Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy

Names and Numbers. ICANN manages

Internet protocol numbers and

namespaces, coordinating the translation

of www.example.com to the numeric IP

address 93.184.216.119 for connection

across the Internet.

Blockchain technology simultaneously

highlights the issue of the appropriate

administration of transnational public

goods and presents a solution.

Wikipedia is a similar transnational

public good that is currently subject to a

local jurisdiction that could impose on

the organization an artificial or biased

agenda. It is possible that blockchain

mechanisms might be the most efficient

and equitable models for administering

all transnational public goods,

particularly due to their participative,

democratic, and distributed nature.

A notable case in which jurisdictional

nation-state entities were able to effect

centralized and biased control is

WikiLeaks. In the Edward Snowden

whistle-blowing case in 2010,

individuals were trying to make

financial contributions in support of the

WikiLeaks organization but, strongarmed

by centralized government agendas,

credit card payment networks and

PayPal, refused to accept such

contributions, and WikiLeaks was

effectively embargoed. 75 Bitcoin

contributions, had they been possible at

the time, would have been direct, and

possibly produced a different outcome.

The Electronic Freedom Foundation

(EFF), a nonprofit organization that

supports personal freedoms, and other

related organizations are similarly

located in jurisdictional locations at

present, which could always mean the

operation of curtailed agendas if

authorities were to exercise influence

over the organization and individuals

involved.

Namecoin: Decentralized

Domain Name System

One of the first noncurrency uses of

blockchain technology was to prevent

Internet censorship with Namecoin, an

altcoin that can be used to verify Domain

Name System (DNS) registrations.

Namecoin is an alternative DNS that is

transnational and cannot be controlled

by any government or corporation. The

benefit of a decentralized DNS is that it

makes it possible for anyone worldwide

who might be otherwise suppressed or

censored to publish information freely in

the Internet.

Just as Bitcoin is a decentralized

currency that cannot be shut down,

Namecoin is the basis for a

decentralized DNS (i.e., web URLs). 76

The idea is that URLs permanently

embedded in the blockchain would be

resistant to the government seizing of

domains. The censorship issue is that in

a URL such as google.com, centralized

authorities control the top-level domain,

the .com portion (the United States

controls .com URLs), and therefore can

potentially seize and redirect the URL.

Centralized authorities control all top-

level domains; for example, China

controls all .cn domains. Therefore, a

decentralized DNS means that top-level

domains can exist that are not controlled

by anyone, and they have DNS lookup

tables shared on a peer-to-peer network.

As long as there are volunteers running

the decentralized DNS server software,

alternative domains registered in this

system can be accessed. Authorities

cannot impose rules to affect the

operation of a well-designed and

executed global peer-to-peer top-level

domain. The same Bitcoin structure is

used in the implementation of a separate

blockchain and coin, Namecoin, for

decentralized DNS.

Namecoin is not at present intended for

the registration of all domains, but as a

free speech mechanism for domains that

might be sensitive to censorship (for

example, in countries with limited

political freedom). The top-level

domain for Namecoin is .bit. Interested

parties register .bit domains with

Namecoin. The actions necessary to

register a new domain or to update an

existing one are built in to the Namecoin

protocol, based on transaction type—for

example, the “name_new” transaction at

a cost of 0.01 NMC (Namecoin is

convertible in/out of Bitcoin). Domains

can be registered directly with the

Namecoin system or via a registration

service like https://dotbit.me/.

Because the top-level domain .bit is

outside the traditional operation of the

Internet, to facilitate viewing .bit

websites, there are .bit proxy servers to

handle DNS requests in a browser, as

well as Firefox and Chrome extensions.

According to the Bitcoin Contact

website as of October 2014, there are

178,397 .bit domains registered,

including, for example, wikileaks.bit.

The key point is that .bit domains are a

free-speech mechanism, because now

having the ability to view .bit websites

means attempts to silence those with a

legitimate message will have less of a

chance of succeeding. Just as there are

benefits to having decentralized currency

transactions, there are benefits to having

many other kinds of decentralized

transactions.

Challenges and Other

Decentralized DNS Services

Technical issues were found with the

Namecoin implementation that left .bit

domains vulnerable to takeover (a bug

that made it possible to update values if

the transaction input name matched the

transaction output name, as well as new

registrations to be overridden).77