Namecoin (NMC) is an experimental open source technology that provides similar functions to traditional DNS (Domain Name Management System) service providers, with features of security, non-censorship, privacy and speed. Namecoin was the first fork of Bitcoin and one of the most innovative "altcoins". Merged mining and decentralized DNS functions are implemented for the first time.

1. Project application

Namecoin was the first fork of Bitcoin and remains one of the most innovative "altcoins". It first implements merge mining and decentralized DNS. Namecoin is also the first solution to Zooko's Triangle, the long-standing problem of producing a naming system that is simultaneously secure, decentralized, and human-meaningful. The specific applications are:

•Protect free speech rights online by making the web less censorable.
• Attach identity information such as GPG and OTR keys and email, Bitcoin and Bitmessage addresses to The identity you choose.
•A Tor .onion domain with human meaning.
•Decentralized TLS (HTTPS) certificate verification, supported by blockchain consensus.
• Use the .bit top-level domain to access the website.
•Proposed ideas such as document signing, voting, bonds/stocks/shares, web of trust, notary services and proof of existence.

Second, the relationship between Namecoin and Bitcoin

The Namecoin codebase consists of the Bitcoin codebase with relatively small changes (about 400 lines) and additional functionality built on top of it. The mining process is the same, but the blockchain is separate, hence the creation of Namecoin. This approach was taken because bitcoin developers wanted to focus almost exclusively on making bitcoin a viable currency, while coin developers were interested in establishing a naming system. Since the intended use cases differ between the two projects, consensus and protocol rules may make sense in one but not the other. Examples of places with different protocols or consensus rules:

•Namecoin's consensus rules need to enforce the uniqueness of names. Although it is possible to store data in Bitcoin (e.g. key/value pairs in OP_RETURN outputs), Bitcoin does not enforce uniqueness. It is theoretically possible to build a layer on top of Bitcoin that discards OP_RETURN outputs that don't respect uniqueness (e.g. name operations that steal someone else's name), but miners won't enforce any such layer. If miners do not enforce transaction validity rules, PoW will not support them, which means that SPV-based lightweight clients will not be able to enforce these validity rules.
•Because consumers expect financial transactions to cost differently than name registrations, and because global financial transactions are not the same as global name registrations The number of is different, so the optimal block size of Namecoin and Bitcoin may be different.
•In a currency, an inflation attack is deadly, in a naming system, an inflation attack is just rubbish Mail or squat attack: Bad, but hardly fatal. Therefore, decisions between Namecoin and Bitcoin regarding features such as zk-SNARK-based anonymity (which introduces the risk of inflation attacks) may lead to different conclusions.
•Some scripting features that make sense for Namecoin may not make sense for Bitcoin, for example, allowing scriptPubKey to limit any spending The transaction's scriptPubKeys. In a naming system, features like this can make updating and renewing names more convenient and secure, but in terms of currency, they can hurt fungibility.
•Coinbase's commitment to the database of names can be enforced through the Namecoin consensus rules, allowing the creation of names that do not exist SPV proof.
•Generally, Namecoin developers try to minimize the patchset for Bitcoin. If a feature works in Bitcoin, we try to add it to Bitcoin and then merge it into Namecoin. Namecoin generally only introduces differences from Bitcoin where it doesn't make sense to Bitcoin due to a different use case. Although it is theoretically possible to use Namecoin as a general-purpose currency, Namecoin developers discourage this use case. There are plenty of cryptocurrency projects out there (such as Bitcoin) dedicated to this purpose. If you're looking for currency, you should use one of these projects.

Related links:
https://www.namecoin.org/docs/faq/