[tor-dev] Memorable onion addresses (was Discussion on the crypto migration plan of the identity keys of Hidden Services)

[Griffin Boyce]

Matthew Finkel <matthew.finkel at gmail.com> wrote:

> So I think we should make some terms clear (just for the sake of
> clarity). We have, I guess, three different naming-system ideas
> floating here: petnames, (distibuted) namecoin-ish, and centralized
> consensus-based - rough summary.
>
> Some months ago, the petname system interested me enough that I started
> to write a proposal for it. At this point, it's wound up in bitrot.
> Though I'd spent a bit of time working on it, there was no comprehensive
> way to accomplish it.


  I too started writing a petname proposal only to have it wind up on the
backburner.

  In a nutshell, there would be a sort of pseudo-DNS that allow a given
.onion to define a petname through a file on their site.  For example,
somename.onion/petname.txt could shorten the address to bettername.pet.
 The pseudo-DNS would check if a hidden service is alive once every few
days, and if the onion is down for thirty days, the petname is freed up for
someone else to use.  This has the side effect of promoting good onion
upkeep.

  I like the idea of federating hidden services and eepsites into one
petname system, but not sure how possible/practical that would be.  Of
course, there's really nothing keeping an independent actor from making
this and offering it as a firefox plugin for those who might want to use it.

Thoughts?

~Griffin
-- 
Technical Program Associate, Open Technology Institute
#Foucault / PGP: 0xAE792C97 / OTR: saint at jabber.ccc.de
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