This is the first proposal I've seen regarding mapping something like user@host that actually makes sense to me.

Bitcoin itself is decentralised by design, in my opinion it seems obvious that it needs to continue to maintain this feature.


On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 8:59 AM, theymos <theymos@mm.st> wrote:

Bitcoin already has code and a protocol for transactions to IP
addresses. Why not reuse that for dynamic address lookup? Just a few
changes are necessary to enable complete user@server.com handling:
- Extend the protocol so that "reply" messages can be signed by a fixed
 public key
- Extend "checkorder" messages so they can specify an account to
 send BTC to. Or standardize on how to put the account into the
 message field.
- Enable DNS lookups for IP transactions. The DNS-only proposals could
 also be used here to avoid having to use the IP transaction protocol
 sometimes. The public key for signing "reply" messages can be gotten
 from TXT records. This will be safe with DNSSEC and Namecoin. With
 plain DNS Bitcoin could take a SSH-like approach and ask the user to
 verify the public key the first time it is used, remembering it later.

DoS attacks are already handled by the IP transactions code: the same IP
address is always given the same bitcoin address until it pays to that
bitcoin address.