As of Wednesday January 8 2024, registration of PKT domains is now open to the public. What’s a PKT Domain? Glad you asked. A PKT Domain is a domain registered in one of the PKT Project smart contracts, it is accessible as a subdomain of every staked infrastructure domain. Staked infrastructure domains are domains that were registered with classical domain registrars, they begin with pkt and end with any top level domain, for example pkt.com, pkt.us, or pkt.wiki. When you register a PKT Domain like cjd.pkt, your domain is reachable via every staked infra domain, so cjd.pkt.com, cjd.pkt.us, and cjd.pkt.wiki.
You can see the list of actual staked infrastructure domains right now, by going to https://insight.pkt.wiki/domains/ and clicking the “Active Domains” tab. Since insight.pkt is itself a PKT domain, you can also reach the same website by going to https://insight.pkt.st/domains/ or https://insight.pkt.ovh/domains/, or insight.pkt.<any staked top level domain>/domains/.
The value of this is two-fold, firstly domains are far overpriced for what they are - an entry in a database table. Secondly, most registrars and domain registry authorities have no interest in defending the rights of their customers if they receive an official-looking (scary) email. This leads to the infamous “website has been seized” banner that has marked the end of more than one freedom-loving project.
This is not to say that there’s no such thing as cybercrime, but investigations are supposed to be slow, methodical, and protective of the rights of everyone involved. All too often, government officials get it in their heads that they’re some kind of “mods” of the internet whose job it is to “swing the ban-hammer” at any website which goes against their sensibilities.
Decentralized technologies have provided a powerful counterbalance to these god-Karens, even as the evolution of surveillance has centralized more and more power within their fickle institutions. But even decentralized projects need websites, and the domain name system has always been a central chokepoint.
There have been numerous projects to “fix” DNS, the first of which was Namecoin, followed by projects such as ENS, Handshake, Unstoppable Domains, Blockstack, and Zilliqa Name Service. Each one of these projects suffered from the same limitation, because they’re not interconnected with the centralized ICANN based domain system, you can’t use them without installing special software. Going to https://peername.bit/ doesn’t work unless you’ve specifically installed namecoin, but going to https://cjd.pkt.movie/ does work, because it’s using the pkt.movie staked domain.
Attempting to take down PKT domains by the classical “scary email” method is practically a dead end. The domains that can be taken down are the staked infrastructure domains, and there are 56 of these, spread across 21 registrars. Moreover, taking them down takes down all PKT domains, not just the one they’re after. That’s not to say they care about who they hurt, but it’s something of a mask off moment if they’re willing to pull the plug on a whole swath of unrelated internet infrastructure just to Get The Guy that they’re looking for. But most likely, out of those 56 domains, some operator somewhere in some country is going to reply to their scary email and say “But what for?”, and even if just one staked domain remains available, they haven’t truly taken down anything.
Registration
Registering a PKT domain is nominally free1, but you must have some PKT staked. The minimum amount you must have staked varies between 1,000 PKT and 50,000 PKT (roughly $1 to $50 worth). The minimum stake rises as more domains are registered, to prevent someone mass registering and squatting all of the good names. If no names have been registered in a while, the minimum stake falls back toward 1,000 PKT.
Once you’ve registered a name, it’s yours for as long as you keep the underlying PKT staked. As with any other domain, you can add DNS records to point to your hosting provider.
Setting up a site
Once you’ve registered, the easiest thing to do is pick your favorite staked infrastructure domain, for example pkt.wiki, and make that your primary domain. This will be the domain which you get SSL certificates for, and if you’re using managed hosting, you’ll enter <yourdomain>.pkt.wiki in the dashboard of your hosting provider. All of the other domains get a simple http redirect to your primary domain, so that they don’t require a certificate.
If you’re more adventurous, you can get certificates for each one of your domains and add them all to your webserver as I did with cjd.pkt. As time goes on, there will be tools to make this process easier, but for now, welcome to the future.
Going forward
I’m planning to add “default” domains to the staked infrastructure domains so that they can be used by their owners even while staked. I own pkt.wiki and I have it staked, but I wouldn’t mind running a wiki for the PKT project. Since it’s staked, <domain>.pkt.wiki goes to the relevant PKT domain, but just plain pkt.wiki doesn’t go anywhere. I plan to make it possible to configure how pkt.wiki will resolve. This will make PKT domain staking just a bit less of a hassle, since you’ll still be able to use the domain.
My next plan is to roll out the VPN exit system for cjdns. Part of this will be enabling reverse-VPN so that you can host a website inside of the cjdns network and it can be accessed from any of the active VPN exits. Requests for any of your domains (https or http) will be forwarded to your designated server, which can be anywhere with a good internet connection, even a device at your house.
When VPN client apps are complete, you will be able to browse PKT websites from your desktop without using the top level domains, you’ll just type cjd.pkt. You’ll also be able to access the public web through any of the VPN exits and your connection to the network will be made through one of the staking cjdns nodes.
Go register a PKT domain. https://app.pkt.cash/
Domain registrations and DNS record updates are free except for the BASE chain transaction fee, which is typically less than a penny worth of Ethereum.