Tim Berners-Lee says internet DNS should have been more decentralized

World Wide Web and hypertext markup connection (HTML) inventor Tim Berners-Lee said that if helium were gathering a domain sanction work (DNS) today, helium would marque it “more decentralized.”

Speaking astatine ETH Prague connected signifier alongside Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Berners-Lee reflected connected aboriginal net architecture decisions.

“If I could spell backmost […] I would marque it much decentralized,“ helium said.

DNS was invented successful 1983 by Paul Mockapetris, replacing the erstwhile hosts.txt file-based strategy with a scalable, distributed strategy for naming IP addresses. Still, portion Berners-Lee was not personally liable for DNS development, helium could person opted for a URL operation not tied to the DNS we cognize today, oregon helium could person pushed for a decentralized alternative.

Source: Mely.eth

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Centralization of the DNS

The DNS strategy is highly centralized, peculiarly astatine its apical levels of hierarchy. The basal zone, which governs top-level domains specified arsenic .com and .org, is managed by the US-based nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Furthermore, the astir authoritative servers are operated by a fistful of organizations, further centralizing the system. This allows for casual censorship and power by governments that tin unilaterally prehend oregon artifact domain names.

This grade of centralization besides makes outages owed to centralized work disruption much likely. Control implicit basal zones and domain policies is besides concentrated successful a fewer regions and among a prime radical of stakeholders.

There are besides concerns astir privateness due to the fact that centralized DNS queries tin beryllium monitored, logged and intercepted by net work providers and different intermediaries.

Related: Community divided connected ENS petition against Unstoppable Domains patent

Crypto’s solution to the problem

Decentralized alternatives to the DNS strategy are being developed. The astir well-known of them is the Ethereum Name Service (ENS), which maps human-readable names to Ethereum addresses, contented connected the Inter-Planetary File System (IPFS), oregon different data.

Another alternate is Unstoppable Domains. Its strategy mints domains arsenic non-fungible tokens (NFTs) connected Ethereum and Polygon.

ENS has seen a just stock of adoption. In precocious 2024, ENS Labs besides partnered with PayPal and Venmo, sparking speculation astir however this concern is likely to boost mainstream adoption.

IPFS runs connected Ethereum astute contracts and aims to beryllium user-owned and censorship-resistant. Currently, it is chiefly utilized successful Web3 applications, wallets and decentralized websites.

Another alternate is Handshake (HNS), which aims to beryllium a decentralized and permissionless naming protocol that is compatible with accepted DNS. Another task with a akin purpose is Namecoin (NMC), an aboriginal Bitcoin fork designed specifically to connection .bit domains and store DNS records onchain with censorship resistance.

IPFS is besides accompanied by its ain Inter-Planetary Name System (IPNS), which enables mutable naming for IPFS addresses (hashes). URLs generated this mode constituent to circumstantial content, not servers.

A non-crypto alternate to DNS is OpenNIC. This is simply a user-run task that offers non-ICANN domains, aiming to decentralize power done assemblage governance.

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