Comment by ryan29 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryan29 | Hacker News Reader

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I've looked at blockchain based domains. There's also ENS (.eth) and HNS (namebase.io). The biggest problem with them is they're a huge pain to purchase. You need to buy their vBucks style coins first (ETH or HNS) and many western governments treat those like a security. That makes it tough for someone like me who wants to buy legit, brandable domains in those systems.

So the only people left are the ones mining coins and skirting KYC/AML laws and I think that leads to a scenario where they'll gain a reputation of being a "nefarious" technology even though there's _some_ merit in the idea.

DNS based censorship by western countries is a risky game IMO. That makes the system vulnerable to a developing country coming in, setting up alternate DNS roots, and refusing to filter / censor for copyright infringement. It won't take much for western users to learn they need to use a foreign search engine to find things the western countries want censored.

China's citizens will be using US search engines and US citizens will be using Chinese search engines. Lol.

> I've looked at blockchain based domains. There's also ENS (.eth) and HNS (namebase.io). The biggest problem with them is they're a huge pain to purchase. You need to buy their vBucks style coins first (ETH or HNS) and many western governments treat those like a security. That makes it tough for someone like me who wants to buy legit, brandable domains in those systems.

Yeah I don't know why any of these blockchain DNS systems don't have an easy fiat on-ramp. Most people don't care about holding a token, they just want their domain name. It's fairly easy these days too with all the stablecoins around.

Because then they need to do KYC and all kind of other regulatory stuff.

Namebase is pretty painless for getting Handshake names.

I signed up, but didn't do any of the verification. I'm from Canada and they're not in FINTRAC (our KYC/AML regulator), so I'm not willing to give them any personal information beyond what I'd use for a normal credit card transaction.

The thing is I wanted a brandable name that I could likely get for less than $.50, but I'd be willing to pay $50 via credit card to avoid dealing with HNS. I would literally pay 100x the market rate to avoid dealing with their crypto currency because, by the time I deal with the bookkeeping and taxes of a crypto purchase, it costs me more than $50 in time and effort.

> Most people don't care about holding a token

I definitely do NOT want the token/coin. As soon as I touch it the transaction becomes a taxable event for me. It's a nightmare. Imagine if every store in your city used a different foreign currency and the government made you track every transaction you make so you can report your foreign currency gains/losses on your taxes.

Thanks for the thoughtful response.

I imagine it will become easier to buy with checkouts that can take a credit card. It looks like some already have a Stripe checkout workflow.

One thing that is easier about owning a domain as an NFT is that it's not a subscription; you pay once and own it until you want to transfer it to someone else.

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