New ICANN Publications Explain Blockchains and Name System TechnologiesPaul Hoffman

To help the ICANN community better understand blockchains and their relationship to alternative naming systems, ICANN recently published two documents in the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) document series aimed at those with a technical background. OCTO-039, "Introduction to Blockchain Name System Technologies" focuses on the proposed features for a variety of blockchain name systems. OCTO-040, "Introduction to Blockchain Technologies" describes the features common to nearly all blockchains currently in use.

Both documents emphasize technology and largely omit the financial aspects of blockchains and blockchain name systems. Additionally, the documents are intended to be neutral, neither promoting nor criticizing the technologies discussed. Neither document includes any policy or position statements from ICANN.

Blockchains

To understand the technology of blockchain name systems, it is helpful to understand the technology behind the blockchains on which the name systems are based. People are often surprised that what they have heard about blockchains frequently oversimplifies many of blockchain's fundamental features. For example:

• You do not query a blockchain to find out who has coins: instead, you must query a database that is constantly being updated by additions to the blockchain.
• Different blockchains have very different ways that they can be trusted, based on technical decisions that are applied when each blockchain is first created.
• The most common blockchain topics that you hear about, particularly their use for financial systems, are mostly unrelated to the technical underpinnings of the blockchains.

A major impediment to learning about blockchain technologies is the loose use of terminology that is used in different parts of the blockchain ecosystem. OCTO-040 adopts terminology that might be more familiar to readers who already understand Internet technologies. The document shows how these more descriptive words and phrases map to terms you might have heard used by blockchain proponents and detractors.

Blockchain Name Systems

It has become clear that there is no single thing that matches the name "blockchain name system." These naming systems are operated outside of the global Domain Name System (DNS), and their operators have made many different choices from each other about how they want their name systems to work. OCTO-039 covers other features that are being used, including:

• Associating blockchain account identifiers ("wallet addresses") with blockchain names (which is also possible in the global DNS)
• Permanently associating other data with blockchain names
• Using alternative top-level domains ("alt-tlds") in blockchain name systems that are not delegated as TLDs in the global DNS
• Coordinating with the global DNS by using alt-tlds that match the TLDs that are already delegated in the global DNS

What This Means for ICANN

Because they are not part of the global DNS, blockchain name systems are able to choose any names they want, without asking permission of any other organization. OCTO-039 describes this in much more depth. Some organizations have already announced that they want greater integration between the global DNS and new blockchain name systems. As these proposals become formalized, the ICANN community can engage with them more effectively if it understands more about the blockchains and the blockchain name systems associated with them.