NGI Zero Entrust: “GNS to DNS Migration and Zone Management”

We are happy to announce that we have successfully aquired funding for further
GNS development and polishing!

The GNU Name System specification is in its

final stages

.
Migration paths and large-scale testing as well as generating interest in running GNS zones and registrars is the next logical step.
Hence, this project aims to

1. Facilitate the management of GNS zones by administrators.
2. Provide users with means to resolve real-world names by (partially) mirroring the DNS root zone.

Ad 1.:

To ease adoption, a framework for GNS registrars will be developed for zone management.
The registrar framework will allow GNS zone administrators to provide
a web-interface for subdomain registration by other users.
The services may also be provided for a fee similar to how DNS domain registrars
operate to cover running costs.
The framework is envisioned to support integration of privacy-friendly payments with

GNU Taler

.

Ad 2.:

We are already hosting and shipping a zone for

gnunet.org

as part of our GNS implementation.
To demonstrate how existing DNS registrars could migrate zones from DNS to GNS
we plan to run multiple GNS zones ourselves which contain the zone information from real-world DNS top-level domains.
This will also show how GNS can be used to secure the existing DNS namespace from
censorship and outages when used in parallel.
A selection of existing top-level domains for which

open data exists

will be hosted and served through GNS in order to facilitate the daily use of the name system.
We are are planning to integrate at least three DNS zones and publish them
through GNS for users to resolve in a default GNUnet installation.

Watch this space and the mailing list for updates!

This work is generously funded by

NLnet

as part of their

NGI Zero Entrust Programme

.