Discuss mailing list

[Boily Gérald <boily.gerald AT free.fr>]

Hi,

There is so much things to explain about our project that i suggest you reading the wiki, ask on irc or ask here if you have more questions after that mail.

Down at the bottom they have a task list...  Joining OpenNic is the last item on their list.  It's nice to know that OpenNic is their preferential choice to associate with, but it might have been nice if they had mentioned it to us before building up their whole project around assumptions.

First, our projects may have similar goals, but they don't work the same way, and that's why being "compatible" with opennic (i even wonder if it could be accepted as an opennic project, due to technical differences) was not my priority (i've written the roadmap in 5 minuts :p).

To understand things a bit more :
- there is no bit. TLD, but a shared database with domain names registered and signed with private/public keys (namecoin software is based on the Bitcoin system and code)
- this shared database (downloaded by the namecoin software) contains a list of name/value in the following form, for the opennic.bit domain for example :

"name" : "d/opennic"
"value" : '{"info":{"description":"First .bit DNS server","registrar":"http://register.dot-bit.org"},"ns":["ns0.web-sweet-web.net","ns1.web-sweet-web.net"],"map":{"":{"ns":["ns0.web-sweet-web.net","ns1.web-sweet-web.net"]}},"email":"register AT dot-bit.org"}'
"expires_in" : 6992

The name field is "d/" + domain name without tld (This software can be used to other things than domain names, see namespaces. But, for now, only d/ is really used).
The value field is configured based on this draft spec.
expires_in is a number of block (see at the end)
Anybody can use the namecoin software to parse the value field of each name and make his own DNS server or a public one, or make a proxy usable in their browser. This works that way to avoid a central authority.
The .bit TLD is not registered in the software, but chosen by parsers (consensus is to use .bit for "d/").
The network could be used to add other TLDs, it's up to namecoin DNS servers to chose to support them or not (remember, there is no central authority to attribute names, so, converting an existing TLD to a namecoin TLD may lead to different owners for a domain in namecoin and a domain elsewhere).
I would say that the namecoin database is our tier-0 server (if i understand your tier 0-1-2 structure the right way).
If we would like to add .bit support to opennic, i guess the namecoin software + a parser should be added on some opennic tier-1 servers and the bit TLD on the tier-0 server. Am-i right ?

I found this rather interesting:

http://namecoin.bitcoin-contact.org/

The first server listed (178.32.31.41) serves up the entire OpenNIC
space without error.  I haven't quite wrapped my head around all this
yet...

I've added opennic TLDs to my .bit DNS server to support your usefull project :p (the second DNS server did the same)

Opennic.bit???  Wow, I don't even remember there being an email asking about creating this TLD as part of opennic.  They even point to our how-to pages for setup instructions.

I've registered the domain for an eventual future use (to be coherent with my roadmap :p). And i redirect to your instruction to change a DNS server because it provides good infos.

I am curious if anyone associated with them follows our list.  It would seem that if I was going to associate my project with another (Even indirectly) I would want to follow their internals. 
I did register on that list in that way :p But, namecoin is still really young and was not ready for opennic in my opinion.
With the current domain spec, i guess it is, now. We only need a script that supports the full spec (and see if it is possible to include .bit in opennic servers)


The whole namecoin project is really much more complex, and inherits from all the bitcoin features too. So, to be fast :
- names must be registered with a currency : NMC (namecoins)
- cost will be near 0 NMC in 1 year or two (just to avoid a rush now)
- namecoins can be "mined" or bought (see also), there is no 1 person that own them all
- each 10mn on average, a new block is generated by miners, which include all recent transactions (when you register a name [with name_new and name_firstupdate commands], and when you send NMC to other people). This block is then sent to everybody on the network (miners and non-miners)
- to generate a valid block (accepted by others), its hash must be bellow a particular value (called difficulty) which changes with the number of people participating in mining to keep an average rate of 1 block each 10mn (so, blocks are generated randomly be people on the network that are mining). This system is used to secure transactions (avoid double-spend, etc. The bitcoin system is complex)

I'll let you digest that, follow links, etc :D

If you have more questions, i've some time to spend :p

--
Best regards,
Boily Gérald.