Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), stated that if he were to build a Domain Name System (DNS) today, he would make it "more decentralized."
At the ETH Prague conference, while speaking alongside Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Berners-Lee reflected on the decisions made in the early architecture of the internet.
He said, "If I could go back in time… I would make it more decentralized."
The DNS was invented by Paul Mockapetris in 1983, replacing the earlier hosts.txt file-based system with a scalable distributed system for naming IP addresses. However, while Berners-Lee was not personally responsible for the development of DNS, he could have chosen a URL structure that did not rely on the DNS as we know it today or advocated for a decentralized alternative.
The DNS system is highly centralized, especially at its top-level hierarchy. The root zone, which manages top-level domains like .com and .org, is overseen by the U.S.-based nonprofit organization Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
Moreover, the most authoritative servers are operated by a few organizations, further exacerbating the centralization of the system. This allows governments to unilaterally seize or block domain names, facilitating easy censorship and control.
This level of centralization also increases the likelihood of downtime due to outages in centralized services. Control over the root zone and domain name policies is concentrated in a few regions and a small number of stakeholders.
Additionally, privacy concerns arise as centralized DNS queries can be monitored, logged, and intercepted by internet service providers and other intermediaries.
Decentralized DNS alternatives are under development. The most notable is the Ethereum Name Service (ENS), which maps human-readable names to Ethereum addresses, content on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), or other data.
Another alternative is Unstoppable Domains, which mints domain names as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Ethereum and Polygon.
ENS has already seen some adoption. By the end of 2024, ENS Labs is also collaborating with PayPal and Venmo, sparking speculation about how this partnership could drive mainstream adoption.
IPFS operates on Ethereum smart contracts and is designed to be user-owned and censorship-resistant. Currently, it is primarily used for Web3 applications, wallets, and decentralized websites.
Another alternative is Handshake (HNS), which aims to be a decentralized and permissionless naming protocol compatible with traditional DNS. Similar projects include Namecoin (NMC), an early fork of Bitcoin (BTC) specifically designed to provide .bit domain names and store DNS records on-chain, with censorship resistance.
IPFS also features its own InterPlanetary Naming System (IPNS), which provides mutable naming for IPFS addresses (hashes). URLs generated this way point to specific content rather than servers.
A non-cryptographic DNS alternative is OpenNIC. This is a user-operated project that offers non-ICANN domains, aiming to achieve decentralized control through community governance.
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Original article: “Tim Berners-Lee Says the Internet Domain System (DNS) Should Have Been More Decentralized”
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