On Saturday, February 09, 2013 2:33:25 PM Timo Hanke wrote: > > Why don't you use namecoin or another alt-chain for this? > > Because namcoin tries to solve a different problem, DNS, whereas I want > to establish an identity for a payment protocol.
What is the technical difference here? Namecoin ties names to data; DNS is a specific namespace in it. There is no reason I know of that this identity stuff cannot be a new namespace. > You can argue that alt-chains _can_ be as strong as bitcoin, but they > don't _have to_ be. There is no guarantee how many people will > cross-mine. This is true of namecoin, but it does not have to be true of new merged-mined data. You could very well require the Bitcoin proof-of-work to be valid and the master header to be in the Bitcoin blockchain. > The alt-chain could even disappear at some point. If at some point your alt- > chain is no longer being worked on, then how do you prove that some old > bitcoin transaction went to an address for which there was a valid > id/certificate at the time of sending? If the certificate is based inside > bitcoin's blockchain then you will have a proof for the correct destinations > of all your old transactions as long as bitcoin exists. Yes, if people stop using your system, it won't work. Consider that a "this idea failed" scenario, where it doesn't matter. Luke ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb _______________________________________________ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development