Zooko's triangle is a
trilemma of three properties that some people consider desirable for names of participants in a
network protocol
A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics, and synchronization of ...
:
* ''Human-meaningful:'' Meaningful and memorable (low-entropy) names are provided to the users.
* ''Secure:'' The amount of damage a malicious entity can inflict on the system should be as low as possible.
* ''Decentralized:'' Names correctly resolve to their respective entities without the use of a central authority or service.
Overview
Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn
Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn (born Bryce Wilcox; 13 May 1974 in Phoenix, Arizona), is an American Colorado-based computer security specialist, self-proclaimed cypherpunk, and ex-CEO of the Electric Coin Company (ECC), a for-profit company leading the de ...
conjectured that no single kind of name can achieve more than two. For example:
DNSSec
The Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) is a suite of extension specifications by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for securing data exchanged in the Domain Name System ( DNS) in Internet Protocol ( IP) networks. The protoco ...
offers a human-meaningful, secure naming scheme, but is not decentralized as it relies on trusted root-servers;
.onion addresses and
bitcoin
Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; Currency symbol, sign: ₿) is the first Decentralized application, decentralized cryptocurrency. Based on a free-market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 when an unknown entity published a white paper under ...
addresses are secure and decentralized but not human-meaningful; and
I2P uses name translation services which are secure (as they run locally) and provide human-meaningful names – but fail to provide unique entities when used globally in a decentralised network without authorities.
Solutions
Several systems that exhibit all three properties of Zooko's triangle include:
* Computer scientist
Nick Szabo
Nicholas Szabo is an American computer scientist, legal scholar, and cryptographer known for his research in smart contracts and digital currency.
Personal life
Szabo currently resides in Seattle, Washington and is married to Michelle Szabo.
...
's paper "Secure Property Titles with Owner Authority" illustrated that all three properties can be achieved
up to Two Mathematical object, mathematical objects and are called "equal up to an equivalence relation "
* if and are related by , that is,
* if holds, that is,
* if the equivalence classes of and with respect to are equal.
This figure of speech ...
the limits of
Byzantine fault tolerance
A Byzantine fault is a condition of a system, particularly a distributed computing system, where a fault occurs such that different symptoms are presented to different observers, including imperfect information on whether a system component has fa ...
.
* Activist
Aaron Swartz
Aaron Hillel Swartz (; November 8, 1986January 11, 2013), also known as AaronSw, was an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivism, hacktivist. As a programmer, Swartz helped develop the we ...
described a naming system based on
Bitcoin
Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; Currency symbol, sign: ₿) is the first Decentralized application, decentralized cryptocurrency. Based on a free-market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 when an unknown entity published a white paper under ...
employing Bitcoin's distributed blockchain as a proof-of-work to establish consensus of domain name ownership. These systems remain vulnerable to
Sybil attack
A Sybil attack is a type of attack on a computer network service in which an attacker subverts the service's reputation system by creating a large number of pseudonymous identities and uses them to gain a disproportionately large influence. It is ...
, but are secure under Byzantine assumptions.
* Theoretician
Curtis Yarvin implemented a decentralized version of IP addresses in
Urbit
Urbit is a decentralized personal server platform based on functional programming in a peer-to-peer network.
The Urbit platform was created by alt-right political blogger Curtis Yarvin. The first code release was in 2010. The Urbit network ...
that hash to four-syllable, human-readable names.
Several platforms implement refutations of Zooko's conjecture, including:
Twister
Twister most commonly refers to a tornado.
Twister or Twisters may also refer to:
Aviation
* Pipistrel Twister, a Slovenian ultralight trike
* Silence Twister, a German homebuilt aircraft design
* Wings of Change Twister, an Austrian paragli ...
(which use Swartz' system with a bitcoin-like system),
Blockstack
Stacks, formerly Blockstack, is a layer-2 blockchain. History
The Blockstack project was originally founded by Muneeb Ali and Ryan Shea in 2013. By 2017, Blockstack locked in two additional funding rounds totalling $4 million. In 2017, Blockstac ...
(separate blockchain),
Namecoin
Namecoin (Abbreviation: NMC; sign: \mathbb) is a cryptocurrency
A cryptocurrency (colloquially crypto) is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government ...
(separate blockchain),
LBRY (separate blockchain – content discovery, ownership, and
peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network, forming a peer-to-peer network of Node ...
file-sharing),
Monero
Monero (; Abbreviation: XMR) is a cryptocurrency which uses a blockchain with privacy-enhancing technologies to obfuscate transactions to achieve anonymity and fungibility. Observers cannot decipher addresses trading Monero, transaction amount ...
,
OpenAlias,
Ethereum Name Service, and the
Handshake Protocol.
See also
*
Petname
*
GNU Name System
*
CAP theorem
In database theory, the CAP theorem, also named Brewer's theorem after computer scientist Eric Brewer (scientist), Eric Brewer, states that any distributed data store can provide at most Inconsistent triad, two of the following three guarantees:
; ...
Notes
References
{{Object-capability security
Secure communication
Decentralization