debate Could Blockchain Democratise dot-COM

[Registry Services]

Recently I wrote a blog discussing the possibility of replacing Verisign with a Blockchain consortium. Thought it might be of interest

https://names.of.london/press/can-blockchain-democratise-dot-com/

Interestingly, my blog came out only days before Verisign issued a press release about exploring blockchain

https://www.coindesk.com/verisign-explores-blockchain-domain-security-system/

Comments welcome.


James

 

[Kuffy]

It would only be immutable if there were multiple copies of the blockchain stored on decentralised computers. Maybe all registrars would be obliged to keep copies, and it would be available for domain investors (and spammers) to download and analyse as well. If you didn't elect for privacy at first registration/transfer, you wouldn't be able to add it.

My cynical mind wonders if it is a way to bypass registrars, or to introduce high frequency trading to increase domain name prices.

 

[Registry Services]

It would only be immutable if there were multiple copies of the blockchain stored on decentralised computers. Maybe all registrars would be obliged to keep copies, and it would be available for domain investors (and spammers) to download and analyse as well. If you didn't elect for privacy at first registration/transfer, you wouldn't be able to add it.

My cynical mind wonders if it is a way to bypass registrars, or to introduce high frequency trading to increase domain name prices.

In the original post I suggested ... "A blockchain distributed network could be run by a consortium of the larger registrars ..."

Access to the blockchain itself, and how much identifying information would be held in it, are interesting issues.

 

[domainer111]

If it's not broken...

 

[Kuffy]

I think this would be quite difficult to implement. The strength of Bitcoin comes from a cryptographic proof of work to generate blocks, and a distributed ledger with multiple copies maintained by thousands of nodes ( including me). To ensure that the addition of a transaction is veried, a block needs to be confirmed a number of times to ensure that it isn't part of an orphaned block. Some assume that 2 confirmations are sufficient for this verification. There is a concentration of power in the domain industry with organisations such as Google, GD and Microsoft having considerable influence. Lets assume that a large investment consortium decides to bulk register several thousand deleted names. That could cause a fork in the chain, and any other registrants would have their registrations ignored. The investor could then taste the names for a few days, and cherry pick the ones he wanted. He could then cancel the names he didn't want.

 

[Registry Services]

If it's not broken...

You're right - it's not "broken", Verisign do a great job - *but*

1) all that money does concentrate a lot of power in one place.
2) they represent a vulnerability - if the zone file was published by multiple entities it would be more resilient to a Mirai type attack.

I discuss this in a different article ... https://names.of.london/press/lets-take-down-the-internet/