transaction and you are adding even
more bloat.

~~~
baddox
Do you have a source for that claim? The official Bitcoin wiki certainly talks
about non-financial uses of Bitcoin, and Script obviously makes such uses
possible.

~~~
aaron-lebo
Well, I remember reading something like that once, so it must be true. ;)

In all seriousness, I did some Googling and the closest I can find is this:

"One final reason is that Satoshi was opposed to putting non-Bitcoin related
data into the main chain. As creator of the system, his opinion should carry a
lot of weight with anyone serious about extending it."

[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Alternative_chain](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Alternative_chain)

I realize that is close to being useless, but I can't find the direct post in
question by Satoshi that it is referencing. I seem to recall it not being
Satoshi, however, but one of the current devs that I read a similar sentiment
from.

But again, I don't have any direct links. I apologize.

------
kushti
I'm interesting in developing services on top of Namecoin / other p2p more-
than-currencies (MasterCoin/Ethereum?). Please mail me (kushtech [at] yahoo
(dot) com) if you want to discuss related things or join me. I'm
Scala/Java/etc developer myself / entrepreneur also in past and future.

~~~
iterationx
You might be interested in learning about Twister, decentralized microblogging
(twitter) [http://twister.net.co/](http://twister.net.co/)

~~~
thisiswrong
I can't believe how potentially disruptive Twister is! Haha and I love its
system of mining for promoted tweets.

As I have always said, bitcoin (the invention) means the end of FB, Twitter,
and all similar centralized corporate entities.

------
mm0
keep pumping it op

------
RexRollman
"Namecoin is a cryptocurrency which also acts as an alternative, decentralized
DNS"

So, finally, a cryptocurrency which serves a purpose aside from filling up
HN's article listing. Cool.

~~~
atmosx
The bitcoin protocol is an extremely important advancement as it solved the
double spending[1] problem and can be used for all sorts of interesting
community and business applications. Especially for systems used by
organizations (e.g. DNS) that need to be public, uncensored and accessible
from everyone (institutions, countries and individuals).

Here are just a few ideas:
[http://www.convalesco.org/#31](http://www.convalesco.org/#31)

[1] [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Double-
spending](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Double-spending)

