And meshnets. DNS is just a layer on top of an already vulnerable IP stack.

IP can work between broad and anonymous mesh nets, but when an IP address can be resolved to a business or person it provides an exploit vector.

Like MaidSafe? Are there other alternatives?

It doesn't serve No-IP's market, because No-IP is for frequently changing IP addresses. Namecoin charges for each record change, to my knowledge.

How often are updates necessary? It costs 0.8 cents to update a namecoin domain.

It depends on how often a router may disconnect; they typically receive a new IP address every time they connect. It's also a matter of the ISP's policy, some ISP's force a disconnection once per day while others don't.

One of the main reasons to use a dynamic DNS service is because your IP address changes frequently. A service that requires you to pay for each record update is a non-starter for that use case.

> It costs 0.8 cents to update a namecoin domain That's not fair to say.

It costs like this because the namecoin price is so low. However, if it was used more, the price would skyrocket.

So malware authors will be able to operate with impunity? As in all things, the solution is somewhere in the middle.