[realusername]

If my cloud provider is bad, I can switch to another one or self-host.

You can't switch from the ICANN, no matter which domain you chose, it depends on them, they effectively have a monopoly. I want to self host my domain name.

[aitrean]

There's a fair point to be made there. But then I would ask which solution is best: lobbying hard enough to democratize the organizational structure of ICANN, creating a competitive ecosystem, or resorting exclusively to a ledger of entries with no capacity to be modified according to legalities, attacks, or otherwise? What if someone spams the ledger with too many names? What if someone takes domains that should be illegal for them to possess? What if someone takes someone else's private key? What if an organization gets their private key stolen? The vectors for exploitation don't just disappear because you have a decentralized system. The exploitative behaviour just changes.

[realusername]

All these issues currently exist with the existing domain name system as well.

> What if someone spams the ledger with too many names

You need to pay in coins to register a namecoin domain so this attack won't work.

> What if someone takes domains that should be illegal for them to possess?

This should be up to courts to decide if the name is illegal and handle it over, not to some random organisation like the ICANN which has no legal basis.

> What if someone takes someone else's private key?

Same as if some gets access to your registrar password right now, nothing changes with that.

> What if an organization gets their private key stolen?

Again, same as before, nothing is improved or changed by a blockchain here.

[stereo]

There was AlterNIC, it didn’t have a lot of success.