Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Blockchain as root CA for payment protocol

From: "Luke-Jr" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2013 19:01:48 +0000

On Saturday, February 09, 2013 2:33:25 PM Timo Hanke wrote:
> > Why don't you use namecoin or another alt-chain for this?
> 
> Because namcoin tries to solve a different problem, DNS, whereas I want
> to establish an identity for a payment protocol.

What is the technical difference here? Namecoin ties names to data; DNS is a 
specific namespace in it. There is no reason I know of that this identity 
stuff cannot be a new namespace.

> You can argue that alt-chains _can_ be as strong as bitcoin, but they
> don't _have to_ be. There is no guarantee how many people will
> cross-mine.

This is true of namecoin, but it does not have to be true of new merged-mined 
data. You could very well require the Bitcoin proof-of-work to be valid and 
the master header to be in the Bitcoin blockchain.

> The alt-chain could even disappear at some point. If at some point your alt-
> chain is no longer being worked on, then how do you prove that some old
> bitcoin transaction went to an address for which there was a valid
> id/certificate at the time of sending? If the certificate is based inside
> bitcoin's blockchain then you will have a proof for the correct destinations
> of all your old transactions as long as bitcoin exists.

Yes, if people stop using your system, it won't work. Consider that a "this 
idea failed" scenario, where it doesn't matter.

Luke