Yes, and the same problems arise, and there have been long threads and much deep thinking on this forum trying to figure out better ways of doing this. I had another go on my own yesterday and concluded that, much as we don’t like some aspects of the current domain system, it does a pretty good job and is hard to improve on IMO.
I still couldn’t see a way of having the benefits of a domain like system without the obvious downsides (mainly squatting), and think the benefits are well worth it: memorable addresses for any online property or app.
Thinking about it lead me to think that if we don’t charge a rent for public IDs (as there is for domain names) it will make hoarding them worse.
What I realised from my thoughts yesterday is that the key qualities that make domains / public IDs so useful are that they are:
- memorable
- universal & unique (ie like a street address)
- easily obtained
These qualities make them both useful and valuable.
Making them tradeable makes them easy to obtain and creates a market which enables squatting. It is very hard to limit any of the downsides significantly without messing up the benefits. Anyway, I don’t want to derail this topic, the place to discuss ways to do public IDs is here:
See also this post for links to six (yes six!) proposals including five RFCs in different ways to do public IDs: