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

[George Kadianakis]

Jeremy Rand <jeremyrand at airmail.cc> writes:

> [ text/plain ]
> 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.
>

Hello people interested in this topic,

I made a wiki page for Naming Systems  here:
  https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/OnionServiceNamingSystems

Feel free to start adding information and links and make it look nicer.

Let's try to build a good knowledge base that will help us take informed
decisions. Please try to maintain some sort of consistent structure through the
document.

(In the unlikely case where the doc gets out of hand, I will try to find some
time to curate it.)

Thanks! :)