Using Ethereum to Replace DNS – Braden Pezeshki

ETHDenver 2020 · 14 Feb 2020 · 10:53

At ETHDenver 2020, Braden Pezeshki explores using Ethereum to replace the Domain Name System, drawing on the model established by the Ethereum Name Service. He covers how smart contracts can manage naming records in a decentralized way, removing reliance on centralized registrars and the censorship risks that come with them.

Speakers

Topics

From ETHDenver 2020, hosted by ETH Denver.

Transcript

all right howdy everybody um i'm braden pozewski i'm from unstoppable domains uh we make blockchain domains uh and decentralized web tools um so who am i i'm brandon pazke i co-founded uh unstoppable domains uh we just got uh series a and we're selling blockchain domain names um so we just reached 20 employees and last year we launched two blockchain domain name registries um dot zill and then dot crypto um every one of you guys should have a doc crypto domain inside your little buffado wallet on the top right

and essentially a blockchain domain name resolves like whatever kind of content you want so right now we're primarily interested in resolving um cryptocurrency addresses so like your eth address your bitcoin address it doesn't matter um we'll store it and then um for dapp developers we'll also store your unsensible website and we're working on other like application specific uh use cases like chat right now so all a blockchain domain name is is a an entry on a smart contract that points to a contract that stores

your data right so um we're really big into self-custody assets so when you buy a blockchain domain name um you sign a message and then we give that domain name out to you it's imperative because the current way domain names work is centralized so right now i can uh basically uh it's a consortium and they uh they lease domain names out to everyone um and like they will comply with countries censoring people um and just recently they and

verisign uh came to an agreement to hike up prices over like uh for con names over the next like 10 years by something like 70 so um yeah uh it is like it's a real current um problem uh and so basically by using a decentralized domain name you're um propping up uh you're propping up uh unsensible free speech basically um so right now we have um we just launched ipfs websites on our for our ux

and in the long term it's just going to be good for everybody we just registered 200 000 domain names and like i said we just uh we just launched ipfs websites we already have 500. um and to get your domain name you guys already have one on your little app but all you have to do is go to unsolvabledomains.com and then we pay for all the transactions you just have uh you just use an e personal signature to configure and manage your domain name and you can host content on your domain name um we're integrated with around 20 wallets right now

uh and you can use that to pay other people um and then resolve things using ipfs gateways in a browser which we also just made so we released a demo browser um so on our technical side um we deployed a registry uh for the domain names that's set in stone so as soon as you own the domain we can't do anything to it um and then users and other applications can implement whatever customer resolution you want again we pay for everyone's transactions we feel like uh like the ux for

lots of these daps is uh not so good and then we also it's a one-time fee so no no renewals no anything like that uh we view that as uh another attack vector um so resolving content is pretty easy uh you just get the name get the resolver contract on that name and then look up the val look up the records and then we also support transferring just like any other nft asset um so that's kind of the ethereum side of things

uh but we're also uh in 2020 we're really trying to focus on getting out tools to help developers make the dweb a reality and we see this as three problems um building your website right so so right now like one of the one of the problems with uh ipfs websites and like the dweb in general is that it's really hard to make meaningful content um using um using ipfs so like you can build a profile um we're working though on um like complex spas right so that have multiple

pages that you can browse like any other regular website uh and we're trying to move past all that into kind of making e-commerce a reality on the d-web right because most developers are not going to want to deploy dapps on the decentralized web if they're not going to make any money right and we see that commercial interest is really important for like the future of the d-web so we're working on that problem as well and then for integrating websites that already are dapps and can be deployed on the decentralized web we're working on problems to just make getting the getting your getting your stuff up onto the

decentralized web as easy as possible just simple configuration and then we're also working with um ipfs pinning services like pinata or temporal uh to make it so that your content stays out there and it works just like every other sas platform where you can reliably deploy your deploy your stuff and right now the way you can access the decentralized web is uh through browsers so we just made a demo browser uh and we're talking to other browsers to see if to uh resolve decentralized content

and chrome extensions so we're about to release a chrome extension next week so there are some challenges to creating um a great name service on the blockchain and basically because it's it's seen as kind of a speculative asset uh we've had we've had to mitigate it by like protecting brands and protecting premium domains those of you familiar with the space

know that like this is not the first project to do the decentralized web so like namecoin listed up here uh was one of the first projects um they made a sidechain on uh on bitcoin um and sold a bunch of names but didn't get that much adoption so we're really interested in that developer outreach side of things trying to get people to deploy real websites uh and integrating with lots of lots of wallets uh yeah so we are also um sponsoring some building stuff

too uh if any of you guys are interested so we're like we're interested in um good ipfs templates so we're we just launched a template generator on um for our website and we'd love to talk to you guys about that and we're also just interested in any cool application so yeah come talk to to me or any of the other unsolvable teams for that if you have a wallet or anything integrating domain resolution is really easy and then we also just released that open source browser so feel free to check that out too if yeah any questions

that's about it sorry can you speak up can you share statistics around how many domains you sold so far so we just reached 200 000 domain sold in the past nine months the wallets that you are integrating with uh so we've got my ether wallet my crypto trust wallet atomic um there are more um we've got a list on our website

i think yeah anybody else all righty then pleasure speaking with [Music] you