RFC - Decentralised Naming System

I know that I’m presenting this like a stoner, well then let’s make it unattractive for name squatters. Let’s price a exclusive name at $100 K, after all that’s the minimum that companies are willing to pay Icann for a gTLD. Problem solved.

I’m not really worried about another man/woman who is a community member’s profit, money is not everything, but if a little profit can make Maidsafe grow (software/hardware/enable education) that’s the only thing that interests me.

Then you like my idea above?:

A set fee … a small one over many urls would potentially generate a lot of money directly to maidsafe and avoid the unsavoury name squatting.

I’m against selling names, the current scheme seems sufficient to me. If people want to get rid of the additional numeric identifiers, DNS-like systems could be build on top of the network, where lists of names (without the numbers) are attributed to the “correct” party. This could be done through a voting system, or by a trusted party. If the list is useful, it will become popular and generate some income (from the network and SafeCoin donations).

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I was thinking this the other day too. These names could ultimately just become addressible IDs, much like IP addresses in the long run.

It may be that people will want particularly IDs and will pay dearly for them, but they would become more like vanity addresses with a regular resolver over the top.

That said, this is a subject which care needs to be taken with. Clearly, individuals benefiting from the efforts of the devs and investors doesn’t seem very fair and it would seem more equitable for that profit to be reinvested into safe net.

If big money comes in for registering names, I would like to think that some combination of developers, miners, users should benefit from this. It would help the network to grow and would be less susceptible to accusations of blackmail etc.

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I think we should set up a service that doesn’t include paying for names. Let the most well-known party under a particular name get that name. If google starts some sort of service on SAFE, they can just register their google-XXXXXXXXX (with X’s being numbers) ID in the core. The service that runs on top of SAFE, would then resolve simply “google” to that particular google-XXXXXXXXX ID.

My point is, for the vast majority of names it is very clear who is the “real”, legit party. Everyone associates “google” with the company that got founded in California in 1998. It doesn’t make sense to require payment to get this generally accepted association working in SAFE. For small companies that have the same name, let it be a popularity contest. The loser can always change or adapt their name, which is generally a good idea if there’s a bigger company with the same name already.

I think if we do have payment for exclusive names, the SafeCoins should be destroyed and recycled. Let the network take care of the re-distribution. This is good for circulation and network growth. Both farmers and app developers will profit from it.

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I had the same idea a while back, but it would just be wasting time, because if you got multiple domains you have to proof them one by one.
www.google.nl
www.google.eu

www.google.in

With an exclusive name all these names would just be under the google umbrella.

I’m sorry Seneca, but I have to totally disagree that it doesn’t make sense to require payment. When I look at what Icann is asking right now for a gTLD, I wonder why it woulden’t make sense if the Maidsafe project ask to same price so we can further grow the SAFE Network.

If Google would want the gTLD (.google) they would have to pay Icann a minimum of $200 K, they would even pay ANNUAL FEES. Until now I haven’t read something about a renewal fee with the SAFE DNS system. And the thing is, Google is ready to pay Icann this in a heartbeat. Why would we the Maidsafe community NOT WANT this money to come into the SAFE Network economy? People seem to be afraid of big money and have the idea that something is unfair. The reality is not Icann or Google or any of these for profit companies care about the Maidsafe project. Take a good look at Namecoin, big companies laugh about their dot bit domain. Well at least if some one would pay for a SAFE DNS it would have it advantages.

Having a DNS that funds the Maidsafe project, is way better than us having to beg for donations. Just having the SAFE Network software in our hands is not gonna let it take off like a rocket. We’ll need money to promote the SAFE Network, educate people about it and open up new doors.

I’m puzzled at why that, instead of handing this to the Maidsafe Foundation. Maybe if people don’t want all the SAFEcoins to go to the Maidsafe Foundation, maybe it would be an option to donate to SAFE Network projects (kickstarter style). No offence, but if we don’t have a paid DNS system which insure the further growth of the SAFE Network, maybe we’ll have a longer road to travel. Not that I mind the long road, I’m in this Maidsafe thingy for life.

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I really like the idea of being able to map existing registered domains to a specified share, simply on the basis of ease of adoption by the general public. Current regular internet users could easily be redirected by websites at http://domain.com to safe://domain.com (given adequate browser support) in a seamless way that uses conventions they are already familiar with.

Web developers could also call resources from their safe://domain.com/ stores within pages on their http://domain.com hosted web pages.

The only technical challenge (which is not so challenging) is matching up that requested resource name with the right SAFE share (a lookup), and verifying in the other direction that the share owner has rights to the registered domain name (by already common methods of text file in web root or hash info in html headers.)

There would be no need to create additional registries, just verification on one service of ownership on another service.

I also think such lookup would require UTF-8 as international characters can now be used in registered domain names.

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The MaidSafe Foundation is a point of centralization, and I think we should keep centralization to a minimum. Destroying the coins would indirectly increase farming rewards, decrease upload costs, and combat inflation at the same time. It’s definitely good for the network.

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I thought David made a comment in the past, that at some point the devs would be on different locations. So maybe the Maidsafe Foundation could also be on different locations (yeah I know it would still be a building with people who can be arrested). But every problem can be solved, if we got enough ideas.

What if we could have a new multisig scheme (2 out of 3)? For instance one in which the Maidsafe Foundation would sign for 33 1/3% and the other 66 2/3% would be signed by the SAFE community. What would make this multisig scheme new is that it would randomly pick community members and further break up the pieces of a key.

The first signing key could be known by all the Maidsafe Foundations around the world
The second signing key, could be 10 trusted community members like the mods of this forum. Their signing key could have a (7 out of 10) scheme, that further breaks their signing key into pieces.
The third signing key, would be the real messy key. It would just randomly pick 1000 community members with a (700 out of 1000) scheme, that further breaks their signing key into pieces. This key scheme would be time based, so if you don’t sign in time another community member would be randomly selected. People who would sign the third key could also get a small donation of SAFEcoin for their work. Time based could also mean another thing, that you’ve been using/on the SAFE Network for a certain period of time, like 1 year minimum.

The first and second keys seems like the weakest links in this setup, because these people are known. Maybe the third key should be a maverick and have the special power to release all the funds to all the community members, if the first and second key holders are arrested. Maybe the whole signing of funds should be time based.

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I’m simply not a supporter of the concept. It takes the A out of DAO, making it a DO process. The autonomous part of the network is key in my opinion.

As far as SafeCoin is concerned, I see the SAFE network as a (de)Central Bank. It has special powers none else has (issuing SafeCoin) and thus executes a form of monetary policy. Like a Central Bank’s mandate often is long term growth of the national economy, SAFE’s “mandate” is doing the same for it’s own ecosystem, algorithmically. I don’t think we humans should directly interfere with this. It gets messy and unpredictable. So all payment for SAFE’s services, whether it be secure data storage, distributed cloud computing, or exclusive domain names, should get into SAFE’s own coffers, i.e. destroyed to be re-issued later, according to what the network thinks the network needs.

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Wow amazing! Thanks for taking the time to explain it.
Because what your saying seems more logic, compare to what I was saying.
Some idea’s really takes getting use too.

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What happens if someone makes a program that generates and registers all the possible DNS names in existence. Does that make them the Supreme Overlord of All SAFE DNS?

I know it is impossible to generate all the DNS names in existence, but it is within the realm of probability for someone to generate the most common names and hold them hostage, putting the SAFE Network in the same crappy centralized DNS predicament the current internet is in.

How do we solve this issue without taking away users freedom?

Network confidence ratings? If the system is able to evict people from a domain based on popular action, you could have a situation where Facebook has been gazumped, but everyone wants SAFE book, and no one wants “Is this your domain? Give me money!”

An option to flag a DNS entry as bad would allow you to choose a ratio of visits-to-flags. Obviously this moves the problem to a question of trusting reports, but it provides a decentralised mechanism to avoid domain squatting.

Hi, if @janitor excuses me for restating my views, I share this concern. The best answer I have found so far is that a network aimed to break a monopoly held by others shouldn’t build a monopoly of its own. Naming systems can be multiple.

Interoperation can be ensured via a two-tier addressing system where at the lower level unique binary addresses are used (aka “complex”, onion-style) - and resolution of these addresses to routing info is done by MaidSafe core network. At the higher level human readable addresses are mapped to binary ones. Each user may be using a different high level naming system of his choice. These high level naming systems are simply normal applications running on top of the core MadeSafe network.

There can still be one official high level naming system run by MadeSafe foundation itself. Names in this system can be sold for money. This naming system will come preconfigured on safe browser at installation time which hopefully will make it popular enough for organisations to pay money for registration.

Under this proposal each user would be able to construct his own human readable address space by combining different high level naming system. Each user would be expected to keep a list of private bookmarks mapping human readable names like ‘bank’ to the binary address his bank has given him on paper possibly via a q-code. The level of trust to all addresses resolved via naming systems would need to be carefully computed using “web of trust” techniques. Trust levels will be something a user would need to be acutely aware of.

Writers of all applications on MadeSafe network would need to be aware that different users may be using different naming systems. This means for example that all hyper links on all web pages would need to use the low level binary addresses. Reverse lookup can then be used to present a human-readable address of the new page to the user.

I agree that this all looks a bit awkward, but then we, future MadeSafe users, hope for MadeSafe to free us from the monopolies not build a new one. And if we really want it that badly we may need to put up with the associated increase in complexity of naming and learn to understand trust levels in distributed networks.

Guys you’re like those doomsday astronomers.

Firstly, you can’t just “generate” a MaidSafe address and claim it forever. You need to actually have an actual node come up and stay online.

Secondly, there’s no (as far as I know) a name resolution solution, so there’s nothing to occupy yet.

Thirdly, let’s say there’s an alias system one can bring up 100K nodes and register “all the good names”, but it doesn’t prevent you from registering a crappy name. It’s only a matter if you like (or don’t) First Come First Serve, but it’s not a matter of can you have a mycrappyalias54321.safe, I’m sure you’ll be able to get something like that.

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A small note: isn’t

    mycrappyalias54321.safe

somewhat in the same league as

    duskgytldkxiuqc6.onion

both are hard to remember and require the use of local bookmarks? And local bookmarks can be organised in a tree of folders… and if people start sharing them we get back exactly to where I started - to a multitude of naming systems.

Yes, you might end up with a name that’s close to impossible to remember, but that’s not “monopoly”, you have an unlimited number of (crappy) names at your disposal.

The naming system would be one (*.safe), bookmarks/redirects/aliases would map many-to-1. But SAFE can’t control what people do on the client, this many-to-one aliasing can always be done.

Also please everyone note that my proposal to auction “all the good names” would ensure that the names hoarder would make the Foundation so rich that it could easily fund continuous development of the platform over a period of several years without raising money.
You want a crappy name? You can have it.
You want a nice name? Buy it (i.e. donate $50 to the Foundation)

Wouldn’t this namespace also end up a bit chaotic?
The existing DNS is hierarchical making it easier on humans.

I appreciate the need to raise funds. I might even secretely dream of working for the foundation :slight_smile: So I do want it to have money even if that dream (most likely) never comes true. So what I’m trying to do here is to balance the need to raise funds against a design which in my view might deliver the best value to the humanity. Please see above…

[quote=“catbert, post:23, topic:4235”]
There can still be one official high level naming system run by MadeSafe foundation itself. Names in this system can be sold for money. This naming system will come preconfigured on safe browser at installation time which hopefully will make it popular enough for organisations to pay money for registration.[/quote]

This was my best shot so far in trying to satisfy both needs. In this official namaspace the foundation can enforce whatever policy it deems sensible - for example remove names of fraudelent sites, perform dispute resolution between trademark holders etc Might running such a namespace actually end up being a better business mode?

Another angle: imagine a legal dispute about arises.

Under the current proposal: the Foundation sold name ABC to DEF but GHI wants for itself and sues the Foundation. What does the Foundation do? Does it even have the technical means to reverse the grant of name ABC to DEF? Or has it gone into Bitcoin style block chain and can not be undone? Does the Foundation need to pay the penalty to GHI?

Under catbert proposal: firstly there are multiple naming systems, most of them not run by the Foundation - so Foundation has no responsibility for what they do. If however Foundation has granted ABC to DEF in its own official namespace and GHI wins a court battle the foundation can easily give ABC to GHI because under this proposal the naming system is not something built into the core of the network but a simple app like a relational database running on top of it.

Also if the naming service is not something built into the core of the network but an app the foundation can spawn a separate legal entity managing the official namespace. This entity would pump proceeds back into the foundation but in case of a legal case it would shield the founcation bearing all the responsiblity itself.

… and should this extra legal entity collapse of a judicial brutality that won’t do that much harm to SAFE network. Okay the Network will loose its most popular naming service but then it will be very soon replaced. This organism should survive the death of any of its parts!

I don’t think I want the Foundation to take the role of ICANN, that’d be a point of centralization and a thus a vulnerability. The Foundation members can be pressured by government agencies, their keys can be lost or stolen, etc. No SAFE functionality should be dependent on the Foundation, ideally it should only fulfill an advisory role for development and the community.

If I remember correctly the network itself has a reward scheme for developers who release SAFE software updates that actually get adopted. If that works, we don’t need the Foundation for dev funding.

I’m not principally against payment for domain names, but then the SAFE network itself should be paid. Coins used in such payments would then be recycled (destroyed and later re-issued to farmers etc) by the network. This would make SAFE far more robust economically, because right now continued farming rewards rely solely on income from data uploads. Creating more sources of income for the network should be an important goal, and DNS is a good candidate.

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