Alex Van de Sande & Nick Johnson: ENS – A Global Naming System for Ethereum (Episode 183)

Transcript

[Music] this episode of epicenter has brought to you by the ledger nano s the hardware wallet which sets the new standard in security and usability get it today at leisure while calm and use the offer code epicenter to get 10% off your order and buy Jax Jax is a user-friendly wallet that works across all your devices and handles both Bitcoin and ether go to J a double X Co and embrace the future of cryptograms wallets hi welcome to epicenter the show which

talks about the technologies projects and starts driving decentralization and the global blockchain revolution my name is Dylan Kuchar and I'm man Haron today we shall explode the future of naming on this helium blockchain specifically we are talking to Nick Johnson's and Alex to understand it we're developing the ENS of aterial name system project the ENS system went live today so you think it's a it's a great time to catch up with them before we start let's have a short introduction starting with Nick Nick tell us a bit about your background and how you came to be in the rocks in space sure I've been a software engineer SERPs was going on 15 years now I'd always been interested in infrastructure

type projects sort of stuff but behind the scenes Microsoft work and I hadn't really had much involvement in blockchain until very recently and when I should have had chanced across the variance from appeal coincidence and and had a look at it I'm pretty sure I saw it during the crowd sale but like many sort of didn't do anything about it and when I took another look I was really impressed with what was being built up in our rapidly and some quite lovin structure in general and etherion is basically the biggest and most interesting bit of new infrastructure on the Internet in a long time I was really intrigued and next we had our mine being offered a position by the foundation -

that was one they were very amenable and from there it sort of you know spiraled man cool and now now on to Alex now many of you would know Alex as a UX designer and creator of mist but Alex I'd love to hear from you how you have got to be involved with blocks a technology in the first place so I am a designer by ice formation on my plate and I mean I was working just with the developing apps and so I'm trying to be interpreted for a while but then I started getting dirty because and then I started getting really interested in all the Hong Kong

but then responded to the whole project right and then that's how I got into achievement and he was one of the most active communities and I just started helping different day some aspecting was before the talk show and I already who need this sort of help the presentation design t-shirt and I started helping them on that then when the when the sole sale ended and they had some money to hire people and to ask for help they offered me a job and IP I went alone one of the first way one of the people who work in the salary to the foundation under the first I see was one of the

first tires I believe so that's that's how I really know and I've been working with them since 2014 cool oh okay oh I've always wondered what what what it's like for you to be one of these let's say so when well-known people in this space out of Brazil X for example I'm originally from India and there are so few people from India in the space that for for my friends and all what I'm doing is might as well be you know completely bonkers what is it like in Brazil do you think this is a huge community that people

understand what you're doing your friends understand what you do well when I started any places that I could I wanted to hear children were in probably in different communities and they were hopeful talking about it's going fries and mining and then then sometime ago let's let's give that gives us coins but they all spent space now and I think one of the first stops I gave was do was work on from was so my thank God was just after some guy was talking about waving theories on how everything the word isn't and how and then after that there's remaining after that or the charts say for all time then that would

be so in the game but didn't it was really different immediately just about miner and trade et cetera and unfortunately you see for a long time do you have to see our studio still like that but I am starting to see more interest in the intrapreneurship and especially it's also simplified it seems that I've been talking more than work people involved with yield and for want to give were looking how we can help stubborn on some side collision which is a big topic but we're there right now cool so let's get right into it as as mayor mentioned the ENS or if they are

naming system went live the day that this is being recorded so it's gonna come in a few weeks it by then there will be I'm sure lots of domain names that have that will have been registered but as of now there there's a Twitter bot I believe that's that's tweeting out the names that are being bid on and we were just looking in it seems to be you know the live releases seems to be going smoothly I take it the frugal house life just went for auction oh that is so yeah but before we get into ENS and you know what the technical architecture what what use people will be able to make out of this new system

first I think it would be interesting to spend a little bit of time on DNS so not the dogecoin naming system but the domain name system so I like to ask you guys firstly as an introduction do you describe what the domain name system is and what role it plays in the functioning of the Internet sure so I think it probably helps to go back to how it originated and back in the very early days of the internet when it was still called the ARPANET early 80s there was no real domain name service and the way you find a name to a computer was you literally call them up

on the phone during business hours and you said I would like this name to be associated with IP address and they this is a great text file called hospital txt the remanence of which you can simply on your computer to say and enter the name in there and then they sent that by our FTP to every single person on the International basically and if you wants to possess a new site you had to wait until the newest version of those files is distributed and make sure you've got a copy before you could actually actually do it I preserve the size with careful - in the course of three weeks but at any rate and and this became sort of rapidly unwieldy as the number of hosts and the number of names ballooned

so currently the early pioneers came together and Paul mark patrece who's one of the founders was my main concern in fact wrote the effective first version of it set out to build a serene system and what he built is what eventually is become DNS today and the way it works is it literally won't the Internet to us distribution systems we we think about block chains and columns being of revolution and distribution systems that to some degree as DNS was kind of first and the way it works is is you have the group servers they're responsible for answering queries about

the first part of the name so they're actually the last part way it normally written so calm and nice and all and they when asked how I resolved calm gets into the servants responsible calm and those then get out without the next bit example for example and then they think it's the next verse and so on and the the idea is the mean one wanting to register a new name can can add it to the domain name system s at the relevant part by asking the people who maintain that section of the 2fm and then point to their own domain name server which does the next question so forth I had no idea that host txt was the originals of domain name system I had no idea that's that's really cool recently literally

overall Wow so you just populate that with all the domain names and then you have this company that with issues or iterative versions of this host dot txt file until it just got unmanageable well okay so so essentially there are these servers and these servers are sort of the top-level domain name server so you've got like com org like dot Paris you know all these new domain names that have come out and when you query when you when you make a request your ISP through its DNS servers will query the correct I guess root server for that top-level domain or TLD and then that TL the

server will come back with response saying this domain name points to this IP address and then you can then make that request so before you make anything when you type facebook.com or whatever before you go to Facebook or get anything for Facebook you're first contacting a DNS server directory essentially to get the IP address for for Facebook servers yes so there's actually a one label about these inverted or comandantes the.org one of the GTL leases and they just maintain a list of addresses but you only need the one gTLD server and that is that tells you where to find the dot-com server and the dot mixers and the dog server

okay so as new domain as new top-level domain names start you know appearing much such has been the case these last few years so if it was like a thousand now your your ISP or DNS provider typically it's your ISP will give you access to this list of top-level domains servers gTLD know the gTLD is actually maintained by ICANN that your IP doesn't need to update with each week to tell people to know I see what you're saying okay okay so that's that's quite clear so talk about how the how did DNS system

and with regards to ICANN and how that works or what you know what is the governance model they're like if me or some company or anyone wants to register a new top-level domain let's say I want to register like you know dot epicenter top-level domain how does that work what's the governance mechanism in order for that to happen etc so like you pointed out it used to be the beyond swords you don't you you either book up with combination doctor or or you form a new country and if you're lucky and you form a new country they know you'll get you know epicenter so if you can you know form the epicenter country then you're sorted they're changed a few

years back when I can decided to open up registrations from util things and of course now we have an incredible protrusion of them and the way that works is they opened up a limited period during which people submit proposals from utl DS and if you are interested then you wrote up a mini mini page document describing what the TLD was and what you choose to do with mercenary it'll sell things to people and so forth and a whole lot of other details like security aspects and so on and then you submitted that along with $100,000 application fee which is a void of rejected till I came and then they went through all of the lusts and assess all

the women determined who got names and didn't according to the application and if you were lucky enough to get it then you now the clones exclusively the three for their top people domain and you could decide according to what it will all ships it who gets up the lanes and how much they pay for them so that that opportunity window to register new top-level domains has now expired that it's not no longer possible yes okay they they're talking about opening us up again for seeking that new domain they they might revise the rules from what we've learned the first time around they might think that almost certainly will increase the education see and then yeah they go through another periods of

accepting applications and then close down and review them all and so on and so forth why is it so expensive to register a new top-level domain that's a very good question my guess is the combination is the the amount of due diligence they have to do and not want me to be out of pocket for that and a deliberate tactic to erect a barrier of entry so that you know Joe Bloggs doesn't say I want Dock Joe Bloggs and she's really serious about it right well I mean there could be source or some sort of an auction system you know yeah that courage be things like the work pretty well so I guess none of an executive authority on the remains are charged and are there any ways that

in European this system is vulnerable or has have there been any lot I mean I know I'm asking this question but I know that there have been attacks on DNS in the past what are some well some of the ways in which this system is made vulnerable either security vulnerabilities or any type of vulnerability so I guess you can you can roughly divide it up until security and closure issues or technical and social issues from a technical point of view das was designed back before things like if they'll even existed everything was in the clear on the internet gained and the general for the threat model and the very early internet was only people we trust even have internet connections and

obviously they've changed that the Internet infrastructure has been slow to catch up so DNS continues to be resolved entirely in the clear and yet it's surprisingly easy in some situations for people to mess with your DNA surprise if you're surfing the net web apps of the nexus point then chances are that anyone who's in the same cafe as you can construe with your replies and signature to different site so again those requests are not secured through HTTP or some sort of a secure dome-like exactly and they're all closed on so they don't have the transport layer security like that they don't even have they also don't have any sort of security to attest to the origin of the records so

even if you knew of connections right you wouldn't know if the DNS server was lying to you or not and there are solutions of accepted solution of DNS SEC which is a sort of certificate hierarchy similar to how you sell works for the website and for other resources so it relies on you know the route submits the root certificate being in violation may issue about finding authority to command nice and organized and so forth and they signed certificates for all the individual domains but of things that slow to be rolled out and has a lot of technical issues both in terms of implementation and insted legacy software and there are political issues - believe it or not

because there's a whole bunch of attacks that are possible for instance a few if you can just lie about whether a name even exists but proving with a name doesn't exist exposing some information at one ends do exist and some people don't want other people knowing what names exist and so on and so forth also there are some some other issue page I can have effective control over them so if your room taunting that it legal under the jurisdiction but I ended your domain might be taken in technology even each player German is probably your own politics and also that I say this open up the possibility of fire of government

firewall blocking specific so the lines from emergency largest switching them out so I think I so I think that that's a big political innovation here it almost seems like it the NSF can be like a potential choke point in what is otherwise these otherwise spread out and decently as information with very much so unfortunately a number of countries as the censorship systems ranging from the fairly liberal you know that some some countries unfortunately adopted all the way down to very restrictive one like Turkey inside or have relied at

least apparently and sometimes still on on being able to redirect DNS queries and and sensible results let's take a break to talk about the larger nano s the new flagship hardware wallet by Leger I'll pass it over to the ledger CEO Nico de Baca who can tell you all about ledger security features and SDK so let your nano as the personal security device based on the secure element screen and button so that you can verify everything that is done on device and make sure that you are really doing what you want it to do compared to our previous solution this device is based on the latest generation secure element DSD 31 from st-michel the SE 31 is on is using a secure arm core which means that

you can add the same ease of development that you would have on a generic microcontroller but benefit from the security features of the secure element security features are include an application firewall at the lowest level that lets you protect applications from each other which means that you can load multiple application and the hardware wallet even post issuance and you as a developer will be able to leverage these features to load your own application without a word or relation and without any kind of photo revision from the window we will be providing the device with a not an SDK on that let you do anything you want with the device we provide sample applications for crypto currencies different cryptocurrencies so

Bitcoin nitiram are we will also provide a 500-ton skater and you will be free to add everything you like for example you could add some secure messaging some encrypted chat and you'll see that the solution is quite powerful and very easy to develop with the Nano F sets the new standard in hardware wallet security and usability you can get yours today at ledger wallet calm and when you do be sure to use the offer code epicenter they get 10% off your first order we'd like to thank ledger for their support of epicenter let's take me into ENS a tedium name system starting with like what is year this and what is it train do in short Amy is is adding two remaining to

etherium and and block change the general I guess but for now it's you know stick with Aryan so one enormous problem at a time the the idea is that in a block block chains personal Bitcoin am in form of a lot a lot changes been around for a while but people still communicate addresses to each other as if it was 1984 in posts dot txt with all the rage or in fact even before that so if you want to seem some bumps normally you have to get there you know there are ferry Madeira software model Bitcoin address or whatever and it's big long you know string that's completely and human readable and very easy to type

over terrible consequences we can do and while it's difficult to build distribution mailing system on top of first-generation chain like Bitcoin etherion actually make was really easy it's really straightforward to build a naming system in terms of technical implementation and there have been a teams in the past but they hadn't really attempted to address the purposes of use cases but remainings of clunky and engaging so the goal of gold beginning is effectively just to go from human readable names like you know aetherium dot e for wallet studies or whatever to various different types of resources those are the most common ones being some of these wallet address or a

contract that you want to interact with or a site hosted on swarm and IP appears and I think such they're interesting enough I think you know that this whole is all we she sort of predated you in for for base by so one of the first youth gamers of blockchains other than this point was probably a point of a remembered which was clearly an attempt of on building destroy things and sort of name fine didn't really what wasn't really successful with that and then there and then when when other watches and other

people try to make model even watching when that's when sort of our client master going for sort of spotty nada I see I would say that was sort of the beginning of June and a lot of leaders are realized but why wait we have had a separate block chamber nanny and a separate block change or or keeping asset and a separate asset and a separate blood shape for some kinds of financial transaction ideally one single block chain that allows more contract so in a sense trying to build many is right engine when they experience and

how I would say help launch the whole buffer cool so far one question that comes to my mind is on this we've had namecoin right which was based on like a Bitcoin like like architecture where there's like it inputs and outputs to a transaction and then on top of Bitcoin work one of the famous projects that was trying to do naming of some of another type was the one name project right so select tell us how you serial offers something different compared to compared to these these systems so so you only freedom you have Els and then on Bitcoin

architecture you had named coin and one name when you go from like that those architectures to etherium what kind of capability opens up so I think and probably one of the main points is that those other systems are started off by trying to hold the naming problem for the whole world they were affected they're they're trying to build a replacement for DNS right off that they try to resolve them speak domain names and socials and well that pumping that I record to seeing with NS our initial goal is twofold meaning for aetherium so we're not going up against the the entire mass of the entire legacy

Internet we're attempting to make a theory and easier to use and easier to interact with and other related resources like storm and IP it is easier to interact with and then you know once once or fix that it's not but it does look at our problem we can try and tackle the entire Internet and I think the whole interoperability opportun also a great way and how was better attitude because for us not because once you are you are using one block what's your using and at impact we do is once kind of told in Johnson and Peter if you want to interact with a realtor about sales

contracts you can use DNS directly from it so it the more the more as we have an ecosystem being worried they will be able to use the tool itself I think that's we sort of see images each other so speaking of apps I mean when you think about it perhaps obvious where everyone but a DNS system is really a way of improving user experience it's it's it's taking you know addresses that are not friendly human friendly human readable and making them human friendly and human readable so from that perspective I think that it's it's an

it's an interesting way to perhaps you know in in one sense in make user adoption a bit better or help help user adoption through improving the user experience like you and we had status on recently you know they're doing something else and the in in that realm and it seems that this although it's perhaps not obvious you know when you look at it because it's a sort of technical thing it is a user experience play in a sense and so I'd like to ask you then as a follow up is as a developer how will I integrate this into my into my apps and how will I change the experience for my

users okay can answer first the the use of affected that I think that helps developer site so when they're doing this which is and you can bow that allows you to load application and just by developing a weekly we have too many problems with reading a good coat first of all it's just sending angle of like and it has has opened apart just in order to send traction to anyone you have to have a return address each I mean it's not even readable like and I cannot tell you over the phone what I what I did not read it I have to populate it and probably even add a typo

there so right right there is it bar and we want our users to be able to type if they want to let's say make a donation to epicenter 20 hundred degrees which is able to just send us Google Wallet by epicenter and they would be able to know that that's their correct at and the second thing is that this is also broad and and is your intern ending sworn for it which allows you to connect to a site it is not hostile voltage anymore actually it just your download it from of Jacob your net and it's great because you are you can be sure that you are already

downloading instead of typing a Madrid or I denied idea that the tell you where hunting is a has expired right you won the back of your constable so instead of having IP address what you have sort of a hash it is quite really a version of an application which event the file which of all the other two days of course there we go we have the same problem as idea to tell you beginning and the same problems we have go to begin address which is you know for you to connect to a phone app you need to type a hash which is which are 64 characters you cannot see a single any one of them and then that's another

problem that we needed Els Halbert so right now and then you'll be able to say look I want you to or you to stumble Center low-tech Center app to interact with us so we can just like epicenter the piece on your wrist order a little download Kaiser from swarm or from from defense just turn around I also did this kind of problem if you're having a pest if you kind of problem everyone's health right so standard I am has been issued by coming with an eater and when a man has a hesitate issues everyone happy so by by solving is a global scale is that anyone any developer can just log enn

into it and help solve yeah and then so from a developer's perspective you know if I make the comparison to a browser the browser calls up you know a DNS server and then that gets the information from the server for you know the corresponding IP address when domain name as an app developer I like plug in the in a smart contract and call up that smart contract to get the corresponding domain yeah domain name in and either address you sure and interact with the blockchain you can add it to any information or so it has name

and it's in the center of it and you can request them and it can be one example but i want i what do you want from it I want a given address within some fun and a wallet okay here's to the true value head oh no I am a different water but I want what is the different advert for epicenter of it here in war you can compare that particular oh oh no I won I'm looking for a hash of content or maybe an IP address or not that then you just query this board we'll be able to tell you any sort of information that is attached to that particular name and actually uh recently in one of the token Saints they was

Chris token same for this project called token guard right and a very interesting incident happen and I'm sure the two of you know that incidents that there was this person was trying to send like 250 ether to the to the smart contact with token same contract and these camels this guy had the wallet like my thermal it loaded up on the screen and he was searching for the address to which he ought to send that money to and in order to gain that address for it it was the event of the slack of this token called Project and he browsed through the slack and he saw a message where where it seemed like one of the administrators of

that slack had put in the address to which the funds not to be sent to he took that address send it to that particular address he sent 250 sir and then I think like 30 minutes later he realized that he had been scammed because on the slack that particular message wasn't put by the admin but was rather put by some kind of attacker for loss of plan for better word and he ended up spending all those to Peter to this other address and basically lost that money and like when I was reading that thing I was like ok we do need human readable names for smart contracts right so so that you know in the in

future token says I can just I can just say ok I want to send to the cosmos tokens and I can just type like cosmos token salient send the money and be sure it's a something like that I think that's a good example yeah although I noted caution of course is that anyone can buy an I'm sorry one could go to the processor a properly handled token sale of course we by the name eight a time when they would declare this is the name of the contract will be available on when it's ready and they can see the advantage that you can you can spread that information so it might ahead of time and then when with a rush you don't need to wait you know somebody who looks legit but as you point out turned out they weren't to to post a mysterious address but agree and

just take on faith it would soon as EMS sold sort of the problem and I would say that the clients themselves should try to solve second part which is to check but the NFL rule what is it address related to that name but let's say you go people had a typo on your name or if you if you're having issue but which are taking a similarly sounding name probably give you all of it should have some sort of check saying look this is actually a name that is 10 money to before right so it's another way we can you can I don't say that we always need

to be dealing more and more protections together on top of it because we do not never on the other may be the kind that we should either end users will find out yeah and I think the other thing that this that looks interesting to our ENS to me is and you silly falls out of the nature of DTM platform is so we're like we started off the show with DNS and like comparing it to Els and when I look at the NS as far as I'm aware it it's a system that Maps like human readable names like amazon.com to IP addresses right but then you can say that DNS is like sort of a better version of DNS or

decentralized version of DNS eventually but but in reality like what ENS is doing is something that told me even DNS doesn't because of like a smart contract is essentially like an execution of a program right this is this program and there is this execution or program and ENS maps names to executions of programs like not just IP address but names to executions of programs and maybe even names to previous versions of a particular website right Allah so if you yes name to an IPSS address then maybe every leo version of that website gets a slightly different name and you can

actually map names to different versions of websites as well right so it seems to me like a system that has the potential to offer much bigger capabilities down the line then much much bigger us advantages down the line then the DNS system itself you you're exactly right point app versioning there's already a package management system being built for some others a variants main programming language that relies on this in E&E so it uses en esta richards to package names and allows you to register different versions against different names likewise if we're working on a decent clothes version of gifts which users ian

is to register the the hip you know the tags and branches and forget so here's a perfect example of where it extends beyond regular tea and it also I would say this vision justice fact that one week difference yes it helped with the digital block like when you own the domain where you're actually on your just only a promise that there is someone who holds your domain for you there you keep your domain for using the charge of credit cards you can actually give some leaves your depend so we are a different instance you can say right you're talking about raising money what's open thing right now is open

thing just go into what is fig account and then that movie free account just it controlled by a by either by a by the founders endearing what it could have and you couldn't have a contract that controls also the in s domain or a nickname so let's say that you want to learn example prone sale like and you could they thought you could make a concert and control epicenter of it and then is it is let's say if you're you're you're all sales open are not happy we in yourself because own the domain will take it elsewhere or if they get that domain and knowledge someone or put it at the collateral though you

could have a stay over or let's say oh I I want to raise them how I want to get come down all of the dominoes and if I don't pay it back by the end of arms then you have to get to control my name for let's say 24 hours and you can like post it on social media like oh I'm sorry I'm a terrible pair III never made my view or you can use the deposit button is used to register the name itself or the collateral as well exactly it's like the name itself becomes a smart aspect right yeah so we might think of a DNS name as still like sort of a dumb Bassett that you can do very limited things with but like ENS claims

could do a smart smart asset so I think these things these things like seem non-obvious where I think they're they'll be very they could be very important down tonight so with that like let's let's kind of walk down into the technical architecture of of ENS so explain to us like how it works how the system works from 10,000 feet up so I started to squat dearly I have DNS works in terms of you you have your rich citizen I redirect to the next one in Kanpur for DNA settings to retain that distraction and there's a diffusion of responsibility such that you can you can

delegate ownership to a lot of parties at different levels the domain and tree without some of the disasters medicine in if you applied it to the period so so if we if we went directly with mirroring DNS on to ans then if you wanted to resolve you know bad bears large ENS we'd have to do a whole series of lookups and that would either be depending on whether you're doing it on chain or off expensive in terms of gas or slow in terms of real time and if you're doing it on chain of course you your very little opportunity to catch any of X you incur that cost every time so the in this structure is a little different it has a single central contracts called the registry and the

registry maintains a tree of every single name in the EMS system but it's a very sort of bare-bones tree the only thing it knows about each name so bind by name I mean beef and include Aziz and in bad Abu Dhabi's and so on is who owns us and that person we're commissioned to make changes and what the resolver is for it and then the resolver is and other contracts that can be you know anyone can write a result that anyone can deploy a resolver and if you know own a name you can point it that goes over and the resolvers job is to actually do the lookup so every every name lookup in the ENS system is a two-step thing a two

step process first you ask the central registry which resolver is responsible for if the center dot E and it returns an address and then the software are that address what is the you know the there in whorls address or what is this warm air sure or whatnot of Representatives easy to answer the query so the advantage of this is that everything only ever required two steps but you get the same decentralized nature you get the same distribution of authority and distribution of implementations so people can implement their own resolvers they can add new features without having to centrally coordinated and you get from the system like DNS okay so I highly signaling this giant list of what like name and they

resolver at which you have to query in order to figure out what that name leads to get back home that's so that is the registry and it's like this this giant list and that is that list is what is the key component of what you have built and in order to figure out what that name exactly needs - anybody could write their own resolvers a smart contract so maybe those is always could also reside on systems other than etherium well you know they they need to exist it appeared smart contracts more we call them so the all the two components are the the actual implementation of the registries a big list and the interface

registrar sorry that resolvers have to to a bag so they do need to exist of appeareance mark conflict but they can get their data for anywhere so you can might resolve of it but update the data from any sort of resource you want you know for live chain that can be signed it could be a multi-speed it can be you know as Alex was suggesting you can have something where it's owned by a tourism contract and so forth so this this sort of start could be like the registry itself is like very dump and then all of these smartness like like that we are talking about that on a DNS name can be loaned it can be part of financial

transaction all these smartness and Isis because you can make smart resolvers do different things and not just smart resolves you can also have small onions so the owner of the name can be just an external accountant and I can only name myself but if I want I can make a contract to them today and then the contract under name it gets acceptable so our resolve is updated or what's up the names of creates and so on and so forth so that's actually how registrar's were coming in is all they are is there a contract with under name and they set the rules for when they will hand out what domains and we they'll get into that's that's really amazing so I think yeah for me like this kind of thing kind

of demonstrates the power of CATIA right like you're something that is absolutely dumb which is just like a list off okay like here's the name and here's a contract go to that contact to figure out what this name is right it is an absolutely dumb list but but like it's like you can build all of these smart things on the edges and like slowly as people build smart things on the edges you you keep getting all sorts of emergent behavior that that is that is unexpected select before we kind of go down into the technical details tell us some of these emergent behavior is that can that sort of happen when like programs own names or the resolvers are

smart in some way so they I mean I think the first ones that occurred to us were the possibility of ridges trails like I mentioned so the you know Dottie is owned by a contract and because their contract owns the name it's a registrar and we can set our betrayal II complex rules now and things out we use an option based system on the main net but on the Testament deployment we use a systems a certain type system that gives you any name you ask or that expires them after 28 days if you want to buy wallets Dottie then you can set up your own wallets registrar which can be in handout names according to your own set of rules which might be free to everyone or you they might pay you a

deposit or you know pay you an outright see or any number of things and you know the what makes a registrar is effectively just what the interface is so if you have a multi think that home the names that a registrar I don't know you know they're just a bunch of people playing to do stuff if you think back about the early days of the DNS system where you had to call them up during working hours to ask for a new name that a registrar I suppose it was that we were person whose job is type date names in terms of the resolved range of sentence where the smartness comes in there is I get this twofold one is that the piece of resources that you can resolve so you know sworn ashes and

etherium addresses and IP addresses and silence I thought depends only on the resolver part on the registry the registry knows nothing about resource types so if you come up with a new resource type that you want to ask results so you decide that you know the latest totnes who is you know new token registry or something and you can write up a short spec saying this is the interface that resolvers must implement to in order to be able to resolve it and then anyone can invent a new resolver and deploy any and assistance and they support this new new type of information without any sort of the only coordination you need is making sure other people know that they can do it as

well and I guess the final bit is that you can you can add smartness result in other ways for instance you know we know radon is coming soon there's no built-in support in aetherium for item but it doesn't really need it because you can write a resolver that's rate incontestable and those capable of taking updates and you know from radom channels and then now your name supports ratings because you're resolving us and they didn't require any creature coordination or power forks or upgrades or anything if you it's important to know that I think there's two things that nick said is there's the biddings so first of all

let's say this whispers vertigo right maybe so each whisperer ID might be another one or someone can come up with another each of people to go or you can control it and connect to very fires control other source of action you can add that to your UMass that means that let's say that you are reading a sham application on a Geum you can have the same name that we use on ENS you can use it as your shuttle so if someone you Twitter on it here they can you already have your your user X that means that you click got at the center at least at some point you will be anything enter that if you will be you only in the center on every single app and I have

ENS for their own protocol and I think that's important because then your main launch the user done your name doesn't necessarily belong to the social media platform or whatever platform you're using right now I think that's important let's take a short break to talk about Jax Jax is your wallet you complete user interface to cover all your blocks he needs I've been using it nap and loving attack supports a lot of different cryptocurrencies suppose Bitcoin Easter like corn here in classic Disney cash order rep and you're adding me more keep you responding to users needs that was Jack the nice thing is that you can manage all of those coins within a single wallet and you are in control of

your own private keys they're not on their server and there's a single 12 bird seat that you can use to backup your wallet all your coins and see came across different devices talk about devices they're on pretty much any device that you can think of you can get it on PC Mac Linux you can get on smartphones like Android and Apple and iPhone you can get it on tablets or you can very even browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox and on top of that in Jack you can actually change the different cryptocurrencies for each other because they've integrated a shape shift and more partnerships and integrations are coming down the line in 2017 that are going to make Jack even better so Jack's is really making

blockchain and cryptocurrencies accessible for the massive huge use for the masses make sure you sure to get your own Jack's wallet at Jack's of i/o or you can get it from any of the app stores you are using we'd like to thank Jack's for their support of epicenter you guys are essentially running a you're running resolver and a registrar so the Registrar is the part that allows people to register the domain name so right now it's a registrar DNS domains and the domain by the way and and you're also going to be writing the resolver that is gonna be returning the corresponding smart contract dress or in a wallet address for any domain that

somebody yeah for any domain name to someone queries so I guess we run into port the registries that they win somebody register the name we deploy a sort of a default resolver for them but they can they choose to pour their own you know their own version of resolver okay and so then let's say I register Wallace studies and you know I'm a nice guy so I'm letting people register domain names for free like subdomains of Wallace studies so I can have like Nick dot Wallace study I kind of Mayer dot Walla studies and I then essentially run and resolver as a when people query that top well that yeah that while a studies domain name then I'm providing the sub

domain the corresponding addresses for the subdomains so it's sort of cascading yet like resolvers over resolvers over resolvers I think the strain apart from there one of the issues is how do you select an egg right so right now in order to do all on a name it takes about five days in gates right from the moment you want you say you want on a name that there's three day where anyone can also claim the same name and bid for it and then there are two days which will give your bid and so you cannot get a name faster than five days five nine but for some cases you really want you do we don't want any deed you don't want any so you create a signed babe in at least two or

three transactions you can give action for YouTube its neighbors but for most cases 41 you just want a user to click one button and wanna name mystic so if you own let's a wallet of positive if you could give you a giveaway subdomain or your own users and then I can can be electric while it's a piece or or or next that wallet for if and it could work sort of like an email address right so can you are Alex and if you at least out of it right okay and what what will present anyone from year sort of establishing yourself as a dot e top-level domain what would prevent

anyone else from you know just working your project and having a competing in top-level domain that can that is conflicting with your namespace so the shorter in his network effect the way that somebody starts resolving things on the on the inner system is that they'd get the address of the registry that for the central tree big list of domains and once they've got that they can look up every other name under a second or couple of the registrar's and so forth if somebody wanted to establish their own alternate hierarchy living in your cigarettes what we do that I just to

pour their own registering they basically have their own registrar that they want for hand that names under whatever they want but the sending of nandi innings there are you know ultimately nice registries but they suffer from when it will get them met in least somebody knows to use your a vision of the registry as the the authority of the one we're not going to actually be able to look up the names that we registered so one of the things we also have to consider it went in order so you mentioned registered DNS domain right you mentioned that as if it's the place where you can buy names so that's not naturally true in the

sense that we give an app where you can register a name particularly on on registrar's of the inventors name but into but the magic of the term is that anyone can deploy their own and to register domain and actually they have four major waters has employed their own headed by their own register F major major scan has deployed their own DNS connect connection en export and I think that connects to the reason on why I think it's hard horrible and welcome interesting because the process of doing ns we meant that we connected we contacted my wallet microliters can't

exactly get some parity we can connect connect the gation from adamak and everyone sort of inside of am and everyone agreed and wanted to get for work ENS so i think that's when you will need to have each one anyone could deposit or on your neck i mean they would have to have all the client support in there right okay so the network effect is is really important too so you know in a sense a competing top-level domain might be hard you may be hard to like you move you out of that that dominant position but someone could register or could decide to to do like a dot aetherium or i don't know like a dot dap or something like

that and and make that available for any wallet provider than to query that resolver and you know they could have their own registration service in one huh I'd like them to talk about the the oxygen system that youth you put in place in order to register domains can you explain how that works yeah of course so the way we are doing it is worth its what so we went through many iterations with the community going back and forth giving ideas on people coming back to us and then we are working right now is what we call the big three options right so what we want

is that there is no rush there is no we don't need to be there first we really didn't want to have a greater land rush where everyone whoever was the first register something or just needing to get it right so that's why we sort of created the thing at stake necessarily five days oil so the way it works is that you put it we put a single base or how much you a Leo at the night right so if you if let's say you see the main day I would pay $1000 right as a tennisia not be able to own that night you put aa so we put a few so this no one can know how much no no which domain you are kind

of pricing and then you put up a few bit there are these gears of two days and which anyone can see the data menu open probate and they can also put bits out after those three days they are we you there are Tuesday which people can review those this and then at the end the temperament the person who wanted to find out their name the both so that means the first thank you with you to conduit the thousand dollars you will win the name we only pay what is necessary for the second highest price so basically you only pay with it everybody to overbid second-highest earth so if you want we're willing to pay a thousand dollars someone someone

offer $100 and you only use a or an invisible box absorbers okay so it's sort of similar to like an eBay auction I guess innocent so once once I've registered that domain name and it's it's mine and win that auction how long do I have that domain name for because with DNS typically you you register domain name for a year and then after you have to pay for it again so how does that work with ENS so right now where you're doing is that you are paying anyone you're just watching that next that winter amount of leader for one year right so to learn so you just you're just like that amount product for one year or for how long we

want people tonight and right now we have deployed for a temporary register and AGA that you want to see how people X how people react so people find Elaine how probably try to splat on the name and after this after one or two years we'd employ a new more permanent right teacher and the main different will be the currently right now all you need to do is right now there is no sort of registration fee willing to have a recurrence is you get by what is on the more permanent register you're probably be found on a way that they will be a recurring some sort of feed that you

need to pay just agree with your life and you're not actually just squat in the net right so how that how is that going to work we don't know but we are we notice I think I think we do have some yeah and so it's just going to say that they I guess the erosion psychedelic was getting at is we realize that it's not really practical to design an entirely new system for allocating and managing names entirely from scratch in very few people involved like that so in some ways we're following a sort of a methodology of the Minimum Viable Product so we've launched a registrar they're capable of allocating names using the fair option system of allowing you to

use those to interactively means but see it's not the governance system the goal is that we'll use the first couple of years experience to filled it East versus ourselves and others in the community to raise awareness without in and raise the profile beginning and then - together with the community too and build a permanent registrar that you know that we believe will function well for the environmentalism so the registration CJ is the interim one and in putting their what into a series of a good stretch thing we've given up the ground okay so this this auction system currently it's an auction system where

you bid on a domain when once that the the auction period that has expired the highest bidder gets a domain name and that money is locked for for a year and at that point then sort of auctions I presume would start again and that whole process would would would start once again a year later not quite so you'll name your deposited lot for at least a year and that to prevent people from sort of sitting on punting and immediately giving it up and getting it back after a year you can if you want relinquish the may and get the deposit

back but if you want to keep using the name you can do that you just leave the deposit where it is and continue using your name and the name is yours effectively until the registrar or rather which point how it works is up to the what the community decides with them and we just go should do okay so I see perhaps a problem there were if I'm locking let's say I put in I don't like 5e right now right for a domain and that's worth like okay five hundred dollars it around five hundred dollars at today's price and a year from now if either is worth that thousand dollars all of a sudden I'm no longer locking five hundred dollars but I'm unlocking five thousand dollars whereas the you

know the value of that domain name has not gone up tenfold the money that I'm effectively locking in is now worth ten times as much is is there any way that you plan to mitigate that can I you know review my sort of bid at that at the end of that year period we can put a proposal like that when we were initially building the registrar and one of the problems is that it introduces both complexities and and opportunities to gain the system you can't hold another option for the name unless you're willing to take the risk that the man gets taken off the person who originally register that and and we've got a very high value on stability of names on the idea that one

see Bridget doesn't name it should take some fairly extraordinary circumstances but the longer the yields for it difficult to sort of them partially assess you know what the development should be now what the name is worth now without either introducing you know game theory problems or without introducing opportunities to explore it for just a significant additional complexity so when you're bidding on a named day you should be doing so in the knowledge that you're going to have to tie up the deposit for at least a year no matter how much either means and that when that time comes rapid enough to make a decision relative which is more valuable to you being guaranteed to retain the name or the deposit deposit money and if

you want to take the risk you could relinquish the name and you get a positive actually immediately start a new option but you're doing that and the knowledge that somebody else Michael sizes is more valuable to the end than it was to you let's not move on to one of the final topics for for this show this is so the cool thing that you're building is a registry that tracks dot ans names write names end with or TNS tell us about the governance of the dot ETH registry so in the short term it's entirely automated for the interim registrar as rules the options allocating names and no disputes process

the pair's no way to revoke you know legitimate name once you've got a name you're headed for the duration of the interim registry in the long run you know the government is that will evolve community and we will deploy deploy the permanent registry will decide what that looks like and I really hope that some of the people listening will get involved in others without how that should look because I think we both Alex and I alone have slightly different views on how the plan of government should work both want lots of input from both from the outside and just to learn now functions and the interest I also get the sense you might be asking about the route and the multi

circles Oh God yeah so the the other component to to Ian is governance is is at a level above the Dottie's green peridot registry and it's the route so likely talked about earlier and DNS however is a four oops negative but responsible for telling you on your name server where to find common org the Rizzoli's node and the NS which has been sort of the empty name and that is the records the node that is allowed to create new top-level domains and reassign registrar's to top-level domains and so forth and so of course the problem of how do you govern that fairly and again in the sort of a minimum viable product line we're at the

moment what we're doing is we have on multi-sig that is owned by settlement of a jewels in the appearing community and say together have to sign you know for editable majority is necessary in order to make any changes to the route for any and everyone who signed up agreed to a very sort of because I can fairly restrictive agreement on what circumstances that would happen which is effectively in in cases mitigating an impending disaster in the case of technical upgrades like replacing the intro and Regis trailers determinant one or in the cases you know are other changes to the systems that the

community as a whole you know is in consensus on and the individual key holders really is not an accordingly terrible idea you completely the exact list of you know what the key elders agreed to on on these domains in the long run we would like to see the multi state based governments replaced with something you know fussing more distributed which might be some form of Dao that is capable of you know taking votes from stakeholders and the system and time but I think designing that government system especially since I think we both believe in together a significant size and favor

of stability is going to be I think at least as big a challenge of designing work or Dottie's and registrar so in the short term we pans over to these key holders in order to sort of secure it and and make sure things you know don't go horribly wrong or short-term okay so the the long term what's the other like a road map that you've sort of set out to you have a governance system by investors time or this timeframe so the road maps or sadati is basically a year from now start soliciting submissions we're working on designs within the registrar the goal of rolling that out two years from now and we

haven't been explicit timeline for a placeable multisig because I think we'd like to see how things work out with the Dottie's government first but I think the goal is that we could start working on that in terms of a permanent thing more or less the students where we're happy with closings and I think what will inform us a lot fear is other 18 daos things like colony and so forth and how well they function and where their strengths and weaknesses like to help us build something permanent for the route awesome if you listen to know the limitations of the current political right they have control to appraise the GMs

but they do not have controls or any access of any other funds are locked into the a dns so if if they for the worst thing that you do is that to create a new sort of an asset would not that would not assign names into a way that other people would like to and what what I means is that everyone who just made my way to a new be an assistant you use the previous regular version and get older their each you're holding back after a year they'll be able to get the reader back yeah okay so if for some reason like Vlad and you know new Nick and and Juan and like Aaron Fischer

decides that they want to change the rules if they deploy a new contract you can immediately take your ATAR there right it's going well so okay and if they don't change anything and then after a year once you decided that holding the name of work for you you can read back the names of oil and then then get your air okay because I was because I was kind of concerned about this for of seven multi-sig although you know it sort of makes sense to look at the community and respected people in the community to hold you know that have this responsibility at the same time it's sort of a homogeneous bunch of people that you know it the risk of the

collusion is quite it's quite high if you if you think about it a better more heaters and ingenious option would be like to take people that you know are from different communities or perhaps even different you know types of open source projects for people people that are not even involved with with you know watching in space but you know it's sort of reassuring to know that at least there are some safeguards there that would prevent them from taking funds from it specifically taking funds and if anything like that were to happen not that it's likely you know domain name holders would be able to get their

funds back at the end okay should ENS collapse under some sort of massive collusion between like flat and bacon and Han and the you know the funneled funding members would be reimbursed I think we've all definitely sort of maple gothic going all mentally which is that as we collect the people we did because we we knew and trusted them and people we know and trapped the person to have that community and also we need them to have some level of awareness we don't need them to have a detailed technical understanding and our system works but they need to have at least basic level of awareness equal system of and constraint in order to collect inform play because we really

don't want to a rather stand through obviously we must bring P holders to actually listen to our arguments that way a change should be made and then make up your own lines so before I wrap up tell us where can people find you how can people get involved is there any you know are you are you looking for people to join the project this is your chance to call out to the community great so you can you can find out if you want information on ENS domain if you want to join in the conversation in the community on get over in the theory installation name - registry channel and yes we are absolutely looking for people

to contribute read up the documentation have a chat with us come up with your ideas submit a RP sorry IB and and yet please do get involved because the system's going to be more successful than more people who build on top of us and the more people we got alright cool and we'll add those links to the show notes so anybody interested can look up the the Registrar I try to register our domain or join the committee on giver so thanks a lot guys for joining us today on Epsom is a pleasure to speak with you and learning about ENS like they say thank you for advice and thank you for our listeners for tuning in epicenter is part of the let's

talk Bitcoin network you can find this show and lots of other great shows at let's talk echoing calm of course if you like the show there's lots of different ways you can support us of course you can tell all your friends about it you know you can just go like just go tell all your friends at epicenters great you love it and learning things every week and that will make us happy you can also leave aside Tunes review that helps people find the show and you can also give us tip and the tipping address is in the show description so thank you so much for tuning in and we look forward to being back next week [Music]