Hey Indo 

Great comments, and no, we'll never have a consensus about "squatting," whatever that means to the individual reader. Your view and mine are closer than most I think. There are multiple behaviors that always seem to get lumped into this generic bag called squatting. They should be dealt with differently, as they are in the conventional system. How much of a problem the respective behaviors are is a matter of opinion, but each has its unique set of edge cases to be accounted for.

As for fighting "squatting" I personally don't think any of this is necessary. I think the only thing that *should* be done is to hold back the best names, as the conventional registry operators do. Not to prevent them from being registered, but simply because a lot of money can be made selling them for high prices. But almost everyone here disagrees, and thinks squatting is a huge problem, so I simply wanted to say that there are so many easy things you can do to make it less desirable.

My point about the speedy registration times was that it's a distinguishing feature Bitshares can offer that competitors cannot. The original project had the "anti-squatting" mechanism (auctions) touted as the primary thing that was different. So I tried to make the point that offering "instant registrations" is a better differentiator. First time registrants are often eager to get started. And paired with some really basic DIY web page builder they can register a name and have a simple site built and resolving in minutes. Not hours. No other potential competitor can offer this to my knowledge.

This chain is fast, and that fact should be exploited. Play the cards you're dealt right? It's also more centralized, and I think that can be used to great advantage in designing certain system features as well.

OK my $0.02 - for a Bitshares DNS offering, it's important to think up front about what the distinguishing features should be. My personal opinion is that the emphasis should be on the blockchain and DPoS. Domain Name resolution is the 800 pound gorilla, but it's a universal problem, and a proprietary solution from one chain will not satisfy the general need for all blockchain-based DNS. Be a different DDNS, highlight your inherent strengths through creative feature sets.

I would assert that since you have here a fundamentally different chain than Namecoin's "traditional-style" POW chain that should be the focus. Namecoin is very well served by the SHA-256 POW system they use, due to the unique merge-mining situation they have with Bitcoin. But making a weaker copy of that is, well, weak. Bitshares is a very fast, efficient chain with a different consensus model and should leverage that.

You have the potential here, for example, to get a new domain name registration up and resolving before even the first block is added in a 10-minute block system! Contrast that with Namecoin, where not only does each block take a while, but new registration requires two consecutive operations, so realistically you can't expect your name to resolve for people an hour after registering it.

Feel free to flame me to death for this next part, but I also believe that the emphasis on a complicated auction-style system to deter squatting was ill-advised. Not having a predictable annual cost is a negative for the business community, and I believe that "squatting", however you define it, is not an actual problem.

I've been involved in the domain industry for years, and people have complained since the late 90's that .COM was so completely squatted. Yet they continue tor register them, instead of going for shorter .WHATEVER domains. People find names, and the business has continued to boom with xxx,xxx,xxx .COM registrations. It continues to grow even this year, with hundreds of new TLDs introduced.

I don't expect many to agree about squatting being a fictitious problem, but my point is that designing feature sets around those capabilities that are unique to Bitshares chain is more appealing, no? You might prefer to think of it in terms of being a competitive advantage.

Near-instant registrations, as I alluded to earlier, would seem to be one such interesting differentiator. Ever look at Dash's (was Darkcoin) InstantX payments, where it happens almost immediately? This, for domain registrations (and subsequent website setup) is a killer feature that's very tough to match by any would-be competitors.

Thanks Ken. I think your thread here proves that interest in blockchain-based DNS is as strong as ever. There are many small missteps on the path, but the basic underlying need remains. There have been, and continue to be compelling reasons for decentralizing this core Internet infrastructure. Round up @toast and the gang and let's have some fun.

My personal belief is that Namecoin is going to really come into its own soon, after such a long period of stagnation. I also believe that other, different, blockchain-based DNS will come to market in quick succession, and mainstream folks will finally start to realize they have real choices. Maybe that'll include some offering from this group - I hope so. So count me in for whatever, I'll be glad to do what I can. - Mike

If decentralized storage of website content is the main goal wouldn't Storj be a more practical way to go?

NMC can relaunch with a squatter resistant DNS on a more efficient blockchain, which can allow it to list separately, yet still within the Bitshares umbrella (due to the PTS/AGS)

Yeah good luck getting Namecoin to switch to DPoS, that does mean abandoning merge-mining with Bitcoin.

The toolset/support between the 2 projects obviously has huge overlap though.  So I think it might be possible to work with them.  Just give them $$ no strings attached and don't go announcing it all over the place.  Just a sincere and friendly gesture to help them with their development and hopefully become more of a team or at the very least align some aspects of the projects.  DNS servers supporting both projects simultaneously, plugins, etc.

Although we are direct competitors, neither project is going away.  So it makes far more sense to see the hoards of non-adopters as the shared goal where everyone benefits.

Since all the non-blockchain infrastructure will potentially be shared it totally makes sense to work together. This is hardly Apple vs. Microsoft, this is more like Mosaic browser versus Netscape in 1994. Both groups should be focused on growing the non-ICANN market for domains 1000x. There are hundreds of millions of domains registered in the legacy system, and we're probably looking at only hundreds of thousands of decentralized domains next year.

I support a sharedrop. But give them an insanely short time period, say 30 or 60 days (rather than a year) to redeem.

Yeah - it has a pronounced effect if people act in the initial weeks. 9 months out is not at all the same dynamic.

I agree with the previous posters. That post is inflammatory, and replying with emotional responses will surely not have any benefit. Bickering will reflect badly on all participants. Unless of course someone has factual knowledge of what exactly happened, in which case it might be appropriate to set the record straight.

I think most people understand that on reddit, and the Internet in general, there are always gonna be a small number of people whose goal is simply to stir up trouble. The best thing IMO for BitsharesDNS is for everyone to just stay focused.

Hi all,

I'm working on getting the DNS GUI in place. Here's a working draft of the record editor—

https://danielbrockman.se/2014/bts-dns-editor/1/

Right now I'm focusing on getting the basic structure right, and there's quite a bit of surface polishing to be done still, but feel free to comment, especially if you see anything that doesn't seem to make sense logically.

(Subdomain mappings will be handled outside of this UI in a way that basically puts the root domain plus all subdomains next to each other in a flat list.)

 

End-to-end would also be a problem for a for-profit Tor. Also, you'd have to consider the fact that you're now paying node operators. How would you structure the incentives so that node operators will be more honest than they are in vanilla Tor?

Yeah, you can pay them but it won't make them behave better. If you could solve one of the main problems in Tor, you could have an advantage until they implemented the same in Tor. Then you're back to free versus paid.

There is one relationship between Tor and BitsharesDNS that @derrick outlined in the "alias" section of the specification.

If I understand correctly, I should be able to use a .P2P domain to give folks a more memorable name to use to get to a site that I run as a Tor hidden service. Let's say my blog is at mdwabc12345xyz.onion

I could specify something in the blockchain entry for mdwblog.p2p
{
  "alias": "mdwabc12345xyz.onion",
  . . . . .
}

and the people who can resolve .p2p domains have an easier way to reach my onion site via http://mdwblog.p2p.