In the name of freedom
Neutral money like bitcoin preserves economic freedom. It respects individual liberty. It quietly upholds property rights. Whether you are an individual or a company, it gives you complete power over your decisions about production, investment, and consumption without the threat of censorship, confiscation, or degradation. Without the involvement of governments, this encourages self-sufficiency and contributes to social harmony. bitcoin, in other words, is essential to maintaining a free, prosperous, and fair society. The same is true for names. If there is anything as important to society as money, it is a name. Names are necessary for almost everything, and individuals and companies should be able to own their name without it being under the control of a centralized third party.
Both names and money have historically relied on trust for their effectiveness, but just as bitcoin, as money, ushered in an era of trustlessness, the same must be true for names.
Centralized naming providers are dinosaurs
People need to realize, if they haven't already, that they are not masters of their own being. x.com/jeremyvaught/status/1687223289482035200″>social media usernames and are always just a click away that their property or what should be their property be confiscated.
The security risk of relying on centralized naming systems is especially true for individuals and companies that build their business on bitcoin. If you rely on centralized naming services, it's only a matter of time until you're compromised, just as we saw with the crypto-site-hijackings/”>Square space DNS hijacking last month.
Governments often silence their political opponents by confiscating their names. For example, PuntCATCatalan private non-profit foundation whose mission is to promote all kinds of activities related to the creation, management and control of the .cat top-level domain and, in general, the promotion of the Catalan language and culture. They were the target of a police raid at a turbulent political time and were forced to block several websites critical of the Spanish government due to judicial pressure from Madrid. The head of the IT Service was arrested for sedition.
Furthermore, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), responsible for managing the global domain name system, has faced numerous controversies over the years related to centralized control, transparency, and accountability. ICANN's practices and policies are opaque, have been called by people like Ralph Nader for violating consumer rights, and like the Electronic Frontier Foundation In other words, there is an obvious susceptibility to capture due to the excessive deference given to the interests of major trademark and copyright owners.
The point is that if we fail to decentralize names, the risk of censorship, confiscation of property and other rights will always be under attack.
As bitcoin continues to evolve alongside adjacent technological protocols like NOSTR, names will become increasingly important for this reason alone. Names can serve as identifiers for various components within these systems, facilitating communication between different parties and improving usability, protocol interoperability, and freedom of expression.
Don't call it a comeback
Previous attempts to decentralize names have included initiatives such as the splitting out of the DNS root server in 1997 and new top-level domains (TLDs) such as .bit and .name. In the cryptocurrency space, projects such as Namecoin, BitDNS, and blockchain-based naming services from companies like Namecoin, Blockstack, and Stacks have also sought to decentralize naming systems. Despite these efforts, many of these initiatives have failed due to limited adoption, scalability issues, distribution problems, and other technical complexities, leaving centralized naming systems dominant in both the traditional Internet and cryptocurrency landscapes.
Earlier this year, Matt Corallo proposed a BIP for coordinating bitcoin payment processing using DNS. Matt is right about not relying on another blockchain (e.g. ENS on ethereum), but he acknowledges that relying on traditional centralized DNS is risky, and that it's only the “best option.” There are organizations between you and your name, and every website that uses HTTPS to encrypt traffic is relying on a third party to protect it: you literally don't own your own keys. Not your keys, and not your name.
What is needed is a truly decentralized, permissionless naming system built on bitcoin, free of third-party certificate authorities, that gives users control and privacy over their online identities. And unlike previous attempts, names must be made in a cypherpunk-centric way, without a new blockchain or modifications to bitcoin itself, without a new token, foundation, or premine. Users must have full control over how they register, manage, and transfer names.
The future of names is cypherpunk
The Internet, once conceived as a democratising force for free expression and global communication, now faces increasing threats from government censorship, corporate influence and technical vulnerabilities. Decentralised naming, built on the strong and secure foundation of bitcoin, offers a future where people and businesses have greater control over their identities, ideas and information. By leveraging the immutability, transparency and censorship-resistant nature of bitcoin, decentralised naming systems can provide a more resilient and democratic alternative for managing their identities. With bitcoin as the backbone, we can ensure that decentralised naming is not only inevitable, but truly successful in creating a free, open and global Internet – one where everyone has an equal voice in shaping the global conversation without fear of censorship or control. An Internet that is cypherpunk.
This is a guest post by Mike Carson. The views expressed are solely his own and do not necessarily reflect those of btc Inc or bitcoin Magazine.
