I wonder if we’d be able to tell the difference? 
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Very true, all these years of work and the network will immediately be labeled very unsafe and fraudulent.
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As soon as some domainers think the SAFE Network will be popular, it will be a race to write a script to register the entire dictionary. We will likely end up with just a few individuals owning every word, every popular combination of words plus every combination of two and three letters etc.
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Yeah, that’s why some sort of auction system, or at least some way to control or ration the supply of domain names will be necessary.
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I am less worried about this than the top clear net names, which will include the ones you highlight anyway. The combinations of letters and words is vast and there is a *cost to register each of them.
Once you have missed out on the top names, adding some punctuation, extra word, etc, makes little difference. It is the big targets the squatters will go after, imo.
Edit: * I wonder if a minimum cost should be enough to put of pure spamming of name registrations though? If they were even a few cents each, it would probably put off many people, much like with email spam.
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Assuming the top names are reserved, market forces will dictate the rest, imo. Maybe someone will make a few quid on a name, but any more than that and they would be doing the same with regular clear net DNS.
Who will be doing the selling? I’ve not seen any mention of that.
I care about the names. I don’t confuse the URL bar with the search bar. I strongly dislike “phone apps” and hardly ever use any. That’s just me, of course, but I do exist.
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The person who registered the name, presumably? Perhaps a marketplace would be needed, but trading names was mentioned as possible in the recent NRS thread.
… It needs to be communicated clearly that the naming system is more like a plug in… If all names are reserved by some idiots one can just upgrade to the naming system v01 where the resolution algorithm does hash(some website name)+1 or v02 where the resolution algorithm does hash(some website name)+2
And it should be done in early network versions so squatters get frightened off…
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So how do you prevent the sort of automated registration of every word in the dictionary that @intrz brought up? This seems to be a tricky problem. You don’t want to prevent people with very few funds having a place on the network, but at the same time you have to guard against exploitation by bots. Ideally this should all be automated and decentralised, but how you do that that is unclear, to me at least.
A minimum price would be a simple solution. It wouldn’t take much cost to put off name registration spammers. It could be a put price multiple to make it cheap for genuine buyers, but expensive for speculators. An equivalent to a few cents or so may even be enough.
Naturally, the fee would go to farmers and maidsafe foundation as per normal.
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Just thinking out loud, but maybe registering a name could be tied in with an incentive to run a vault. The network needs to grow quickly as we know, and perhaps if we can give vault owners first dibs at a domain that would be an incentive to run one. It would also provide a ‘hurry hurry hurrry’ marketing opportunity. I think we need to generate some sort of scarcity, and a periodic auction or lottery of domain names could provide that.
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No, if Maidsafe does it, then it will be the defacto NRS and hence will enforce monopoly control of names. If others do it, then there will be multiple NRS’s and search won’t rely on any one of them - so no monopoly control of names. So it makes a difference for sure if Maidsafe does it, but not at all in a positive way for the network IMO.
I strongly believe you are being way too optimistic with regards to corporate adoption. I do think corporate adoption for storage may happen over time, but not for websites - that will take many decades.
They are not indispensable on a new network - they are used because they exist - if your company doesn’t get the name then someone else will - so it becomes a necessary evil. If no defacto NRS, then it’s no longer necessary to get a name - in fact if multiple NRS’s emerge then there can be an unlimited number of companies using the same name - so companies will no longer rely on NRS - they’ll use tags and search instead.
Yes, this seems reasonable - it’s like multiple NRS not a defacto NRS, so doesn’t grant monopoly control.
ownership may not be deletable, but updating a pointer is still possible.
But can’t you see that even the existing monopolists can (and sometimes are) fraudsters? What you are saying is subjective. And giving them perpetual ownership is the real risk.
It’s going to be labeled that IN ANY CASE. The governments/oligarchs of the world and the presstitutes that work for them are not going to play nice when speaking about the Safe Network. It’s going to have a black eye out of the box and not for any technical reason.
… only if there is a defacto NRS … which would bring with it the whole headache of managing auctions.
Someone with a lot of safecoin could still easily buy up a huge number of names. I’m not personally against squatting if there is to be a defacto NRS and may do this myself as a business model.
Corporate favoritism - and it’s playing god. Is this the way of the humble ant?
Presumably Maidsafe will hand that task off to a company to mange (sooner or later) … I’m sure nothing bad will happen (sarcasm).
But you do confuse it … as the URL bar IS a search bar in any case - you are just searching a DNS database that’s been ranked according to a first-past-the-post philosophy (the first one to buy the name wins all).
All well and good if there is no defacto system, but if Maidsafe is running/managing the show then squatters are inevitable IMO.
How is this any different? Philosophically it’s still a first-past-the-post winner take all method. You’re just making it more difficult to get past the post and hence ceding more power to the established monopolies.
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Now I understand your resistance. You any many others, I suspect!
I am on mobile, so can’t respond point by point, but not having a defacto naming system will be to the detriment of the network, imo. It would also render NRS pretty much broken from the start.
People advertise their sites - should they put XOR url on cards and read them out on radio ads (random letter long strings)? Do they say just search for us and then hope they are found? How do they quote their wallet address? How do they asked to be messaged?
NRS is useful for many reasons, as long as it doesn’t get abused from the start.
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Advertising changes over time of course. Today we see URL QR-codes all over the place, so easy enough to give a direct link. Radio as it stands won’t do it, but podcasts can use QR-codes too and podcasting is quite possibly the future of radio. Otherwise, yeah, just use your name, and tell people to search with an algo that will allow the site to come up.
My point is that it IS ITSELF an abuse from the Start - as it grants monopoly power over specific common words/names. On SAFE it’s even worse because ownership would, most likely, be perpetual as opposed to the clear-net where they expire.
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According to the RFC of the NRS the names in safe will be published AppendOnlyData (versioned) so once created, as far as I understand, they can never be deleted or transferred. So I’m not sure that anyone could monetarize these names by selling them.
Another thing are the security problems or phishing that could be generated.
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To me it is to early for someone to invest $10k into nice domain, when SafeNetwork is not widely know around the world and working. The price of dot com also developed since beginning of Internet. Who would buy dot com domain for $10k 25 years ago ? Or dot tech today ?
Which is exactly the power you hope to exploit by pre registering the names yourself.
I would rather trust the maidsafe foundation to do right for the network and it’s partners, than random folk trying to make an easy buck.
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