/ Unsplash / Charles Deluvio
What happened
The campaign for an alternative implementation of the namespace has been actively promoted since last year. A few days ago, a material was released with detailed explanations of critical assessments, proposals for global decentralization, the necessary requirements for the project and its potential capabilities.
We analyzed the article and discussion around it on thematic platforms. We share the main findings, additional materials and opinions on this topic.
What do they criticize for
The company's website contains references to the problem of excessive centralization on the side of "technology monopolists", national and international organizations - from ICANN to social networks.
The founders of Namebase are questioning how such entities (and even states) exercise the rights to free speech and ownership of digital assets like profiles, usernames, and domain names. In their speeches - they often recall cases of theft, blocking and removal of such "assets" without due process or explanation.
What are the proposals
According to the opinion of enthusiasts of the topic, to move away from all sorts of difficulties towards the universal, sustainable and decentralized namespace, you need:
- Make sure the new system is decentralized.
- Leave only key functionality.
- Provide low resource consumption and trustless availability.
- Maintain compatibility with common network infrastructure.
- Provide for the possibility of updating at the protocol level.
The first and second requirements can be implemented using a dedicated PoW blockchain (the company called it Handshake ). Thus, the developers plan to eliminate the risks of destabilizing the system due to the actions of stakeholders or any external factors.
In their opinion, designing on the basis of existing blockchains will not allow achieving such an effect in the long term, which is the determining factor for the smooth operation and updating (the fifth point of the requirements) of "IT standards" of this level.
In response to the third requirement, developers suggest storing namespace data in so-called Urkel Trees , designed specifically for this task. They act as an alternativeparticia trees in Ethereum, but with nodes of 32 (leaf / sibling nodes) and 76 bytes (internal nodes), and the PoW weight here does not exceed a kilobyte even if there are tens of millions of "leaves".
This is how the team tries to optimize the time and resources required for name resolution. In addition, she also opened a "light" client in C - it deals exclusively with DNS tasks.
/ Unsplash / Thomas Jensen
If we talk about compatibility (fourth point), according to the founders, the project is aimed at expanding the capabilities of existing IT standards, and not at replacing them. The developers are confident that “netizens should have more opportunities to maintain control and make sure that this or that name belongs to them”, and continue to develop their product (basic information on it - GitHub repository , documentation , API ) ...
What they are criticized for
Hacker News was linked to a Handshake-powered app store and similar implementations . But there were also those who expressed fears that the vendor is simply trying to become another registrar, operating with names in a slightly updated format. The independence of such projects was also questioned, citing data on the distribution of mining pools.
At some point, the discussion went aside - one of the site's residents even expressed an idea of a similar "revival" of RSS-ecosystem, which could become a decentralized answer for the monopolized social media market. But here - as in the Handshake situation - everything came down to the issue of monetization and the degree of elegance in its resolution. As you know, such DNS projects have already tried to launch , but this process did not go as smoothly as their founders would like.
Now Handshake and Namebase have several alternatives at once - from Unstoppable Domains ( documentation ) to Ethereum Name Service ( ENS ). Time will tell whether they will be able to compete with the existing approaches to domain name management and become widespread.
PS Additional reading in our hubblog -work of providers and development of communication systems .