Could EOS serve as a decentralized DNS?
There where quite some news articles about the Domain Name System over the last few months. And if one thing has become clear it is the fact that DNS in the hands of the ICANN organization is as old fashioned as the fax machine.
The DNS is the bridge between a website’s IP-address and their domain name. Your browser doesn’t know how to find https://eos.io unless it can link that name to a certain IP-address to load in the browser. So what’s the problem? In short: centralization. The moment one central authority controls something important as our domain names the door to abuse of that power is open. Especially when governments get involved. The news below is just one example of censorship.
Sci-Hub, often referred to as the “Pirate Bay of Science,” lost three of its domain names this week. The suspensions are likely the result of the lost court case against the American Chemical Society. Despite the setback, Sci-Hub remains resilient, pointing out that there are other ways to access the site including its own custom DNS servers.
Countries in control
Several big countries like Russia and China are setting up their own DNS servers to get away from ICANN’s version. And this could clearly be used to censor even more. China is already blocking a lot of websites and could easily make a law that forbids the use of any foreign and open DNS system.
Companies in control
Google is currently working on TLS over DNS. This means that your connection to the DNS-server is protected by Transport Layer Security. Much like connecting to a website using https instead of just http. This gives an extra layer of protection which should be a good thing. But there’s a catch:
This does require the DNS you are using to have DNS over TLS support, though, but it’s a start. Users can switch to Google’s DNS if they wish to benefit from DNS over TLS.
So while Google wants to protect you from your ISP’s snooping….. They will now snoop on you themselves! Most Google services come with a privacy catch and this one doesn’t look any different. Google could force your Android phone to connect to their corporate DNS-servers “for more security”. And after that they could track you and all the websites you visit even with all trackers and cookies blocked.
DNS on a blockchain?
The Ethereum Name Service already has 167.390 names registered which is quite a big number. The system is not currently used by any browser to resolve an IP-address but it’s a start. MaidSafe has their own “decentralized name system” on their Alpha 2 network. People connect to websites like safe://tetris using a dedicated browser to connect to their network. And of course there’s Namecoin: probably the first project trying to link domains using crypto technology.
DNS on EOS?
EOS’ blockchain and EOS Storage open the door to more experimentation. This could be in the way of a dedicated eos://website system with a dedicated browser like MaidSafe. Or even by registering public domains by the owners of the website on the EOS blockchain. The real problem is to get a system like this fast enough so a user won’t experience any delay. Block producers on EOS could serve people by reading out the domains on the blockchain. A problem with this approach is that it might take years before websites use this system. They need their certificate to sign not only the DNS-part but also the EOS-part.
Conclusion
Moving away from any centralized DNS can be quite hard. The ideas and little steps forward are out there and the crypto community has the drive to really solve this one. A good first step for EOS could be to come up with a privacy protecting browser and let anyone register a eos://website. With encrypted connections to the block producers and the EOS Storage system a user would be quite protected from snooping by governments or ISP’s. Especially with a build-in proxy system to keep even the BPs in the dark on who is visiting what website.
Share your ideas on this topic on the EOS Community Forum.
