Why not Namecoin for DNS?

[Ademan]

The Namecoin project already implements a robust (and flexible) DNS system based on a blockchain, and provides a Firefox browsing plugin. I invite you to consider using Namecoin in place of Colored Coins. Feel free to join us on irc.freenode.net #namecoin (slow) or our mailing list here: http://srv01.web-sweet-web.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/namecoin-dev-dot-bit.org

It's possible Namecoin isn't an appropriate solution for syncnet but at first glance it appears to be an excellent candidate, and would save you considerable reimplementation effort.

[jminardi]

I am not necessarily tied to colored coins. Do you have example code somewhere of integrating with namecoin?

[ghost]

The namecoin control util nmcontrol returns json info(to console) to a getValue command . You can easily scrape that.

Instructions : https://github.com/khalahan/nmcontrol/blob/master/doc/INSTALL.md

[Ademan]

Thanks for being open to the idea. In my opinion, the path of least resistance since you're already using python, is to depend on python-bitcoinlib (preferably from either my fork, which you probably shouldn't, or petertodd's pythonize branch) https://github.com/petertodd/python-bitcoinlib/tree/pythonize .

You can use the provided bitcoin.rpc.Proxy to talk to namecoin. I cranked out some proof-of-concept code on my BART ride home today, it looks more or less like this (assuming you have a local instance of namecoin running which accepts rpc messages):

import json
from bitcoin.rpc import Proxy

proxy = Proxy(service_url="http://user:password@localhost:8336") # interface for creating a proxy is negotiable, one of the things my branch does is change this
name = 'dot-bit'
dns_record = proxy._call('name_show', 'd/' + name) # throws if the name doesn't exist, iirc
try:
    name_info = json.loads(dns_record.get('value'))
except ValueError:
    pass # invalid json, or no 'value' field

secret = name_info['syncnet']['secret'] # of course this could throw a KeyError

# Use retrieved secret

I'd be happy to finish my PoC and submit a pull request if you'd like, otherwise I can provide more help. In addition since namecoin names are cheap, I can register a few secrets for you, but it's probably best if you communicate those to me in private so nobody decides to snatch up the names before you or I.

[JeremyRand]

@ippisl nmcontrol supports a JSON-RPC interface, which would be much cleaner than trying to scrape its console output. It's TCP rather than HTTP, so the Bitcoin RPC libs won't work as far as I know.

nmcontrol is quite a bit more flexible than talking directly to namecoind's RPC. For example, nmcontrol automatically caches data (saving around 60ms per lookup if I recall correctly), and I believe nmcontrol allows loading test data from a file rather than from the blockchain (makes debugging easier, although with names so cheap right now that hasn't been a concern for me when I'm developing).

That said, talking to namecoind should work fine if you don't expect to need any of nmcontrol's features. Also, nmcontrol isn't able to register/update names, it just reads them -- if you want to register names you need to use namecoind (as @Ademan's code does).

Hope this info is helpful.

[jminardi]

@Ademan I'd love it if you submitted a PR with your proposed updates. I've been thinking and I don't think there is a reason for me not to work with multiple decentralized name services. Namecoin seems to be the best one currently so I'd love to get it integrated.

[jminardi]

Closing this issue since @Ademan is working on a PR to demonstrate namecoin implementation.