I have just finished the first draft of a smart contract that will do DNS on the blockchain. The new smart contracting paradigm is so efficient that the PKT roadmap is already going into hyperdrive.
I’m running for Network Steward in order to complete this mission, and the people who vote for me are going to have early access register your favorite PKT domains. Early access will work as follows:
On the first 7 days, each of the top 7 biggest whales to have voted for me will be added to the early access list. Day 1 will be the person with the most votes, day 2 I will add the person with the second most, and so on.
At the beginning of week 2, I will open up access to the top 25% of all people who voted for me.
Beginning week 3 it will be the top 50%.
Week 4 I will open access to everyone who voted for me.
Week 5 I will open access to the general public.
What does top 25% mean? If 100 addresses vote for me, it will be the 25 richest whales out of them all. If 1000 addresses vote for me, it will be the richest 250. If you want early access, claim your airdrops and vote!
Vote for 0xf3dc93c871944BE0159Bf17C93D2dc66F09A09B2
In order to vote, you need to add a Network Steward vote to your staked coins. You can either do this while staking, or you can do it by clicking “Update Data”.
You don’t need to vote with all of your stakes, the system will automatically include the ones which have no vote. However, only staked assets count toward your total votes, so make sure you claim your airdrops and stake!
I will soon begin publishing a daily report of the biggest voters, and on Wednesday September 11th, the early access list will be locked in. All you have to do to maintain your position is to not remove your vote, or decrease your total staked assets until the project is complete.
How domains will work
In order to register a domain, you will need to have staked assets. The minimum amount of staked assets needed will depend on how many other people are registering domains. We are aiming for an average rate of 1 domain per hour, so when you register a domain, the minimum staked assets for the next person is set to double the amount in your stake, and then every hour that amount will decrease by 50%.
Each stake can only connect to one domain, and your ownership of the domain will be connected to the stake. If you transfer your stake to someone else (it’s an NFT so it can be transferred), they get ownership of the domain as well. If you unstake, your domain can be taken over by anyone. Allowing your stake to mature will not put your domain in jeopardy, you will only lose it if you actually click unstake.
Subdomains and records
Once you register a PKT Domain, you will be able to create any subdomains and add any records that you want. The PKT name servers will serve those records the same as if you put them in a Domain provider like Namecheap.
When you are done editing the records for your domain and subdomains, you just have to click “Save Changes” to create a transaction which will update the smart contract.
Staking domains and name servers
After October 30th, “Infrastructure Day”, you will need to run PKT Infrastructure in order to continue yielding on your staked PKT. Two of the pieces of identified infrastructure are Domains, and Name servers.
cjd.pkt + pkt.cash => cjd.pkt.cash
The names that you have been buying up, such as pkt.com, pkt.org and pkt.us, are part of a plan to create a highly robust global DNS system, and this is how it will work. When you register a domain on the smart contract, like cjd.pkt, the records for that domain will be broadcast out to every name server on every staked domain.
So cjd.pkt will be accessible to the general public via cjd.pkt.cash, cjd.pkt.com, cjd.pkt.us, etc. Because these are all public domain names, anyone will be able to access any one of these names without installing any special software to do so.
As part of the project, there will be a name server which reads the smart contract and serves every .pkt domain (like cjd.pkt) as a subdomain under the staked domain (like pkt.cash).
Cybercrime and bad actors
Everybody wants to be part of making the internet more free and open, but nobody wants their infrastructure used by cybercriminals who bring bad reputation and police attention without so much as a thank you (let alone a share of the loot!)
In order to receive staking yield, every name server will be required to correctly resolve every domain, but this presents a risk because if a bad actor registers a .pkt domain, they could bring problems to everyone who is staking a public domain.
To resolve this, pkt domains can be blacklisted. Name server operators will be able to be choose whether their servers should resolve blacklisted domains or not. Whichever they choose, their name server will still be regarded as fully functional and they will still receive their full yields.
The blacklist will be administered by me until such time as we have a more robust governance system, my goal is to protect the reputation of this young project while keeping most of the domain stakers out of harm’s way. I can’t guarantee to blacklist every domain that is considered a problem to anyone. Domains registered in unstable jurisdictions may find that they are forced to migrate or stop staking. My goal is to make sure that public domains that are domiciled in normal free countries don’t end up with serious problems.
Conclusion
Blockchain based name registration is almost as old as Bitcoin itself. But to this day, every last blockchain DNS project requires the end user to install software in order to resolve the domains. This is because the public DNS system imposes liability, and connecting a blockchain domain system to the public DNS allows anonymous criminals to create liability for innocent infrastructure operators. The blacklist will make PKT DNS unattractive for the “worst of the worst”, and the large amount of public staking domains will create a strength in numbers for the domain stakers. I expect PKT DNS is going to be something truly unique and exciting, and I hope you will come along for the ride!