[tor-dev] prop224: Ditching key blinding for shorter onion addresses

[Jeremy Rand]

George Kadianakis:
> Lunar <lunar at torproject.org> writes:
> 
>> [ text/plain ]
>> George Kadianakis:
>>> this is an experimental mail meant to address legitimate usability concerns
>>> with the size of onion addresses after proposal 224 gets implemented. It's
>>> meant for discussion and it's far from a full blown proposal.
>>
>> Taking a step back here, I believe the size of the address to be a
>> really minor usability problem. IPv6 adressses are 128 bits long, and
>> plenty of people in this world now access content via IPv6. It's not a
>> usability problem because they use a naming—as opposed to
>> addressing—scheme to learn about the appropriate IPv6 address.
>>
> 
> That's true. Naming systems are indeed the way to go wrt UX. The future sucks
> if our users are supposed to use 24 (or 56) random characters as addresses.
> 
> That said, the current IPv6 naming scheme (DNS) is far from perfect as
> well. Tor would never use it (or any other system with similar threat model).
> 
> Furthermore, all the _secure naming systems_ that have been suggested have
> their own tradeoffs. They are either centralized, or they use blockchains, or
> they require money, or they require a whole network/community to exist, or they
> have annoying name-squatting issues, or they require a non-anonymous
> registration, or they save HS history on disk, or their protocol is three times
> more complicated than Tor itself, or ...
>       
> So it's not like we have the perfect solution on the naming scheme right now.
> We likely need plenty of trial experimentation before we decide on one (or
> multiple) naming cheme becoming the official.
> 
> We really need to start serious work in this area ASAP! Maybe let's start by
> making a wiki page that lists the various potential solutions (GNS, Namecoin,
> Blockstack, OnioNS, etc.)?

I'd be happy to provide feedback on the Namecoin section of such a wiki
page.

Cheers,
-Jeremy Rand

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