An empirical study of Namecoin and lessons for decentralized namespace design Harry Kalodner*, Miles Carlsten*, Paul Ellenbogen*, Joseph Bonneau†, Arvind Narayanan* {kalodner, carlsten, pe5, arvindn} @cs.princeton.edu*
[email protected]† Princeton University Abstract 1 Introduction Decentralized namespaces. We initiate the study of decentralized namespaces from an eco- Secure decentralized namespaces have recently nomic perspective. A namespace, as we define become possible due to cryptocurrency technol- it, is an online system that maps names to val- ogy. They enable a censorship-resistant domain- ues. The Domain Name System (DNS) is the name system outside the control of any single most prominent example. A web service such entity, among other applications. Namecoin, a as Twitter that allows users to claim usernames fork of Bitcoin, is the most prominent example. and create profiles can be thought of as imple- menting a namespace. To be memorable by hu- We initiate the study of decentralized names- mans, namespaces must support arbitrary user- paces and the market for names in such sys- chosen strings as names. To be secure, names- tems. Our extensive empirical analysis of paces must map each name to the same value Namecoin reveals a system in disrepair. Indeed, for all users and adversaries shouldn’t be able to our methodology for detecting “squatted” and convince a user that any other value is correct. otherwise inactive domains reveals that among The problem of decentralized namespaces has Namecoin’s roughly 120,000 registered domain long been recognized as an important one. The names, a mere 28 are not squatted and have non- DNS is a critical yet centralized component of trivial content.