[CPWG] Are Blockchain Domains within the Mission of ICANN - WAS RE: Questions to the board about distributed DNS

[Jeff Neuman]

And this twisting of words is one of the problems of the ICANN community that takes it for granted that just because these movements failed in the past, they are doomed to fail in the future.

Like you Evan I too initially had that position.  After all, no one was more was heavily involved in the alternate root debate / ICP-3 back in 2000/2001 when we had to litigate against the then-called Atlantic Root who sued Neustar and ICANN when we were awarded .biz.   Then came "Real Names" and other versions.

However, the real reason why those other movements failed had nothing to do with ICANN, but had everything to do with the browsers and other applications that did not recognize these alternate roots without a plug-in / third party software to make them work.  In a way this does support your argument that ICANN should just ignore the Blockchain domains because ICANN's involvement or lack thereof is irrelevant to the success or not of the Blockchain domains.

However, this is a superficial view and ignores the question about why these alternate roots keep popping up and what makes Blockchain domains so different than previous alt roots.  And I believe it is a combination of factors.


  1.   Traditional DNS / Domain Names are now 40-50 year old technology that while scalable up to a point does have its limitations.
  2.  The ICANN environment which is so incredibly slow has a tough time (if not makes it impossible) for new technology to be integrated into the domain name system.  What do I mean?
     *   Every time in the past 22 years when a registry wants to introduce new functionality or technology into the system, ICANN (community and Org) do everything in its power to delay or water down its emergency.  I am not saying it tries to intentionally sabotage new innovation, but through its incredibly beaurocratic  and complex processes requests for truly new services grind to a halt.
     *   When new technologies want to be introduced, incumbent players in the industry that may be negatively impacted by the new technology do their best to ensure that such new technology is either rejected outright or is caught up in so much delay and process that time and other new technologies make the original request no longer relevant.  The first example I witnessed of this was the application for .geo in 2000 which was not accepted by ICANN.  The two reasons given by the Board was (1) we dont understand the technology behind the proposal and (2) Since Neustar was the registry back-end (the most insignificant part of the .geo proposal), and they already got .biz, we dont want them involved in another TLD.  NOTE:  the reality is that SRI was the applicant and essentially had planned to roll out a system much like Google Earth (only a decade earlier).  This scenario has repeated time and time again, including when the .hiphop registry was being assigned from its former registry to where it is now.  That assignment (which normally takes less than 90 days), took 9 months because of the mention of the words Blockchain and NFT.  Just take a look at the history of RSEP requests and you can find a number of examples of services that were proposed and delayed which eventually either were withdrawn (because of the headache of the process), or were watered down.

The point is that some of the drawbacks of the multi stakeholder model are that (a) everyone has to have their say regardless of whether they are impacted or not, (b) if the org or the community doesn't understand a proposal (or the proposal may negatively impact their commercial interests) it pushes back hard to the point where delay is beneficial, and (c) the model is to slow to react to what is truly going on around them.

Eventually, this will lead to many working around the system.   They may fail over and over again, but there is always a breaking point.  Is that here and now?  We dont know, but we cant turn a blind eye towards it.

Just some food for thought.

Sincerely,



Jeffrey J. Neuman
Founder & CEO
JJN Solutions, LLC
Jeff at JJNSolutions.com
+1.202.549.5079
Http://www.jjnsolutions.com


________________________________
From: Evan Leibovitch <evan at telly.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2022 1:26 AM
To: Jeff Neuman <jeff at jjnsolutions.com>
Cc: Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl at gih.com>; Chokri Ben Romdhane <chokribr at gmail.com>; CPWG <cpwg at icann.org>
Subject: Re: [CPWG] Are Blockchain Domains within the Mission of ICANN - WAS RE: Questions to the board about distributed DNS

On Fri, Aug 19, 2022 at 11:57 AM Jeff Neuman via CPWG <cpwg at icann.org<mailto:cpwg at icann.org>> wrote:

However, asking whether the Board understands that the longer it takes to introduce the process for the next round, the more it is indirectly encouraging the proliferation of these Blockchain domains and the more problems there will be in the future with potential “collisions” of namespaces not associated with ICANN.

Hey there, ICANN.
Nice little DNS business you got going.
Now listen here ... if you don't give us a new shitload of TLDs to peddle we're gonna go off and create our own DNS so we can invent them ourselves.
Not only that, but we're gonna use current buzzwords to sell our new stuff.
What's the buzzword all those Tiktok influencers are flogging?
Yeah, Bitcoin! That one!
Maybe we'll sell the subdomains as NFTs!!
Then you'll REALLY be sorry when we start making our TLDs the same as yours!
But hey, we're reasonable people.
Just send the TLDs we're demanding in an unmarked envelope to our PO box in the Caymans.
And then you won't have to worry your little heads...
Until the next time we want some more.


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