Intro to Dap

[netopwibby]

Dap is a blockchain-based decentralized alt-root of the DNS (Domain Name System). Essentially, I'm building the foundation for a new "phone book" for what I call, "The Neue Internet." If that sounds interesting to you, check these links:

— Homepage: https://dap.sh
— Whitepaper: https://whitepaper.dap.sh

Why work on this? Two reasons.

1) I spent ~5 years of my life building a TLD portfolio and developing a domain registry/registrar as well as releasing smaller apps and writing and evangelizing and essentially becoming a trusted voice in the Handshake community. I quit out of protest of a proposed takeover and money grab of locked tokens of the blockchain and man, that's a lot of work and experience I have in this space, which leads me to the most important reason:

2) I've had this dream since I was ~15. Blockchain didn't exist so I resigned myself to grow up, get a tech job, and eventually save $185k to apply for a TLD with ICANN. Handshake showed me it was possible and my work within it showed me it was inevitable.

Blockchain has a reputation for being exceedingly wasteful computation so I engineered Dap to be ~90% more efficient whilst keeping the security of difficult computation. Blockchain naming systems have a reputation of simply being "squat chains" and I believe I've solved that with squatting being financially costly.

Dap is in active development but I'm happy to report that mining appears to work without issue, haha!

[netopwibby]

Whitepaper's been updated to to flesh out the anti-squatting mechanism: https://whitepaper.dap.sh/#:~:text=6.3%20Anti%E2%80%91Squatting%20Mechanisms

In a nutshell, Dap comes with the concept of standard TLDs and personal TLDs. Standard TLDs have build requirements while personal TLDs do not. However, squatters could then register a bunch of TLDs, assign them the "personal" status and do nothing. Personal TLDs are 3x the standard cost, which makes squatting economically unviable.

However, what if you had plans for a personal TLD that didn't pan out so now you want to convert it to a standard TLD? There's graduated unlocks. So, after two years and a burn, you could do so. Or, just wait a full threes and you can freely convert a personal TLD to a standard one.

The SLD count attestation (how to prove you actually have SLDs on your TLD) is the section following, check it out!