Transitioning the web to Namecoin by addressing squatters

[sugarpuff]

Anybody could contest a domain(1000 block waiting for ex) as long as the payed registration fee is lower then the maximum fee(200 NMC proposed). So if somebody reserved Google with 0.02 NMC Google can contest it for ex with 0.04 NMC and if nobody offers more in 1000 blocks ~ 1 week then it belongs to them. If somebody offers more then who has the max offer will take it.

I don't understand what "1000 block waiting for ex" means.

Are you saying that someone can steal domains that you own just by paying more than you?

[sugarpuff]

virtual_master proposed an auction-based system with a maximum fee: https://dot-bit.bit/forum/viewtopic.php ... 9982#p6653

A few notes on this that weren't addressed in his post (read his post before you read the following):

Thanks for the heads up biolizard, I read his post and some of the others in that thread, and posted a couple of replies.

(1) I think if his proposal were implemented, all domains currently owned should go up for auction at a prechosen block height, with the "initial owner" being the person who owned it at the previous block. This means that everyone who owns a high-value name now can keep their name if they're willing to pay e.g. 200NMC for it, which will rate limit squatters into extinction but will be fine for people with 1-2 high-value names.

That sounds like a terrible idea. Not many people have 200NMC ($800 today!!!) to keep the names they already own.

That would probably guarantee that no one uses Namecoin.

Your proposal also does not allow owners of today's names to keep their domain names without having to fight other people and have bidding wars for domains they already own.

Regarding your first point, the issue is that blocks are checked for validity regardless of age. So how would you be able to verify blocks containing an expired .com domain?

Not sure I understand you, "check for validity" for what?

If a .com domain is expired in today's DNS then it cannot be registered in these special namespaces until someone claims it in the old DNS.

[sugarpuff]

(1) You apparently are unaware of WikiLeaks, Pirate Bay, and the large number of other websites that have had domains seized.

This was addressed in the HN thread:

How do you determine who owns the .com domain? When a domain is seized by the government does the com/piratebay domain respect the blockchain or the centralized DNS now updated signtaure? If it's the latter.. what's the point of using the blockchain version at all?

Expiry dates would be set to match those from today's DNS entries, so that addresses new owners.

As far as domain-seizures go, first it should be emphasized that this issue affects probably less than 1% of 1% of internet domains. However, to answer the question: if the domain was stolen from its owners prior to the expiry date, I personally see no reason to change the entry contents in the blockchain to match that of the stolen property. They can wait for it to expire and then register it like everyone else. :-p

Meanwhile, I doubt the piratebay would be using the .com (and we know that they can't today). They'd be using the .bit (or whatever else), because they'd be protected from such theft. ^_^

(2) The proposal would break blockchain validation even if a single domain is hijacked on a single network. I.e. if 500 miners have a single (different) DNS entry censored on their network, then they generate 500 blockchain forks. Relying on nondeterministic off-chain data is simply not workable for blockchain validation. This isn't just about certain domains being censored. This proposal would break the entire blockchain if any domain is censored from the point of view of any miner.

Now that is real criticism! Great observation!

Yes, this needs to be addressed. The proposal can be kept as-is with the following modification/addition:

In order to prevent such attacks, it could be required that transactions need be confirmed across N "different networks", where "different networks" can be measured by some metric (IP2location, the first two octets of an IPv4 address, etc.). The value for N can be based as a percentage of the number of nodes running in the past 48 hours, or some other means.

[virtual_master]

Anybody could contest a domain(1000 block waiting for ex) as long as the payed registration fee is lower then the maximum fee(200 NMC proposed). So if somebody reserved Google with 0.02 NMC Google can contest it for ex with 0.04 NMC and if nobody offers more in 1000 blocks ~ 1 week then it belongs to them. If somebody offers more then who has the max offer will take it.

I don't understand what "1000 block waiting for ex" means.

Are you saying that someone can steal domains that you own just by paying more than you?

Contesting the name and waiting 1000 blocks until confirmed.(in this time the original name owner could react and bring higher his investment.
may be you didn't read the hole thread but 200 NMC is would just the highest investment as long the domain is use. When you give back the domain the invested coins will be released.
'Stealing' is only if you consider auctions as stealing. The domains should go to the highest economic interest.
If you make a personal domain like sugerpuffshomepage.bit I guess it will be enough to invest 0.02 NMC as nobody would contest it but if you reserve google.bit with 0.02 NMC then Google could take it with 200 NMC as they have a higher economic interest. However this would be just a coin-locking during the domain use.
There is a trade off between limiting excessive domain squatting and protecting the interests of the original registrant.

[sugarpuff]

Are you saying that someone can steal domains that you own just by paying more than you?

Contesting the name and waiting 1000 blocks until confirmed.(in this time the original name owner could react and bring higher his investment.
may be you didn't read the hole thread but 200 NMC is would just the highest investment as long the domain is use. When you give back the domain the invested coins will be released.

Ah, thank you, I must have misread or misunderstood that part.

Personally, I think $800 to guarantee ownership of a domain is too much, but I understand the principle now.

'Stealing' is only if you consider auctions as stealing. The domains should go to the highest economic interest.
If you make a personal domain like sugerpuffshomepage.bit I guess it will be enough to invest 0.02 NMC as nobody would contest it but if you reserve google.bit with 0.02 NMC then Google could take it with 200 NMC as they have a higher economic interest. However this would be just a coin-locking during the domain use.
There is a trade off between limiting excessive domain squatting and protecting the interests of the original registrant.

So how does somebody know that they need to suddenly pay more to hold their domain?

[virtual_master]

Personally, I think $800 to guarantee ownership of a domain is too much, but I understand the principle now.

Why ? We are speaking about valorous domains.
How much is it worth the google.com domain ? 1 million $ or 1 billion $ ? for a concurrent company like Yahoo as final trading and not even just as deposit like here
But this is just a proposal, all user of the network should decide where is the balance what each party could accept.

So how does somebody know that they need to suddenly pay more to hold their domain?

This is really not a big philosophy. In the network protocol could be implemented such a request to contest a domain name which will be introduced by the miners in a block like any transaction or name registration request.
If in the blockchain then the client of the domain owner could show a red alert if the proper wallet is loaded. But the blockexplorer could show it also. There could be additionally other alert systems implemented also like email, bitmessage or internal Namecoin message(this is also a planned extension).

[Pagel1928]

An alternative solution is to start a new altcoin/namecoin, write a tighter DNS specification for data hosted in the chain.

Then premine a certain number of namecoins, and create a similar "sunrise"/"launch" system exactly the same as the .xxx launch.

Where you have trademark holders reserve their domains and a period of auctioning domains etc.

Then it would at least as fair as the .xxx TLD launch. The premined coins would then be publically destroyed.

[pitbull]

Any method of contesting ownership or auctioning domain introduces a method of censorship. This fundamentally breaks namecoin.

I'd rather see domain costs increased to reduce speculation or namespace expanded to other TLD's - and perhaps all names at initial registration are auctioned off as previously described.

Once a domain is owned, that's it. No contesting it, period. Sorry Google, Microsoft, etc. This is why namecoin will succeed. Otherwise, why not just stick with ICANN and what works? Faster DNS lookups isn't much of a selling point to the vast majority.

[pitbull]

To fix the first line (I can't seem to edit it)- Any method of contesting ownership of a domain introduces a method of censorship.

[sugarpuff]

To fix the first line (I can't seem to edit it)- Any method of contesting ownership of a domain introduces a method of censorship.

Which proposals are you comments referring to, the original one or the auction ones? From what I can tell they're referring to the auction/bidding based ones. The proposal in the first post does not introduce "any method of contesting ownership", as far as I can tell (certainly there was no intention to do that, quite the opposite actually).