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Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 12:48:33 -0500
Message-ID: <CAAS2fgTxk1UWDju+GbKFfA7+U+_pq5wDCXV8mnqgcn99iEOLuQ@mail.gmail.com>
From: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com>
To: Khalahan <khal@dot-bit.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Cc: bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Fwd: [BIP 15] Aliases
Precedence: list

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 12:36 PM, Khalahan <khal@dot-bit.org> wrote:
> Namecoin is a peer-to-peer generic name/value datastore system.
> Don't forget it's not limited to .bit usage ! So, directly mapping
> things to .bit url would not be the optimal way of using namecoin.
>
> Namecoin is specificaly designed to map things to names in a fully
> decentralized way. So, it's the perfect starting point to map names to
> other things (a public bitcoin address, an url, etc)
> You won't have all the advantages of namecoin when using other systems
> like DNS and HTTP(S) as the first entry point.


How can one construct a zero-trust (or nearly zero trust) namecoin
resolver without having a copy of the ever growing complete namecoin
block chain?

The bitcoin lite node mechanism will not work because a peer could
return stale records or no-result and you would have no evidence of
their deception.  (In the case of lite bitcoin nodes, telling you
about old transactions is harmless because you control your own
transactions).