Namecoin

Namecoin
Date of introduction 18 April 2011; 1st fork of Bitcoin[1][2][3][4]
User(s) Worldwide
Production 21 million Namecoins are released as a geometric series, every 4 years the rate is halved.[5]
 Source Namecoin Statistics
Subunit
 10−3 mNMC (Milli Namecoin)
 10−6 μNMC (Micro Namecoin)
 10−9 nNMC (Nano Namecoin)
Symbol ℕ, NMC

Namecoin (Symbol: ℕ or NMC) is a cryptocurrency and the first fork of the bitcoin software.[1][3][2][4] It is based on the code of bitcoin and uses the same proof-of-work algorithm. It is limited to 21 million coins.[6]

Unlike bitcoin, Namecoin can store data within its own blockchain transaction database. The original proposal for Namecoin called for Namecoin to insert data into bitcoin's block chain directly.[7] Anticipating scaling difficulties with this approach,[8] a shared proof-of-work (POW) system was proposed to secure new cryptocurrencies with different use cases.[9]

Namecoin's flagship use case is the censorship-resistant top level domain .bit, which is functionally similar to .com or .net domains but is independent of ICANN, the main governing body for domain names.[10]

Records

Each Namecoin record consists of a key and a value which can be up to 520 bytes in size. Each key is actually a path, with the namespace preceding the name of the record. The key d/example signifies a record stored in the DNS namespace d with the name example and corresponds to the record for the example.bit website. The content of d/example is expected to conform to the DNS namespace specification.[11]

The current fee for a record is 0.01 NMC and records expire after 36000 blocks (~200 days) unless updated or renewed. Namecoins used to purchase records are marked as used and destroyed, as giving the fee to miners would enable larger miners to register names at a significant discount.[12]

Uses

Proposed potential uses for Namecoin besides domain name registration include:

History

In September 2010 a discussion was started in the Bitcointalk forum about a hypothetical system called BitDNS and generalizing bitcoin, based on a talk at IRC at 14 November 2010. Gavin Andresen and Satoshi Nakamoto joined the discussion in the Bitcointalk forum and supported the idea of BitDNS.[22][23][24] A reward for implementing BitDNS was announced at the Bitcointalk forum in December 2010.[25] Soon a developer decided to implement this idea to earn this reward.[25][26] On April 18, 2011 Namecoin was introduced by Vinced (Rumored to be Vincent Durham) as a multipurpose and distributed naming system based on bitcoin. It was inspired by the BitDNS discussion on the Bitcointalk forum.[27] WikiLeaks mentioned the project via Twitter in June 2011.[28]

Two years later, in June 2013, NameID was launched.[29][30] It is a service to associate profile information with identities on the Namecoin blockchain and an OpenID provider to allow logging into existing websites with Namecoin identities. The main site itself is accompanied by an open protocol for password-less authentication with Namecoin identities, a corresponding free-software implementation and a supporting extension for Firefox.

In October 2013, Michael Gronager, main developer of libcoin,[31] found a security issue in the Namecoin protocol, which allowed modifying foreign names. It was successfully fixed in a short timeframe and was never exploited, except for bitcoin.bit as a proof-of-concept.[32][33]

In February 2014, a plug-in for Firefox compatible with Windows and Linux, FreeSpeechMe, was released, providing automatic resolution of .bit addresses. This is available by downloading the Namecoin block chain and running it in the background.[34]

Namecoin was also mentioned by ICANN in a public draft report as the most well-known example of distributing control and privacy in DNS.[35][36]

One month later, in March 2014, OneName was released. It is another identity system built on top of the Namecoin protocol that stores usernames and personal profile data in the Namecoin block chain.[37] In contrast to NameID, OneName is built purely for profile information and does not support password-less authentication or log-in. OneName later (in September 2015) switched user profiles from Namecoin to the Bitcoin blockchain, citing the higher hashrate of Bitcoin as the reason.[38]

In May 2014, Kevin McCoy and Anil Dash introduced Monegraph, a system that links Twitter accounts and digital assets (such as artwork) in the block chain, allowing proof of ownership of such assets.[39]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Isgur, Ben (2014-07-16). "A Little Altcoin Sanity: Namecoin". CoinReport.
  2. 1 2 "Namecoin – Next Generation Domain Name System". CoinJoint. 2014-06-05.
  3. 1 2 Buterin, Vitalik (2013-10-26). "Bitcoin in Israel, Part 3: Interview on Alternative Currencies". Bitcoin Magazine.
  4. 1 2 Brokaw, Alex (2014-08-23). "Crypto 2.0 Roundup: Bitcoin’s Revolution Moves Beyond Currency". Coindesk.
  5. ↑ Gilson, David (2013-06-18). "What are Namecoins and .bit domains?". CoinDesk.
  6. ↑ Loibl, Andreas (2014-08-01). "Namecoin" (PDF).
  7. ↑ appamatto (2010-10-15). "BitDNS and Generalizing Bitcoin". BitcoinTalk.
  8. ↑ Nakamoto, Satoshi (2010-12-10). "Re: BitDNS and Generalizing Bitcoin". Bitcoin Talk.
  9. ↑ Nakamoto, Satoshi (2010-12-09). "Re: BitDNS and Generalizing Bitcoin". BitcoinTalk.
  10. ↑ Dourado, Eli (2014-02-05). "Can Namecoin Obsolete ICANN (and More)?". Theumlaut.
  11. ↑ "Namecoin DNS specification".
  12. ↑ "Namecoin FAQ".
  13. ↑ "Namespace:Identity". Dot-Bit.
  14. ↑ "Messaging System]". Dot-Bit.
  15. ↑ Namecoin block explorer, Archived here
  16. ↑ "Personal Namespace". Dot-Bit.
  17. ↑ Kirk, Jeremy (2013-05-24). "Could the Bitcoin network be used as an ultrasecure notary service?". Techworld.
  18. ↑ ecdsa.org/bitcoin-alias/, Archived page
  19. ↑ ecdsa.org/bitcoin_URIs.html, Archived page
  20. ↑ Phelix. "Coming up: Namecoin Stock Control". Namecoin forum. Retrieved 2012-10-05.
  21. ↑ Phelix (2014-01-12). "ANTPY - Atomic Name Trading". Namecoin Forum.
  22. ↑ appamatto (2010-10-15). "BitDNS and Generalizing Bitcoin". Bitcoin Forum. Bitcointalk.org.
  23. ↑ IRC (2010-10-14). "IRC discussion about BitDNS 1/2". web.archive.org. web.archive.org.
  24. ↑ IRC (2010-10-15). "IRC discussion about BitDNS 2/2". web.archive.org. web.archive.org.
  25. 1 2 kiba (2010-04-12). "BitDNS Bounty (3500 BTC)". Bitcoin Forum. Bitcointalk.org.
  26. ↑ "vinced/namecoin". GitHub. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
  27. ↑ vinced (2011-04-18). "[announce] Namecoin - a distributed naming system based on Bitcoin". Bitcoin Forum. Bitcointalk.org.
  28. ↑ "Twitter / wikileaks: Namecoin and Bitcoin will be ...". WikiLeaks, via Twitter. 2011-06-09. Retrieved 2014-05-20.
  29. ↑ Kraft, Daniel (2013-07-25). "NameID - Use namecoin id/ to log into OpenID sites". Namecoin Forum.
  30. ↑ Kraft, Daniel (2013-07-20). "Login mit Namecoin". Bitcoin Forum.
  31. ↑ "libcoin/libcoin". GitHub. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
  32. ↑ Gilson, David (2013-10-28). "Developers attempt to resurrect Namecoin after fundamental flaw discovered". CoinDesk.
  33. ↑ libcoin (2011-04-18). "Namecoin was stillborn, I had to switch off life-support". Bitcoin Forum. Bitcointalk.org.
  34. ↑ Reyes, Ferdinand (2014-02-13). "FreeSpeechMe: The new anti-censorship and secure domain resolving Namecoin-based plug-in". Bitcoin Magazine.
  35. ↑ "The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers Identifier Technology Innovation - Draft Report" (PDF). ICANN. 2014-02-21.
  36. ↑ Hofman, Adam (2014-03-19). "Bitcoin and Namecoin Appear in Draft ICANN Report – U.S. Plans to Relinquish Remaining Control of Internet". Bitcoin Magazine.
  37. ↑ Rizzo, Pete (2014-03-27). "How OneName Makes Bitcoin Payments as Simple as Facebook Sharing". CoinDesk.
  38. ↑ onename (2015-09-15). "Why Onename is Migrating to the Bitcoin Blockchain". OneName Blog.
  39. ↑ Cawrey, Daniel (2014-05-15). "How Monegraph Uses the Block Chain to Verify Digital Assets". CoinDesk.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Namecoin.


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