domains ETH.link domain & GoDaddy Statement

[Lox]

... ENS DAO tweeted that the (ETH.link ) domain's owner, Virgil Griffith, is "unavailable". By this, they mean that he is currently serving his first of five years in prison for helping North Korea evade sanctions. With Griffith "unavailable", the project has found itself at the mercy of GoDaddy. Welcome to the decentralized web3 we've all been promised!
Although GoDaddy previously allowed another person to renew the domain on Griffith's behalf, they reversed that decision, and now say they intend to allow the domain to expire on September 5.
The ENS DAO issued a series of tweets urging people to switch to a different service, given the risk that the domain could be snapped up. "If the name expires and is acquired by someone with ill intent, the damage they could do via phishing is substantial - so please update your links and alert your users of the issue immediately," they wrote.

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GoDaddy Statement / ENS DAO Twitter

 

[bmugford]

Maybe "decentralized" isn't quite as decentralized as team decentralized claims it is.

Brad

 

[pb]

The chain is only as strong as its weakest .link

 

[bmugford]

It's wild that a domain with such wide deployment is controlled by one person and doesn't have some kind of delegated admin set up.

I think ICANN should consider giving all of the alt roots namespaces within the existing system. I think the biggest hurdle would be figuring out who oversees them. Since ICANN plays a big role in intellectual property protection (trademarks, etc.) they may not have the political will to hand a namespace to a 3rd party with no strings attached.

I say let them apply for unmoderated TLDs, but only allow 1 TLD per alt root. Instead of Unstoppable and Handshake arguing over '.crypto', marshal them on to 'crypto.uns' and 'crypto.hns'. That avoids collisions in global DNS. Browsers (or extensions) could be set up to let the TLD double as an alternate protocol. For example, 'ryan.eth.ens' can map to 'ens://ryan.eth' if a browser (or extension) supports it.

IMHO, avoiding collisions should be the main priority and I don't see the harm in allowing alt roots if they don't cause collisions. In fact, I think you can have technical solutions to a lot of problems as long as there's an authoritative list of alt roots. By embracing them, you get that list.

In reality, I think ICANN is more in the mindset of wanting the alt roots to fail and they aren't going to give them an opportunity to participate in the current system. I think that's short sighted because it risks fracturing the global namespace. That would be a shame because a globally recognized, collision free namespace is a modern marvel. The political atmosphere for replicating that accomplishment may not be reproducible.

The problem is the vast majority of the people pushing these are "decentralization" evangelists.

I agree with much of what you say. Actual decentralization has all kinds of issues starting with conflicts, however at that point you are basically just more for the status quo. It would just be putting these extensions on the normal DNS root servers, which will happen over time anyway, for ICANN to manage.

All these companies are tripping over themselves to launch "domains" based on special software, settings, while preaching "decentralization" then complaining when another party tries to enter the field.

It seems what these companies like Unstoppable Domains really want is not decentralization, it is a monopoly of non-existent extensions that they can then try to use to get ICANN versions of domains that work on actual standard settings aka normal root servers.

That is not going to happen. ICANN has dealt with their alternate root nonsense in the past.
The idea is the same, this time it is just wrapped in a shiny new package.

Brad

 

[Armageddon]

I wanted but dont have money

 

[ryan29]

It's wild that a domain with such wide deployment is controlled by one person and doesn't have some kind of delegated admin set up.

I think ICANN should consider giving all of the alt roots namespaces within the existing system. I think the biggest hurdle would be figuring out who oversees them. Since ICANN plays a big role in intellectual property protection (trademarks, etc.) they may not have the political will to hand a namespace to a 3rd party with no strings attached.

I say let them apply for unmoderated TLDs, but only allow 1 TLD per alt root. Instead of Unstoppable and Handshake arguing over '.crypto', marshal them on to 'crypto.uns' and 'crypto.hns'. That avoids collisions in global DNS. Browsers (or extensions) could be set up to let the TLD double as an alternate protocol. For example, 'ryan.eth.ens' can map to 'ens://ryan.eth' if a browser (or extension) supports it.

IMHO, avoiding collisions should be the main priority and I don't see the harm in allowing alt roots if they don't cause collisions. In fact, I think you can have technical solutions to a lot of problems as long as there's an authoritative list of alt roots. By embracing them, you get that list.

In reality, I think ICANN is more in the mindset of wanting the alt roots to fail and they aren't going to give them an opportunity to participate in the current system. I think that's short sighted because it risks fracturing the global namespace. That would be a shame because a globally recognized, collision free namespace is a modern marvel. The political atmosphere for replicating that accomplishment may not be reproducible.

 

[tonyk2000]

alternate root nonsense

Well said

Not a big fan of ICANN, but alternate roots are doomed to failure imo. Both from the technical perspective and due to the nature of ICANN in its current state (pure business). Somebody pays? Then it is all good. Something like this https://techstartups.com/2022/01/22...-harvesting-personal-data-millions-consumers/ is on the air? Still fine, they pay. Are alternate roots ready to pay ICANN? Highly unlikely. So, why would ICANN include them into official roots. I would not be surprised if ICANN already secretly funded (or will soon fund) some new super-unstoppable-whatever domains just to add more confusion, to let them sue each other and to finally disappear alltogether...

As for GoDaddy or any other registrar, yeah, renewals by 3rd parties should not be allowed. Common sense. It was acceptable in 90x I think, and, if I remember correctly, netsol allowed such renewals - but this opened all sorts of issues and side effects (legal, ownership, chargebacks, deletions etc etc).