Naming Systems using Blockchains: On-chain and Off-chain

Can Web3 ever come to prominence comparable to the traditional internet?

A major requirement for that to happen is comparable user experience and trust structure on the web3 networks. Human comprehensible identities are building blocks for the required user experience and trust structures.

How many people would trust the IP address of a website say 157.240.23.35 over the domain name of the website Facebook(dom)com? Thanks to the domain naming system, we do not need to remember the IP addresses for our favourite websites. The names make the internet not only more user-friendly but more trustworthy. Just think how difficult it would be to search for something on the internet without domain names.

Similarly, blockchain-based naming services are playing a pivotal role in making web3 user-friendly – Naming services are going to play a major role in the mass adoption of web3.

Now, the use of blockchain will not be limited to creating an identity for accounts on a blockchain, as we will discuss in this course, blockchains can also improve the domain naming systems for the traditional internet.

So, we can see that there are two problem statements here

• How to create human comprehensible identities on blockchain networks?

• How to improve naming systems on the traditional internet using blockchains?

Given how intertwined these two problems are – we will discuss them together. But, before that, we need to understand how domain naming system works on the traditional internet. So, we will spend some time on that.