[aliasxneo]

It's using a decentralized backend. No, it's not using any existing blockchain, nor does it have any tradable token. It does have some blockchain properties, but the main layer is built on top of libp2p.

Agreed it's a very hard problem. We're in the process of forming a syndicate of like-minded parties who are interested in seeing this come to life because the model itself has no exit plan and is basically anathema to traditional capital funding.

Also, to be clear, names are hashed/salted in the backend with Argon2ID and a rotating salt. So the name index itself isn't enumerable, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee names are private once they are shared publicly. Theoretically you could lookup someone based on their public key without knowing their name - so in that sense it's somewhat close to what you're describing.

[iamnothere]

Interesting. Yes, the possibility of direct key lookup would solve the problem, especially if existing contacts remain connected even after name expiration/revocation.

Perhaps you could do a name presale, although I’m not sure that would be enough funding. I look forward to hearing more about it.

[aliasxneo]

We'll probably do a name presale, but this is deep tech/big infra we're setting up, so it wouldn't be enough. That's why we're busy partnering with like-minded individuals to do a non-traditional raise. We did start with the more traditional route, but all of them (including a16z) were baffled by our choice to not resort to degenerate behavior (i.e. a16z in particular refused to play game without making a token and listing it on a DEX).

Anyone interested can reach me directly at [e-mail] (this is a SimpleLogin alias to protect my email from spam).

[hlieberman]

What two properties are you choosing from Zooko’s Triangle? You say human readable and decentralized, so you must be giving up secure.

[StrontiumK9]

A few things, Zookos conjecture dates to 2001. It was an observation, not a formal proof of anything, nor a physical limit, as he said in the paper: "I didn't prove that it is impossible to have all three features"

So without conflating Zooko with all the commentators who followed saying, "but Secure meant ...", lets look at the real definition from Zooko:

1. distributed (in the sense that there is no central authority which can control the namespace, which is the same as saying that the namespace spans trust boundaries), 2. secure (in the sense that name lookups cannot be forced to return incorrect values by an attacker, where the definition of "incorrect" is determined by some universal policy of name ownership), 3. and having human-usable keys.

So the system we are building (I am the architect) Satisfies all 3. I went and added a fourth, which is privacy. I say:

4. Private (Whereby a scan of the name registry does not reveal the human readable names).

I think 4 is a necessary property to mitigate CT log like reconnaissance feeds being used by threat actors to enumerate every registered identity for the purpose of automated attacks.