
The Handshake Network wants to reinvent DNS - rasengan
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613446/the-ambitious-plan-to-make-the-internets-phone-book-more-trustworthy/
======
p4bl0
In practice, DNS is already sort of not-centralized (even if it would be
incorrect to call it decentralized). One can decide to use specific name
servers that do not follow ICANN's rules. See for instance the OpenNIC
project. They even operate non-standard TLDs.

Using a blockchain has little benefits. And I believe it's energy cost is
really not worth it in the current situation.

~~~
ttjjcc
DNS is hierarchical, but that doesn't matter because it's effectively
controlled by ICANN and big name registrars. "permissionless" is what we need,
but you can only get there through decentralization.

This is a perfect usecase for blockchain, because we need permissionless
writes to a distributed ledger. The energy costs of running the blockchain
would likely be equivalent if not less than the current system (what's the
energy cost associated with running Godaddy?).

An alternative would be to scrap the idea of memorable domain names all
together, and move toward something like QRcodes + tor like public keys +
petnames or similar.

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peeters
> We use the DNS because most humans are bad at keeping track of long numbers.

I almost feel the need to challenge that these days. While it's absolutely
true as far as the original intention went, and is true to a limited amount
today, I think the days of most people typing domain names into the location
field of their browser is largely over. Google search is the modern DNS when
we're talking about that purpose. Today, I think DNS is much more about the
_permanence_ of an address, not whether it's memorable.

~~~
jazzyjackson
Agreed that it’s about changing what IP and address resolves to, 32 bit IPs
don’t have to be harder to memorize than a phone number. In fact most IP
addresses can be represented as a 10 digit decimal notation and last I checked
chrome will resolve this “phone number” representation into the traditional
quad-octet

~~~
omni
> most IP addresses can be represented as a 10 digit decimal notation

Can't all ipv4 addresses be represented this way, since it's equivalent to a
32 bit int?

~~~
jazzyjackson
You’re right, I can’t remember why I was thinking I ran into 11 digits...

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tmikaeld
I remember this was hot about 3 years ago.

Nothing will happen unless it's integrated into the major browsers. Afaik, no
one is planning that.

~~~
swalsh
You wouldn't integrate it in the browsers, but instead you'd probably want it
on the OS level.

~~~
camdenlock
Exactly. With all of these proposed DNS replacements, support at the OS level
is the first step to true adoption. Perhaps Linux-based OSes would be the
places to start...

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parliament32
DNS-blockchain was already done, 8 years ago:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecoin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecoin)

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goofyduck
This will catch on faster than IPv6...

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godelski
Didn't someone last year do an analysis where they thought Summit (250 PFLOPs)
could do a 51% attack on Bitcoin?

My major concern would then be what about Aurora (1ExFLOPs)[1], Frontier
(1.5ExFLOPs)[2], and similar computers? If the big draw is to avoid censorship
this seems like a big concern. Potentially making us all more vulnerable
because someone like China, Russia, or America could decide that they want to
spend all those computing resources on an attack. It's not like these machines
are a significant portion of the national budget and are really dwarfed by
military budgets. We're only talking a few hundred million dollars to build
and tens to operate.

I like the idea in principle, but is this worked out?

[0] [https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/olcf-resources/compute-
systems/sum...](https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/olcf-resources/compute-
systems/summit/)

[1] [https://aurora.alcf.anl.gov/](https://aurora.alcf.anl.gov/)

[2] [https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/frontier/](https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/frontier/)

------
nikisweeting
[https://github.com/Monadical-SAS/solana-dns](https://github.com/Monadical-
SAS/solana-dns) Solana-based DNS would have performance benefits and also not
wast the incredible amount of energy that traditional blockchains do.

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ktpsns
I stopped reading when the term "blockchain" arised. (Jokes aside, the paywall
made me stopping reading)

> Old and busted: DNS over HTTPS. New hotness: DNS over blockchain
> [https://twitter.com/dobes/status/1164412915648086016](https://twitter.com/dobes/status/1164412915648086016)

Original quote from
[https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=a3a04f1b](https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=a3a04f1b)

~~~
m-p-3
So you stopped at Blockchain just above the title? ;)

Here's the IPFS [1][2] and Outline [3] copy after bypassing the paywall

1:
[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmX6TTwqk4H6mKoKXHRGHYu22GZaCim9VBNtGdr...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmX6TTwqk4H6mKoKXHRGHYu22GZaCim9VBNtGdrqWcS8Cm/)

2: [https://cloudflare-
ipfs.com/ipfs/QmX6TTwqk4H6mKoKXHRGHYu22GZ...](https://cloudflare-
ipfs.com/ipfs/QmX6TTwqk4H6mKoKXHRGHYu22GZaCim9VBNtGdrqWcS8Cm/)

3: [https://outline.com/96CLhZ](https://outline.com/96CLhZ)

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skywhopper
How would blockchain make anything “unstoppable”? Malicious DNS records could
still end up in the chain via other attacks. How does such a system handle
establishing ownership of a namespace in the first place?

~~~
m-p-3
More like uncensorable, as unless you blocks all the nodes in the blockchain,
the ledger will eventually makes its way to those who wants to download it.

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coolspot
Very similar to Ethereum Name System, down to Vickrey auction method.

------
dang
Discussed a month ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20625561](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20625561)

------
equalunique
Mental note: Do some research later to see how this is different from
namecoin.

