| I remember reading something about that before. I just had a quick look around and, while I don't believe I have fully groked the concept it would seem to me that Telehash is solving a different, but related problem. The web, as a technology is probably not going anywhere for a few more decades at least - people have gotten very used to opening up a web browser - very few actually understand the technology beneath. The CA/DNS issue is one based solely around them - can I type the domain name I saw on the tv/ my friend gave me/I heard about into a web browser (and these days) and it can direct me (securely) to the page where I can do business. Telehash seems to fit in on another level. Perhaps one which we are heading towards - a world of machines securely finding and communicating with each other to achieve a goal set for them by some human actor. This space is becoming more crowded and no good contender has emerged - and I think there is a good reason - they are either too radical as so they can't find a footing, or they are too conservative. The documentation is slightly lax, but I feel telehash is the latter - it doesn't seem to be solving any problems already solved: * Space/Storage/Data Transfer - I don't care what anyone says, the blockchain model is simply no scalable, any system where are full client has to hold onto/download gigabytes of information is a non-starter for me. But still, in any new system - hopefully decentralised, we need to distribute information. Any kind of system we build must be tolerant of partitioning - I think the solution to this is injecting some trust (ala Convergence) * Speed - Computers work in nanoseconds, the web currently operates in seconds (some sites in milliseconds) - we can't beat the speed of light, but we can certainly start removing the cruft from our communications - HTML, XML, JSON, CSV - are all formats designed for people. We need tools that let us manipulate formats designed for machines. Our networking protocols are like this as well - as much as people hate ASN.1 it solved some problems decades ago allowing the phone system to scale on just duct tape and wd40 * Power - Blockchain bashing time again - we live in a world of limited, expensive power. We are getting much better at producing low power devices, people like wireless devices. Why should our networks be so power-hungry? Just a few, rambling thoughts. |
There's no blockchain involved in Telehash. It accomodates various cipher sets, including one suitable for ultra low power devices (there's a partially working implementation for Arduino). And you're correct, it isn't really aimed at enabling anything like trusting a URL from a television commercial.
Telehash is conservative in the sense that it solves useful problems, even within the current DNS infrastructure. No one's currently doing this, but you could easily map a DNS name to a Telehash address. But it also offers global resilience to partitioning, because the logical mesh can operate on any lower level network transport.
I like the multiple notary model of Convergence, but I think any of these trust models still need to separate the "human memorable names" component.