fiatjaf's avatar
fiatjaf _@fiatjaf.com 6 months ago
I'd say it's extra complexity that is not really solving any problem we have. Nostr is already pretty resilient against DNS issues. But if someone is really out to get someone and Nostr isn't good enough then DNS isn't much worse than the entire IP protocol that relies on one central registry and hierarchy of addresses that is very permissioned. If we are to spend efforts on this layer then I'd rather go for the entire IP thing and make it possible for networks to be assembled in decentralized and permissionless ways using local cables and wireless infrastructure, then merge together forming an ever-growing parallel internet, with decentralized routing that scales globally. This is my idea: View article → But, if Nostr is already struggling to get a few users and not be irrelevant, imagine something like this.
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Replies (3)

Mike Dilger ☑️'s avatar
Mike Dilger ☑️ mike@mikedilger.com 6 months ago
I agree that you can have your IP addresses rug-pulled just like you can have your DNS rug-pulled. But using a keypair for a relay solves some other things. It allows a single relay to serve multiple endpoints (e.g IPv4, IPv6, Tor). It avoids the confusion of clients not knowing if a URL path is a new relay or the same relay. And it allows relays to switch endpoints in the event that DNS and IP addresses are both pulled, without all the clients not being able to know that it is the same relay. Also CAs won't need to be trusted anymore if we use that keypair for TLS. CAs are such a scam. I've done some development at
GitHub
GitHub - mikedilger/alt-tls: TLS provider for rustls supporting ed25519, plus tools
TLS provider for rustls supporting ed25519, plus tools - mikedilger/alt-tls
 on this, but haven't gotten it working with secp256k1 keypairs yet (I think I can, but it would not be standards compliant and wouldn't interoperate with other SSL software) But this change is massively disruptive to how nostr currently works. Relay URLs are all over the place currently. Maybe there is a migration path, but it seems rugged with a lot of switchbacks, and you'll have to carry a water bottle to make it to the end.
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Patrick PReis's avatar
Patrick PReis patrick@patrickdosreis.com 6 months ago
"""If we are to spend efforts on this layer then I'd rather go for the entire IP thing and make it possible for networks to be assembled in decentralized and permissionless ways using local cables and wireless infrastructure, then merge together forming an ever-growing parallel internet, with decentralized routing that scales globally.""" YES YES YES YES YES
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