There are already projects like Handshake, ENS, Unstoppable domains that try to do this. Honestly I like the need for renewal fees for domains personally, since it means you can't just buy a domain once and squat on it forever.

Maybe renewal makes sense to prevent squatting but the question remains: who receives the money paid??

If the money were to be used to secure the network somehow, it would make sense.

If the money just goes to the creators... it was all just a money grab.

I am unsure about the speicfics but Handshake appears to burn the money paid. So that's fine.

However most of the potential token supply (like 50%) was premined/airdropped to ssh keys of Github users with >15 followers.

Except that the money in this case is actually electricity and all you're doing is advancing global warming.

> Handshake appears to burn the money paid. So that's fine.

That's not necessarily fine if the fee is in custom tokens. By burning they are just reducing supply, locking in the amount paid and increasing the value of their huge holding. It's pretty terrible.

Oh I mean it's fine as a concept, since everybody gets the money (in a situation where all the tokens were obtained "naturally").

Ofc in this case the Devs and the "sponsers" have 10% of it, so yea.

yes you can. it costs 10$ a year to squat a 10 million dollar .com, and I bet there's a bunch of them that had been parked since the 90s

the registration fee does prevent someone from squatting the entire Library of Babel though

They taught us in Appalachia to avoid re-occuring payments at all costs, because if you forget about it they can rapidly drain your bank account.

What is your suggestion for those of us who can't spare an angel investment of "just" ten dollar a year until we die or sell the domain?

Well true, I don't know what a good way to deal with this would be, blockchain based solutions also suffer from same problem, where early adopters squat on domains and offer to sell them for 10000x markup

I have thought about it for a long time and I also don't know

How would the blockchain saying that you "own" a domain make you own it more than currently?

It is impossible for the blockchain to prove anything about anything that originates from outside of that particular blockchain.

This is the reason why wanting to apply blockchain to everything such as land ownership is laughable and shows how little blockchain fanatics understand about the very technology they praise.

When you accidentally lose it (by losing your private keys), it will be impossible for anyone else to get it back for you. In a sense, this will prove to you that you did really own it and no-one else did.

It sounds like I don't own the domain, but whoever has the Keys does.

Imagine somebody suddenly "owns" my house because they pickpocketed my house keys, without any recurse. Then I really don't own the house, do I.

It's the closest concept we have to physical ownership in the digital realm.

But IMHO this is an unwanted effect that we should avoid

> How would the blockchain saying that you "own" a domain make you own it more than currently?

There would have to be consensus that the particular blockchain is the source of truth for who owns which domain.

> It is impossible for the blockchain to prove anything about anything that originates from outside of that particular blockchain.

Yes, and this is something that wouldn't be necessary with blockchain-based domain names. It would not need to know about anything that originates from the outside.

> This is the reason why wanting to apply blockchain to everything such as land ownership is laughable and shows how little blockchain fanatics understand about the very technology they praise.

I'm far from a blockchain fanatic and using blockchain for land ownership is obviously laughable to me.

> It is impossible for the blockchain to prove anything about anything that originates from outside of that particular blockchain

True, but instead of having to trust a central authority for insertion, updating, removal and constant maintenance of your "ownership", the trust would only be required for insertion. Once you purchased a domain and it's inserted in the blockchain, no one (outside of yourself) should be able to revoke, change or question your ownership of the domain itself.

Honestly it would be a pretty good use case for a blockchain, but it lacks a money incentive for any part involved so it will probably never happen

If you were an important, powerful or influential organisation, you could just get DNS servers, OSes and/or browsers to special-case a domain rather than refer to the blockchain. Unless you have a legal authority enforcing the rule that "what the blockchain says, goes".

So what happens when Microsoft disagrees that I own Microsoft.block?

E: Honest question, comes off as snark a little - would they be able to just take it somehow or would they need to use jailtime and or broken kneecaps to get it off you? Either way the blockchain's concept of ownership seems like it would be broken easily by law and companies with lots of money

They hardcode their IP into IE/Edge and Windows as the host for that domain, ignoring what the blockchain says.

Or more likely, in partnership with other big tech with similar concerns, they develop an infrastructure that permits blocking/revoking/overriding specific domains, that most clients would refer to in preference to the blockchain. This would be fairly easy to justify on grounds of security and crime.

Or they just don't support the blockchain stuff in the first place, because the current system mostly works and provides a legal process for disputes which they are content with.

> Or they just don't support the blockchain stuff in the first place

This is a given, it's strictly hypothetical.

> they develop an infrastructure that permits blocking/revoking/overriding specific domains, that most clients would refer to in preference to the blockchain

Luckily we already have something similar to fall back on already, that's a time saver!

Would this also handle domain expiry in some way?

This doesn't require blockchain. The registrar could charge you a one time fee to buy the domain forever if ICANN allowed it. It doesn't. Permissionless blockchains are especially ill-suited for this purpose because KYC for domain names is a thing.

Well then you're still relying on the registrar, on ICANN, and your local legal system. But also, yes: with a blockchain, you're still relying on the blockchain, which can be attacked. There are no 100% solutions for virtual goods ownership :)

With a Blockchain, you're still relying on your legal system and the people running the nodes. The Blockchain doesn't make the law go away.

No. It doesn't.

Why? Consider the scenario of a domain name owner dying and his relatives not caring/not knowing he/she owned a domain. With the current system the domain will be eventually available again. What alternative to you suggest?

How does a blockchain change this in any meaningful way?

I don't know how people that suggest using a blockchain would design or already designed the whole system, but maybe you know. If the owner looses access to it's private key is there any way to transfer or expire the domain? If not, you end up having domains that nobody can use.

Yeah, that's sort of my point. Blockchains make things more rigid when dealing with these types of cases. With a central authority, you can appeal to the humans that run it, you can take them to court if need be.

Yes sorry, I totally agree. I realized just now that I got confused with indentation and assumed that the comment I was originally replying to was saying that it doesn't make sense to pay a recurrent fee for a domain. While instead he was saying that it doesn't make sense to use a blockchain, and I agree on this. Unfortunately seems that I can't edit my original comment to fix the misunderstanding.

A blockchain could have a mechanism for the domain name to expire unless renewed. For example Handshake [0] does have exactly that.

[0] https://handshake.org/

> With the current system the domain will be eventually available again.

Why is that a problem? Do you even understand how physical property IRL is owned at a legal or philosophical level?

This is a problem because you risk having domains that nobody can use anymore.

Edit: as I wrote in another comment, I got confused with indentation and assumed that the comment I was replying to was saying that it doesn't make sense to have a recurring fee for domains. I'm sorry. I do agree that a blockchain isn't a good alternative.

Don't forget to pay your government taxes, or you'll quickly find out just how far "ownership" goes.

Because your cloud data is secured by your email address in 99% of cases

Or phone. How does a blockchain change this?