[zzem]

Thank you for your insights. I understand the concerns you've raised, but there's also another side to DNS that's often overlooked: its role as a globally available, distributed database for storing small amounts of data linked to domain names.

Now, I'm not saying that people should start to host their files on DNS, but for simple, personal "banner" like pages that say "Hi, I'm X, love cats, catch me on @email" that should be OK, may be easier than setting up a separate hosting, and make the web more inclusive for non-technical users. Storing and transferring a few hundred bytes for this purpose under a distinct namespace/zone in a niche use case should be well within the capacity of the existing DNS software and infrastructure. We already have other standardized, dedicated classes of informational ("Layer 7 data") DNS records like HINFO and RP, so why not store a piece of text that would have a meaning for humans and present it in a nicely formatted (themes) and accessible (HTTP) way.

The way I see it is as a scale: DNS TXT records may be ok to use for small, simple, informational pages; - static hosting (GitHub Pages, Cloudflare Pages, etc.) should be used for longer texts, pages with custom assets (e.g., images), or multi-page sites; - SSGs and dedicated platforms for blog and bigger websites (Jekyll, Wordpress, etc.); - VPSes, EC2, Lambda, Firebase etc. for bigger things; - ending probably with dedicated servers, networking, and own ASNs for big online platforms. There is always some amount of data or activity above which one should switch to the next level, but switching to it requires additional knowledge and resources; and the other way around, buying and maintaining a dedicated server just to host a simple, static website with low traffic is an overkill.

Also, one thing about the app's architecture may be worth highlighting: The app uses a pre-set DoH provider (currently Cloudflare) to resolve DNS queries on the client-side, so the impact on the DNS ecosystem is close to none as only the source DNS server and the DoH resolver store and transfer these TXT records. Such setup also protects sites against mitm attacks. If the traffic becomes too big for Cloudflare infrastructure (if that's even possible), we can always setup and switch to our own dedicated DoH endpoint. Similarly, if the DNS hosting provider thinks it's abusing their servers, they can increase pricing or limit the number and/or length of TXT records their customers can setup for a single domain.

[plagiat0r]

Every bit of information that is stored in the DNS is serving one basic purpose: to allow connection to a string. Additions, like CAA or SPF are also consumed by programs to set some limits of a domain usage.

Every other record you mentioned never gained any adoption, simply because this "database" is meant to be used by programs, not humans. Sure, I may use SOA email to contact a DC, but this is exception, not a rule.

Therefore, from the perspective of a person that does DNS courses for technical staff, I conclude that average Joe will never be able to set TXT records properly, and professionals will not do it either because of the reasons I mentioned.

And while I encourage you to pursue your goal, adoption willy be close to none so I'm not so worried about that. Adoption of this will be much lover that adoption of HWINFO or LOC records (ignore RFC 8482, I mean user provided HWINFO data). Your proposal will be used by 50 people total, optimistically.

For all use cases, we have http invented already. Storage for http is also a solved problem.