alt Hacker News.self: A new top-level domain designed to support self-hosting
Comments
Hi there. I've done a bit of work on specifying human-centric identity goals for the internet over the last 10 years. May I suggest you look at Microsoft Vega? https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/vega-zero-know... (I have no affiliation).
In brief, I think they aim to solve the most important needs for online identity-gated services in a maximally private way.
For instance, I'd like to see .self offer the following: a single domain to any person in the world with identity blinded. I can imagine two 'tranches': say xxx.v.self for 'verified' and xxx.u.self for 'unverified'.
Both would use a Zero Knowledge proof to confirm they had not already registered a domain; verified would register with you guys or a data broker some PII in case it was needed for verification / checks / etc, while unverified would maintain the promise of one domain = one person, but not allow the TLD or registrars to be able to unblind which person it is.
Use cases like this would be really fantastic. And, obviously could be tested out and tried on a normal domain name while you make your pitch, and put in for the auction / however ICANN is currently managing TLD launches.
The "one free domain per person" isn't the interesting part really - that will be hard to police unless domain name is a function of ID proof (avoids squatting).
0) The actual intersting part of a new TLD can be growing reputation by post-facto taking away a domain without recourse in case of squatting. Instead of adversarial takedowns (which produce false positives as noted), let anyone challenge an inactive domain in the first year or two.
1) If they can figure out a mechanism for moving a domain from "assigned" -> "squatted".
2) Domain must match (or derive from) a verified identity - e.g. your domain is a hash/slug of your government ID. Makes squatting structurally impossible because you can't claim someone else's name / gov (Sign in with passkeys linked to a national ID).
3) Proof of human effort, reduced with time - require periodic renewal with proof-of-use (DNS TXt updates, through a flow hard to automate).
4) Kill speculative market - domains are non-sellable and non-transferable - always go back to the free pool, and stay there for 30 days mandatorily.
Some mix of these could be the right structure for a trule high-reputation, free domain.
https://hccf.onmy.cloud/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/dot-self....
> Everyone entitled to a subdomain at no cost
How are you going to pay for the (substantial) cost of running a TLD without registration fee revenue? Is this a loss leader for other services? Are you operating on a 100% donation model?
> No parking, squatting, or reselling
How do you plan to tell the difference between a parked/squatted domain and one in legitimate use but offering no public-facing services?
I'm just being a negative nancy here, but I don't think I'd want to advertise that any of my sites are specifically self hosted, in that it kinda asks for ... security probing, since it's more likely than not got less than professional security surrounding it.
Having said that gestures to the entirety of the internet
So maybe not such a big deal.
I don't understand the naming scheme, or the apparent lack of it. I half expected it to be some sort of UUID which would at least makes sense. At one per person for 7 billion people that's a little under 33 bits. Make it a nice round 40 for a bit of future proofing (the scheme doesn't need to live forever) and to make a bit of space internally and that's 5 words from a 256-word list. That would seem to make a lot more sense then first-come, first-serve on something as easy to abuse as .self.
However, perhaps more relevantly, it isn't clear why this needs a TLD and all the hassle associated with a tld when it could just as easily be attached to any convenient domain name lying around that you have access to, such as, oh, say, onmy.cloud.
Then again I have this objection to almost all TLDs. But I'm not sure I'm wrong.
At the very least if you want to show ICANN that you mean business I would strongly suggest just doing it on onmy.cloud, and tell people that if you get the .self you'll transparently migrate their onmy.cloud domain on to .self when you get it. Nothing says "I can do this" like actually doing it.
Hold up...why isn't .self listed here:
https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db
Is this just an idea at this point, or some kind of "you have to use our DNS to resolve .self domains" scheme - ?
Site errored out and gave me three different error messages as I reloaded. I guess it's self-hosted on something underpowered, and dynamic where static would do the job?
Shotgun on your.self! That’s going to yield a ton of great second level sub domains :)
It redirected me to: https://drive.google.com/viewerng/viewer?embedded=true&url=h... Doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
States could grant such domains when individuals register their identity, for example, "klaus-mueller-<close eyes say first word that comes to your mind>.self". It runs on a VPS, and it is well documented how to create and run a website on that. School kids are introduced to it. Would be an excellent entry point into digital sovereignty for citizens.
It simply cannot be both free and free choice of domain.
If it has both, it will be squatted to uselessness, and blocked everywhere because of phishing scams everywhere.
You can either make the domains cost money, which seems counter to the entire point, or disallow choosing the domain, instead handing out free what3words style names.
I don't fully understand how this works... who regulates and defines what is "self-hosted" or "ethical technology"... I feel you can't really solve the distributed consensus and governance problem by just introducing a new domain suffix.
I tried to leave a comment and it errored out and said “please leave a valid email.” I tried 6 different addresses at prepend.com.
It’s weird when sites have invalid email checks.
I actually think this is a really good concept. There is no perfect solution for what they're trying to do, but I think they have most of the things covered.
Offering one free per person is nice, it can be tricky to enforce but I think doable. Regarding privacy, even right now ICANN rules require a real name and address for the domain.
This project comes at the right time when because I see a lot of interest growing towards self-hosting.
I am biased though, I've been working on on OS for self-hosting , fully open source, Debian based, no restrictions https://github.com/malmoos/malmo
I’m just using .home.arpa for my self hosted stuff. Free, just have to deal with TLS root cert trust, but once that’s down; you’re golden.
This sounds great in theory, and if you're capable of managing your own DNS servers already possible for US citizens (via locality domains). Who's gonna front the cost of resolving queries for these domains WAS my question... answered by user HumanCCF above: their sponsors and individual donars will (since they plan on operating the service as a "public good" I imagine with a strong technical team they could actually do it! I wish them the best.)
I definitely can appreciate the principles they're espousing even if I'm not gonna be giving them my dollars. More people should care about making sure technology serves humans, not vice versa :)
Locality domain (RFC 1480) rant: Who the heck is Multi-Paradigm Corporation and how come emailing [email protected] with all of my "T"s crossed and "I"s dotted to register a domain results in silence. No response, not even a "go away".
I know there's some localities where you have to have notarized authorization on city letterhead but they're mostly administered by the people behind https://www.about.us/locality-structure
https://locality-domains.pages.dev/ is a good reference if you don't have WHOIS installed btw. I can't vouch for how up to date it is though since I just query the database myself.
reading the comments on the site itself makes me think this is one of those "oh, I think found a way to get free money from governments". It doesn't feel like it's being done by someone with genuine knowledge of domains, nor an actual mission. I sounds more like a "deal maker" figuring out a way to get rich by creating an NPO
We could fix a lot of this by just making sure .local (which is used in Bonjour/mDNS) could coexist sanely in mixed resolver environments _and_ could support subdomains. I built https://rcarmo.github.io/projects/mdnsbridge to “fix” it for my particular use case, and if it wasn’t for TLS shenanigans and the lack of subdomains, my issues largely went away.
I'm currently documenting my research on this at myshape.com/genesis-100.html—would be keen to hear if others are tackling the continuity verification problem from a similar angle.”
What is the expected price range for registration and renewal under this TLD?
Will there be any assurance that renewal prices will remain fairly stable, rather than being significantly raised after customers grow attached to their domains (a practice that seems to be common with new gTLDs)?
What is the premise for being able to do "one person, one subdomain" that isn't a privacy/security nightmare?
We should probably just bring back Geocities at this point.
Better charge an arm and a leg for it, or people will complain that it’s too cheap and argue for blocking it everywhere.
The reason why this won't work is right there, in the original link itself.
They're allowing comments and obviously the first thing there is a scam.
No way any goodwill on the Internet is going to prosper. Not anymore.
.me is cooler, but...
That all the cool 2-letter TLDs are designated as country codes was an extraordinary mistake that will have unpredictable and devastating consequences long into the future.
In practice sadly many of these more obscure TLDs seem to be more expensive than more 'normal' ones like .org
Well, the .meow kickstarter raised €121,896 with just an assertion and a voucher system, so there's at least some community support for this kind of thing, without it needing to be a good idea :-)
> Human-Centered
If this is supposed to be human-centered, why isn't it .human? I assume there will be many agents with their own ".self" domains that have very little human oversight.
well that sucks, I just bought a domain for this purpose. Granted, I was under extremely heavy budget constraints so perhaps I wouldn't have been able to afford one. There was a sale on .club domains, so I picked that with a funny name (beatsyouwith.club (no, nothing is hosted on it publicly yet I'm lazy))
I very much like the idea, but governance is going to be heck.
The $1/year numerical .xyz domain is pretty affordable already, and there are multiple providers now with free DNS services.
> One Person, One Subdomain
> - Everyone entitled to a subdomain at no cost
One subdomain, or one subdomain? Would I be entitled to something like "pavel.hosts.self"?
I, as a human, find that website decidedly unfriendly to quickly getting information. Particularly on mobile.
Sounds like a unified directory of domain with lower security that attackers can target to me. not sure the domain for self hosting is such a great idea.
Do the people who are promoting this know that it costs approx. $227,000 to apply for a new gTLD with ICANN?
In this econimy? where google's full might is behind killing self-hosting? Be still, my beating heart --- there may be hope yet.
Will Self[0] is going to love this.
I’m very confused. This is a web page with an embedded single-page PDF (!?) that gives zero details about how the project would work, be funded, or even look like. What is there to even discuss? Nothing about this seems very “human centered” to me.
Can someone explain how the "core features" would work ?
How/Why is this linked to a TLD and not a hosting provider ?
Feels like putting a flag on yourself that you are an easier target (security vulnerabilities, ddos, etc.)
481 upvotes on HN, and only $136 USD donated (out of $64k target) -- at the time of writing.
Given the amount of traffic this project has received by being at the top of the front page for half a day, one has to wonder if a different approach to soliciting donations would have yielded them more money.
Clearly, everyone here is at least interested in the idea of a .self domain, and I wager that most (even the naysayers) of the commenters would register theirs.
Imagine if instead of asking for a $15–125 donation behind a CTA, they asked for $2 to "pre-register" your domain (with higher tiers for more benefits). I have a feeling they would have raised a lot more money...
The problem I see with those initiatives is that there are 8 billions of us, and for most us, there are uncountable persons with the same name.
And do we really want another public identity anchor given the increasingly signs of a rise on government control and authoritarism?
What I dream of is an identity schema where your identity is context based, your friends can easily locate your game server, the IRS knows the stuff it legally can know about you, but it couldn't easily trace you as a taxpayer to you journalist or political blogger, even if you had a patreon or a substack and received money from supporters, the IRS can tax that money, but it can't link it to your anarchist blog.
Yeah, a pipe dream, I know. But, can we really keep on living on this world without dreaming a bit?
Just use cloudflare with static hosting for things like this. Doesn’t load for me.
A free tunnel would be a dream. This would be a great initiative.
Seems that my.self is already taken. Moving right along, then ...
Wanted to find out more but it looks to be down. Unfortunate.
Seems like a good way to get targeted by attackers
Remember when the .tk TLD became free 20 years ago ? Every hobbyist took one, then scammers followed, then Facebook and antiviruses started blocking it.
I remember publishing a website for a class on my .tk domain, the teacher couldn't open it and I almost got a failing grade because of it.