The Petname System

[smacz]

@polpolrene

…David and the team want to make things in a way that you never have to use a Bitcoin-like address to send some money somewhere.

Exactly! That’s the subject of a Public Persona that I was trying to figure out here which lead me to here.

@polpolrene

Under the hood, the network will take care of all the private and public keys etc. So when you go to a forum, and you register (only need to click register, no username and pass needed) only you can post as your own username. It’s crypto secure, nobody can use it except you. Same for all the pages, forums etc. on the network.

That second link is their proposal on how to handle it. The Petname System is a replacement for that proposition, and is therefore directly incompatible with it. However, similar to @dirvine’s proposal, it has the ability (as I think you figured out) to be applicable to both the data location and public persona systems.

@polpolrene

And what I get from your post, it will be not that different from your view using a petname. If I send cnn.com to a friend, they understand that it’s about CNN.

In the existing DNS system, the name cnn.com is globally unique, verifiably owned, and human-memorable. Zooko’s triangle states that if a system is to be decentralized, it is impossible for a single identifier to have all three properties at the same time. The Petname System cannot provide a single identifier that is all three without disproving Zooko’s triangle. So it does the next best thing, it implements a system that uses only two of the three properties at any given time.