Re: Namecoin was stillborn, I had to switch off life-support
⭐ Merited by Foxpup (2)
One issue I could see with implementing NMC on top of BTC is future scalability. Specifically, when BTC blockchain gets huge, it would mean that the datacenters that store bitcoin blockchain information would have to also double as DNS providers. I think a NMC blockchain would be much much smaller in size compared to bitcoin, since transactions on namecoin are much less frequest, even if they may hold more data. So keeping the two separate would allow for many more smaller, independent DNS providers, instead of limiting it to just the few bitcoin providers we'll likely end up with in the future.
Scalability is already a serious problem with namecoin.
Done correctly a namecoin v2.0 doesn't have to make the same scalability mistakes as with namecoin v1.0, and can be implemented in such a way that if Bitcoin itself remains secure and usable for people who don't have the full blockchain, Namecoin v2.0 will be too. For instance any kind of UTXO proof thing in Bitcoin makes this easy to accomplish by creating a system where a series of one or more UTXO proofs can be used to prove the correct ownership of the domain name, without requiring anyone to have a full copy of all domain names.
Note how it helps that domain registrations can have much higher "fees" than Bitcoin transfers and still be useful.
Incidentally this is the same line of thinking when it comes to colored coins; I'm writing a paper on that topic right now that I really need to finish off before I annoy killerstorm any further...
