alt Hacker NewsYou register a DNS-style name. Registrations lasts a year with a 3 month post-expiration window to reregister, otherwise it gets released back. The system goes out of its way to make name trading uneconomical - specifically to work against speculators and name-sitters from coming in and ruining things.
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I wonder if something like this could follow the spirit of "tag" URIs where you include a temporal component. A semantics of "namespace Foo as established time T."
Any usage of the name in identifiers includes the epoch. Identifiers from several epochs could be concurrently in use. Identifiers rooted in different name epochs are not be comparable.
Out of band networking effects need to establish the meaning of a specific name epoch. The disambiguation doesn't work if the intended consumers are unwilling to learn and distinguish the epoch component of identifiers they care about.
I suppose, at the limit, this is the same as just having everyone add some numeric suffix to names they try to register? But it would be more constrained, e.g. structurally enforce that the digits correspond to some kind of clock metadata which is a witnessed and signed part of the decentralized ledger.
Ah, ok. Is there a fallback for using bare keys instead of human readable names? If not, you have just recreated a central gatekeeper problem; you could be ordered to terminate name service for someone. Unless it’s using some decentralized crypto system like eth.
Optional human readable names could be a good system combining convenience with resilience.