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Is it 21,000,000 / 0.01 (the cost of naming) = 2.1B? from docs: "The name_firstupdate transaction has a network fee. The network fees represents namecoins (NC) that are destroyed. "
Am I missing something? If not, it seems like quite a small number.
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Given increased use of Namecoin, which would lead to a shortage of namecoins as you describe, the fee would be reduced. I have previously seen plans to reduce the network fee to 0.001 or lower, but can not find it now.
These changes would require a hard fork of Namecoin, but it is important to note a fee is only destroyed upon a new registration. Updates of DNS records and domain renewal go to miners.
I am not aware of any hard block size limit, but should one exist (or be implemented with a hard fork) it would be unlikely to get anywhere near the 2.1 billion names as you describe.
Why isn't 2.1 billion enough? There are only 252 million domain names in the standard DNS system. – Nick ODell – 2015-09-23T01:38:04.627
Namecoin isn't exclusively for domains. It can be used for personal 'ids' and other purposes as well. There are over 8 billion people in the world, and with the advent of 'Internet of things' the number domains needed is likely to explode. – AndyM – 2015-09-23T03:01:33.653