biolizard89 wrote:
A hypothetical: Imagine if names were completely free. A single attacker could register the entire d/ namespace (it would take some time due to the block size limit, but would still be very effective), effectively DoSing the system. I believe that this can be considered censorship. Names are not fungible, and are unique. If a single attacker can command control of an immense amount of the namespace, then that attacker has censored a lot of legitimate speech.
If you agree (I don't know if you do, some people don't) that one's Namecoin holding (whether it's coins or registered names) is private property, you cannot label him "an attacker".
Secondly, if he's occupying the entire name space (or 99.99% or whatever), all the names he registered belong to him (assuming you agree that one's blockchain holding belongs to the person who has the private key required to manipulate it) and in that case he has the full right to deny access to others (just like with trespassing). A legitimate walk is walk on your own and/or "public" property (as well as any other where you get a permit from the owner), and legitimate speech on the namecoin blockchain is speech performed using unspent outputs from addresses that belong to you (or to this "attacker").
biolizard89 wrote:
OneName is bulk-registering names at virtually no cost to themselves, and this is harmful. For Namecoin to be resistant to censorship and centralization, the name price must be sufficiently high that a single small actor cannot squat an immense amount of the names.
Why is the price not higher?
I think it's great that OneName is doing what they're doing. Without companies like their, the price would be even lower!
This is also a good example of why private property is important. The same (well, not exactly the same) id on regular NMC, say "thedonald" may be wroth 100 NMC, while "thedonald" on Onename may be worth several times as much. Clearly this higher vale is captured by Onename, but it is so only because they were able to make that happen by adding value on their own (compared to "regular" ID's).
I think there's a lot of unreasonable negativity towards these "speculators" whereas in fact they are important members of the ecosystem (in cases like Onename, they're engaging in "permissionless innovation").
biolizard89 wrote:
It's okay with me if 90% of the names are squatted by speculators -- but it needs to be a diverse set of speculators, not just two or three holding them all.
Each of us has his own standard of what "reasonable" means. You may think it'd be better if there were 5 of them, I may say 10.
But it seems the project is by definition (anti-censorship, freedom) against that kind of policing, or at least that is what one would expect (we can't know how many speculators there are, since we don't know the identities of address "owners").
Even if you assume there could be some sort of conclusion on this (say, 6 speculators should own not more than 80% of the name space), what happens when one of them uses a proxy to buy another 5%? Or even directly.
So there's nothing that can be done, and if it could be done, it would ruin the credibility of the project. That's why it's not very fruitful to discuss how many speculators there are and what is reasonable.
biolizard89 wrote:
Now, to be clear: I strongly believe that usability improvements, including registration of names, lookup of names, and trading of names, should be done before we worry about the name price. The market value of a .bit name is much lower than the market price of a .com name, mainly because of those usability issues. But, once we fix those, we should consider changes to the name pricing scheme. My personal opinion (backed by no math or logic) is that 1 or 2 USD should be sufficient. But that discussion can happen later.
I think a similar comparison (and root cause analysis) can be made for NMC vs. Onename id's. I don't know how much Onename ID's would sell for, but I would assume the good ones are worth at least $10-$20 a piece, if not much more. Now let's consider what happens from the end user perspective here:
* I visit onename.com
* I get a name for free
* I am richer by $5 or more
This value appears out of nowhere. Good for Onename investors and good for their users.
We should hope they be more successful and not move to another blockchain.