#GnuNameSystem A Secure and Resilient Communication Infrastructure for Decentralized Networking Applications
Matthias Wachs thesis
►https://gnunet.org/diss-wachs
6.9 Related Work and Comparison
6.9.2 Namecoin
With #Namecoin it is possible to square #Zooko ’s triangle and achieve all three properties of #Zooko_s_triangle at the same time: memorable, global and secure names. Names are globally unique since with the blockchain a consensus in the network about the current state of the system and therefore all registered names exist. #Names are memorable since they are explicitly chosen that way when registering these names. But with initial cheap cost when bootstrapping the system, the problem of name squatting exists. Initially the registration cost of names are low and therefore early adopters register names with the expectation to sell these names when the system is popular. So with Namecoin, names are an #economic object possessed by an owner and are object of trade and economic behavior. The system is said to be #secure, since with a majority of benign nodes in the network, the consensus of the block chain cannot be attacked. This assumption is only valid with an adversary model weaker than the adversary model used for this work. Note that our adversary model is not a far-fetched assumption in this context: as we saw with recent revelations about a single mining pool in the #Bitcoin network possessing more than 51% of the computational power in the network [Far14a], it is conceivable that a nation-state can muster more resources than the small number of other entities that participate in the system, especially for systems used as an alternative in places where censorship is encountered or during the bootstrapping of the network, when only a small number of users participate.
#Security can also be lowered by the concept of the Namecoin resolution process: a client resolving a name has to be in possession of the complete block chain to validate a name. The complete block chain can be large in size and therefore not be available on devices with restricted resources. These devices would then have to rely on third party resolvers and so creating a trusted third party, which may not be trustworthy or may be manipulated, just like in #DNS.
