Mending Zooko's Triangle

Human Meaningful

Decentralized

Trustworthy

Given Names

i.e. James Smith  

Trustworthy 

Human Meaningful

Decentralized

~40,000 James Smiths in USA

Mathematically Generated

i.e. Tor addresses  

Trustworthy 

Human Meaningful

Decentralized

Wikileaks Tor hidden service address:  suw74isz7wqzpmgu.onion

ICANN Domain Name System (DNS)

Great for BankOfAmerica.com,
not so great for Wikileaks.org

 Great for BankOfAmerica.com,

Human Meaningful

Decentralized

Trustworthy

Legal and Political Attacks on ICANN Domain Name System

• 2008-2010 Attacks on wikileaks.org
• Bank sues DNS provider in California, shuts down 3 weeks.
• DDoS on EveryDNS leads EveryDNS to abruptly terminate Wikileaks.
• 2010 ICE starts seizing domain names.
• Bypasses DNS providers and registrars.
• Fully automated, scoops up non-infringing sites!
• 12+ months to get your site back.
• 2013 City of London Police
• Sends registrars threatening letters, totally extra-judicial.
• Targets include legitimate international mail-order pharmacies selling patented drugs at a discount to people without insurance.
• Version of attacks on hosting
• Anonymous dissidents vs thugs with lawyers.
• Scientology, organized crime, crooked doctors.

All Together Now

1. Centralized == Censorship  
2. Decentralized == Zero-Cost  
3. Zero-Cost == Spammers Rule  
4. ∴ Decentralized naming systems allow squatters snatch up all domains with any human meaning.

 

Namecoin

First Major Alternative Crypto-Currency

• Partly based on Aarron Swartz's essay "Squaring Zooko's Triangle"
  
• Bitcoin's younger sibling, almost all Bitcoin miners are also Namecoin miners.
• Bitcoin's focus is on financial transactions and limits data storage.
• 1KB per record vs Bitcoin's ~70 bytes
• Additional transaction types.
• Namecoin implements generic Key->Value datastore.
• Records stored in the blockchain as JSON records.
• Lookup returns most recent entry of a given key.

Namecoin == Trusted Base

1. identifier/name
2. security credentials
3. optional: link to information               

DNS Namespace (d/name)

Used for .bit Top Level Domain, i.e. wikileaks.bit

Namecoin + Overlay Networks = Win

...Then it permits this information to be spread in such a way where you don't have to trust the underlying networks. And you can flood it. -Julian Assange on Namecoin

wikileaks.bit record

• wikileaks.org
  
• IP address
• Tor .onion address
• I2P "eep" address
• BitTorrent DHT
• ...

Other Namespaces

Status of Namecoin

What I Did Over Summer Vacation

or

Censorship Resistant ICANN ↔ Namecoin DNS Interop

Metcalfe's Law

ICANN ↔   Namecoin Interoperability

1. Mirroring
2. Proxying
3. ???
   

Mirror/Proxy Content on Website

+ Accessible to "everyone".

- Mirrors assume legal liability for the content on their website.

- Proxies can detect what site is being accessed.

- Costs scale linearly with the size of the network.

Challenge

User Experience

Legal

Security + Privacy

• Good enough for read-only content (reading Wikileaks but not necessarily uploading to Wikileaks).

Speech.js

name.spk.is ↔ name.bit

• Reimplement DNS layer of network stack.
• Load page in full-screen iFrame
• Update URL in address bar with paths from iFrame.
• Eventually Use WebRTC data channel for browser P2P network.

Usability

Speech.js Capstone

Usable √

Legal √

Secure √ (enough, will get better)

When I started this last summer, it was assumed that achieving any two of these was impossible.

National Blacklists

• Can't take the domain but can block access to censored.spk.is!
• Britain, SOPA, PIPA, CISPA, and now TPP: trade treaty + censorship

A Technological and Political Hack

Part 1 Know Nothing

Make destination invisible to network and server.

Visibility of a URL: public.tld  /opaque  #invisible

name.spk.is 

spk.is/name

Laws are codified social norms

Online censorship framed as anti-piracy/anti-porn

• File sharing lawsuits Napster, Grokster, Limewire, The Pirate Bay
• Lacked significant non-infringing use cases.
• Capable of stopping the  infringing activity.
• ∴ Witting participants in a crime.
• Nationwide Filters anti-porn crusaders protecting "the children"
• David Cameron announced support for nation-wide filtering after polls showed he lacked support among key female demographic.
• Now blocks "esoteric" and "extremist" content.

Censorship is not the answer to Piracy!

Part 2: Enforce Free Speech Frame

Because facts don't matter when these are people repeating them:

speech.is#name

speech.is#Information

speech.is#Wikipedia

speech.is#Wikileaks

speech.is#NYTimes

speech.is#Occupy

speech.is#TeaParty

speech.is#ACLU

speech.is#FreePress

speech.is#name

Global Online Censorship

3 Vital Censorship Numbers

55% of the world lives under medium or high levels of censorship. 

35% of the world will be free of online censorship under Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty.  

0%  of browser vendors investing seriously in anti-censorship technology.

Rebel Alliance

Water, Water everywehere ....

• Namecoin currency valued in tens of millions of dollars.
• Goes to Bitcoin miners, not us!
• We have to stay non-profit anyway.
• But we can create new incentive schemes. 
  
• Proof-of-Bandwidth = millions in free funding for proxies.
• Might be able to adapt some proposed Tor incentive schemes.
• Free computing for protein folding, etc.

Government Funding & Academia

• Academia and government funding is how Tor protects itself.
• Trying to find safe havens in academia.
• Seeking grants from U.S. Government and NGOs. 
• Wide open field for new research, come play!

ROI for One Year of Development

$100,000 Investment: Lead Dev, API Dev, Community Organizer

Buy Y Namecoin @ $2, break even by selling @ $X dollars

IETF, Are You Listening?

Fin

Wanted

Zachary Lym

Credits/Sources