Description
Namecoin is an experimental open-source technology which improves decentralization, security, censorship resistance, privacy, and speed of certain components of the Internet infrastructure such as DNS and identities.
(For the technically minded, Namecoin is a key/value pair registration and transfer system based on the Bitcoin technology.)
Bitcoin frees money – Namecoin frees DNS, identities, and other technologies.
What can Namecoin be used for?
• Protect free-speech rights online by making the web more resistant to censorship.
• Human-meaningful Tor .onion domains.
• Decentralized TLS (HTTPS) certificate validation, backed by blockchain consensus.
• Access websites using the .bit top-level domain.
• Attach identity information such as GPG and OTR keys and email, Bitcoin, and Bitmessage addresses to an identity of your choice.
What does Namecoin do under the hood?
• Securely record and transfer arbitrary names (keys).
• Attach a value (data) to the names (up to 520 bytes).
• Transact the digital currency namecoins (NMC).
• Like bitcoins, Namecoin names are difficult to censor or seize.
• Lookups do not generate network traffic (improves privacy).
Namecoin was the first fork of Bitcoin and still is one of the most innovative “altcoins”. It was first to implement merged mining and a decentralized DNS. Namecoin was also the first solution to Zooko’s Triangle, the long-standing problem of producing a naming system that is simultaneously secure, decentralized, and human-meaningful.