[tzpardi]

I agree. It doesn't get enough discussion because it would disrupt the hype about blockchain. When in fact as you said, it is relatively easy to solve the problem.

<<< Servers at MIT if I recall correctly. If these servers are inaccessible, what is the effect? >>>

Precisely, that is the problem.

<<< Perhaps "bootstrapping" is simply a matter of voluntarily downloading a trusted file, containing some reachable IP addresses. >>>

Could be a solution. The issue is again, from where we download it? If we download it from a centralized source then the decentralization does not exists. There are suggestions to solve this with Bitmessage or Telehash, but those are both having this very issue with bootstrapping. Using Bitmessage or Telehash for bootstrapping an another network is just kicking the can down the road. I understand you didn't suggest this :-) I am just saying.

The problem with DNS is that an authority can ban a domain name and the idea of permissionless systems is that there is no central authority should control the access of users.

mDNS and UDP multicast work fine on local networks and we are working to solve this on global networks as well. IPv6 anycast looks promising but I haven't got yet the prototype.

[textmode]

Note I mentioned the web and DNS only as an example of the bootstrapping issue, not as a solution for how to overcome centralization. (And to illustrate how I work with the web's bootstrap requirements -- using root.zone file.)

The need to bootstrap is ubiquitous. Even a user's internet connection is "bootstrapped". She has to know at least an RFC1918 address to get started.

Disseminating a list of addresses of working supernodes so users can form networks and connect to each other should not be an insurmountable problem.

The list does not have to disseminated via the network. Remember the days of POP and dial-in numbers? If the user has no internet connection then how did she get the dial-in numbers?

This is not a difficult problem.

re: ability to "ban a domanin name"

When authorities "ban a domain name" via DNS, they only ban lookups using certain DNS servers. The server at the IP address associated with the domain name could still be accessible.

The reason banning DNS lookups in order to take sites "offline" is so effective is because usually these sites are doing something shady and need to keep changing IP addresses frequently. No one knows what IP address they will be using in the future. They are very reliant on DNS.

Otherwise, if we are dealing with a legitimate site that changes its IP only infrequently, it would be futile to try to "ban" it via DNS.

It would be like expecting every nerd worldwide to forget that ftp.internic.net is associated with 192.0.32.9 or that example.com is associated with 93.184.216.34.

Some will have saved this information. There are publicly available archives of historical DNS data.