One of the first uses of blockchain technology for a non-financial application was an alternative domain name registration system called Namecoin, started back in 2010 and still active.

Granted, that was an alternative domain name system, not an ICANN extension like this one. And it used a separate blockchain and coin (Namecoin), not the Bitcoin blockchain, which may be what you were referring to.

Nonetheless, I feel compelled to mention Namecoin in any discussion about the history of blockchain technology and DNS. (incidentally, Namecoin was also the first altcoin)

This thing runs on Namecoin, though that is buried in the documentation.

Ah, you're right. I thought they had moved to the Bitcoin blockchain. But that's a whole can of worms, so it's probably best they stay on Namecoin.

Bar the big incident last year (which it did recover from), Namecoin has been pretty stable.

Buried on the front page

Wasn't mentioned at all when my previous comment was posted.

Are you familiar with NameCoin?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecoin

Namecoin has been used for this purpose since 2011. It already has specifications for DNS and identities (and these have been iterated on for years now):

https://wiki.namecoin.info/index.php?title=Domain_Name_Speci...

https://wiki.namecoin.info/index.php?title=Identity

As well as others (like hashes for software). Even OneName.io's u/ namespace is listed here:

https://wiki.namecoin.info/index.php?title=OneName

There are also many other blockchain DNS related projects:

DNSChain (gives full-security read/write to arbitrary blockchains for all devices without having to run a DNS-based blockchain node, another nifty features like censorship circumvention and dotDNS metaTLD for JS apps):

https://github.com/okTurtles/dnschain (I'm one of the devs of this)

BitShares DNS (a different type of blockchain with a different consensus protocol): http://dotp2p.io

Feel free to mention others. I hope for more collaboration and less reproduction of efforts.

OneName and OpenNameSystem appear to be trying to avoid any association with Namecoin despite the fact that they use it. Both projects have no mention of Namecoin (they just say "blockchain") on their websites and a lot of the documentation isn't very clear on this. What gives?

Are we looking at the same website, or have they changed it since you made your comment? "ONS currently uses namecoin as a key-value store but the system is blockchain-agnostic" is on the first screen after the fold for me.

I'm 99% sure that wasn't there when I made that comment - I had done ^F namecoin to check.

I think the reason they don't say Namecoin explicitly is because at the end of the day, it doesn't particularly matter which *coin's blockchain gets used. At this point in the course of distributed system design, a "blockchain" can be thought of as a building-block for a system, and the matter of which particular blockchain gets used is an implementation detail.

>I think the reason they don't say Namecoin explicitly is because at the end of the day, it doesn't particularly matter which *coin's blockchain gets used.

I disagree. It matters a lot how much hashpower a given Blockchain has, else it can be easily destroyed (through forking) and/or interfered with (50% attacks). So Bitcoin has by far the most secure blockchain.

> it doesn't particularly matter which 'coin's blockchain gets used.

Well, except that it does, because depending on the blockchain used, you are dealing with different consensus protocols, and most importantly, different people. Namecoin is a worthy project, has been doing its noble thing for quite some time, and deserves at least a mention if this project is going to be working off of the sweat its core devs have put into it (and continue to do so).