Someone should create a (dynamic) DNS provider (ideally a non-profit) whose only stated mission is to help people take ownership of their Fediverse, e-mail and XMPP identities.
If my identity were herrabre.mastodon.xyz (a subdomain instead of user-@), I could move to another instance by requesting a DNS record change, and my social graph would remain intact.
A trustable social contract would be needed so I kept effective ownership of the subdomain; the non-profit would be responsible for that.
@cwebber Perfect is the enemy of good, right?
DNS is full of warts, but it's what we have today.
Giving people more autonomy within the systems we have today motivates me; I'm tired of waiting for the flawless replacements from the future.
But I'm not sure how to get this particular idea off the ground.
@HerraBRE Sure! DNS and SSL certificate authorities are the centralized systems that plague our decentralized systems and make them not very decentralized after all, but given that it's difficult to move people off them, providing improved spaces within them is still good. SSL CAs are an awful design, but at least Let's Encrypt has reduced the awfulness level a lot, and that's nothing to sneeze at. Doing so for DNS likewise could be very good.
@profoundlynerdy @HerraBRE No need for namecoin... a petnames system is better (but can include a namecoin-like system as an equal participant)
@profoundlynerdy @HerraBRE I think Namecoin is really too much like DNS to be the *root* naming system. However that doesn't mean Namecoin, something Namecoin-like, or even DNS are entities that should not exist... to the contrary, we will always want naming hubs, but in a petnames system dns and namecoin are equal participants among many.
