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Namecoin is a generic name-value store, so I'm wondering if its possible to register .com domains in namecoin. The answer here seems to suggest you can register any domain you want How do I register a .bit domain name with Namecoin?
Can you register a .com domain with namecoin?
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Namecoin was the first fork from Bitcoin, and is a blockchain based peer-to-peer network which maintains a decentral ledger of registered names.
It is the convention, that when you register a Namecoin name starting with d/ that appropriate DNS resolution software would translate this information to a .bit address. E.g. d/myself would be resolved to myself.bit.
On the other hand, the responsibility for managing regular top-level domains (TLD) is assigned by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to specific organizations, with which a regular user can then register a domain directly or through intermediaries.
The ".bit" domain used by Namecoin didn't exist in the Domain Name System (DNS) before. As far as I am aware, there are no conventions for established top-level domains. That would be especially problematic in the case, when the two resources managing the same namespace would end up with conflicting information: It would be somewhat detrimental to the user experience if domains were to resolve to different pages depending on whether you used the Namecoin extension or not.
Another example of Namecoin usage is the application OneName, which resolves names starting with u/ to point to Bitcoin addresses of their users.
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Easy answer: No, you can't register a *.com domain with namecoin. That would be like asking if you can print dollars with bitcoin. Nope.
But what you can do is start your own namespace with namecoin. The namespace d/ stands for bitdomains. So if you wanted to register a bitdomain named "bitdomain.bit" you would register
d/bitdomain
(Notice that you don't put a *.bit at the end of the name when registering a domain, because it's the namespace you put in front of the domain name that defines what the domain stands for, in the case of d/ it stands for .bit TLD)
But you are not forced to use the d/ domain. In fact you can start your own namespace, for example whatever/ and use it to register your own domains for whatever reason. For example:
whatever/dontask
So sounds like some extensions just decide to interpret d/<whatever> as a <whatever>.bit domain. Presumably, an extension could do the same for .com. But I get it, no one is doing that, and why would they – B T – 2014-11-07T08:08:03.850
Can you explain a little more about why, and what the limitations are with the protocol? – B T – 2014-09-21T23:26:29.083
Yes, I agree that you can't use Namecoins to register domains that will work with the ICANN DNS system. However, theoretically, Namecoins could create a completely parallel DNS system that doesn't care at all about ICANN. For example, if ICANN decided to create a .bit domain space, it wouldn't invalidate Namecoin's .bit domain space. They would exist side by side. My question is: can this happen for .com domains, or is it like you say, that namecoins only supports the .bit domain space? – B T – 2014-09-21T23:44:49.060
I suppose you could theoretically use the key-value storage properties of namecoin to create a system that allows arbitrary domain spaces (.com .bit .whatever). But what you're telling me is that, that's just not being done right now, right? – B T – 2014-09-21T23:49:13.927
Well, you could "overwrite" a domain on Namecoin, but then you couldn't use both systems in parallel without conflict. Imagine for example somebody registered "wikipedia.org" on Namecoin, and everyone running the Namecoin extension in their browser got that page instead of wikipedia. – Murch – 2014-09-21T23:52:19.863
I do see the problems. I'm thinking about the perhaps-not-too-far future where the ICANN DNS system is obsolete - wouldn't matter at that point. But you're saying it is possible? – B T – 2014-09-21T23:54:07.070
The main problem would be having two resources with conflicting content. If only one of the resources survived, the survivor could extend the service to the domains currently managed by the other. The other option would be that both mirrored the same information, but then it would be redundant. – Murch – 2014-09-21T23:57:00.917
Ok, but the basic answer is that, currently, namecoins only do .bit domains, nothing else. Is that entirely accurate? – B T – 2014-09-22T00:03:36.993
4Not really accurate, no. Namecoin itself doesn't know anything about
.bitdomains. It's only by convention that when you register a Namecoin name starting withd/, then appropriate DNS resolution software (which is not Namecoin itself) would resolvefoobar.bitusing information fromd/foobarfrom the Namecoin database. – Greg Hewgill – 2014-09-22T03:26:41.850Thanks Greg, I have updated my answer after doing more research. – Murch – 2014-09-22T07:43:15.113