The largest US domain name registry company, VeriSign, has been granted a patent by the US Patent and Trademark Office on domain name registration based on blockchain technology.
Reciente en un release Published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the domain company that controls the “.com” and “.net” domains, VeriSign, received approval on a patent that gives it the property for the creation of user addresses based on blockchain for the registration of domain names on the Internet.
Patent number 10721060, entitled "Blockchain User Addresses for Domain Names"It will allow the company to provide better services and offer new security techniques associated with web domain registrations, such as the registration of a public key, a new digital signature and identity verification system, among others.
Through this new patented technology, VeriSign can allow users to use domain names created in the Domain Name System (DNS)DNS) within a blockchain network environment, easily and securely interacting with other participants in those networks. The new technology also allows for the creation of new blockchain-based user addresses, as well as converting traditionally created addresses into this new type of “blockchain user addresses.” The patent also includes the administration of public keys and private through DNS records.
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Using domains as “your presence” within blockchain networks
Patent 10721060 also creates the possibility that users can use domain names purchased from a DNS service as “their presence” or identification within the blockchain networks where they interact. To explain this, VeriSign cited the following example:
“If a user owns example.com, they may want to be able to use this domain as their blockchain user address. This allows for a more user-friendly way for them to interact with other blockchain participants by using domain names as addresses instead of numbers, public keys, or hashes thereof. Additionally, it allows blockchain participants to use their web presence, e.g. example.com, as their blockchain presence.”
In simple words, it is about using simple or easy-to-remember names that allow you to interact with hard-to-remember wallet addresses. By using your domain names as blockchain addresses, instead of hash and public keys, the process of interaction between users within blockchain networks will be easier.
Blockchain and crypto in the DNS industry
Although for many the technology patented by VeriSign may mean a great advance in the DNS domain name industry, the truth is that it is not the first company to apply the potential of the crypto ecosystem and blockchain technology to domain names. Some projects that have investigated this trend are:
Namecoin, more than just a cryptocurrency
Namecoin, for example, is a project created in 2011 based on blockchain technology and focused on the creation of a decentralized and secure DNS system. It is a distributed domain registration system based on the original concept of Bitcoin Although it applies it in a different way, Namecoin leverages the potential of blockchain technology, such as transparency and immutability, to solve several problems present in the Internet infrastructure, especially in DNS domain name systems.
By decentralizing domain name systems, Namecoin successfully breaks the vulnerability of these systems to censorship, blocking, and surveillance by governments and other organizations, while ensuring a high level of security for users by storing all domain names within its blockchain and preventing 2 identical domain names from existing and being active at the same time.
Websites created with Namecoin use the “.bit” domain and are protected from the surveillance and censorship that domains created through centralized companies are subject to.
ENS, a universe of decentralized domain names
Ethereum Name Service, known as ENS for its acronym in English, is a project based on the blockchain of Ethereum which aims to provide decentralized and easy-to-remember domain names for users. Very similar to the concept of Namecoin, ENS gives users the ability to use human-readable and understandable names instead of IP addresses, making their internet searches easier in the same way that centralized DNS services do.
Likewise, as ENS is a system built on the Ethereum blockchain, it has the potential to allow users to receive, send and manage ETH tokens or ERC-20 through domain names instead of blockchain addresses; just as VeriSign wants to do with its new patent. This means that a user can send money to another through a domain name instead of using a cryptographic address of numbers and letters that are difficult to memorize.
As we can see, the technology patented by the VeriSign company is nothing new within the crypto ecosystem, although its scope is much broader as it includes the DNS systems we use now.
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