I Am #AliveAndThriving Today! || #IAmAliveChallenge || Daily Off-Grid Jungle Journal Entry: Day #434 - The Dastardly DNS Dilema, a Possible Solution - GaiaYoga Gardens, Lower Puna, Far East Big Island, Hawai'i - Wednesday, October 4, 2023

I live barefooted and naked, very close to Earth and Nature, in an 18-acre, off-grid, clothing-optional, food-forest intentional community (GaiaYoga Gardens), way out in the jungles of Lower Puna, far East Big Island, Hawai'i. I love my life, and I'm immensely grateful to live where and how I do, on my own terms! I would not want to live any other way! 😁🙏💚⚡💥🔥✴️✳️❇️👣🌱✨🤙

Warm greetings all! 😁🙏💚✨🤙

In the previous iteration of this this post yesterday
, IAmAliveAndThriving Today! || IAmAliveChallenge || Daily Off-Grid Jungle Journal Entry: Day #433 - DNS Is a Critical Point of Failure That Must Be Addressed, I drew attention to a critical potential point of attack and failure for our beloved Hive Blockchain Ecosystem, namely the completely centralized control, by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), based in Los Angeles, California, of pretty much all domain name resolution on the internet. ICANN runs 13 TLD (Top-Level Domain) severs scattered around the world, which provide authoritative name resolution for the entire internet for TDLs like .com, .org, .dev, .io, among many others. If any website is using any of of those, or a myriad of other TLDs, then they are registered, controlled, and resolve by these 13 ICANN Authoritative Root DNS Severs.

As I mentioned yesterday, with this sort of centrally-controlled DNS, it is extremely easy for powerful interconnected entities to basically erase websites, or SLDs (Second-Level Domains), from the internet at will. So even if the internet and the website who's domain was erased still function fine, nobody without specialized knowhow would be able to access them, so from most people's perspective they would simply vanish from the internet. For a decentralized Blockchain Ecosystem like Hive, that almost completely relies on the ICANN-controlled 13 Authoritative Root DNS Servers to function, this is not an acceptable situation.

Last night, after finishing my Hive catch-up and tasks, I spent a fair bit of time thinking of potential solutions to this untenable dastardly DNS dilema. In the process of exploring, a rather simple idea came to me. It's one, however, that would require the cooperation of the various hivers/hivians that run and maintain the many Hive SLDs, such as ecency.com, peaks.com, leofinance.io, among many others. There are two projects that I'd like to mention here, that could potentially help resolve this issue, the OpenNIC Project, and the Handshake Project, which are two community-based versions of alternative root DNS systems, both with their own array of TDLs.

I've known of OpenNIC for quite a while, as I've used their community-run DNS servers on my own devices and networks for many years now, I've also run OpenNIC DNS servers from my own computers for my whole network. OpenNIC provides and resolves several TLDs not found in the ICANN version of the internet, and which are resolved automatically if you use any of OpenNIC's community DNS servers on your own devices or networks. OpenNIC is a more traditional sort of DNS service, just community-based, and offering and rssolving other domains outside of the ICANN system. OpenNIC is also well established, and has been running for many years now.

List of OpenNIC TLDs

.bbs, .chan, .cyb, .dyn, .geek, .gopher, .indy, .libre, .neo, .null, .o, .oss, .oz, .parody, and .pirate

Handshake was a new one for me, and it's actually the most interesting, because it's a decentralized, blockchain-based, P2P, alternative root DNS system, that provides far more potential TLDs than I can list here. Handshake, while extremely exciting, is also still in the experimental stage, so much remains to be done. It's potential, however, is huge, and its purpose and philosophy seem very in alignment with Hive's.

My Possible Solution to the Dastardly DNS Dilema

My proposal to help make the Hive Blockchain Ecosystem more resilient to possible points of attack and failure is for those who run and maintain the many Hive websites, to set up a mirror backup website using TLDs registered on OpenNIC and/or Handshake, such as ecency.o, or peakd.libre, for example, then communicating with the community on how to access them by setting alternative DNS servers on their devices and networks.

It should be noted that both OpenNIC DNS servers and Handshake nodes also resolve the regular ICANN TLDs to which everyone is already accustomed, too, so it's win-win to use them. I'll tag @ecency, @peakd, and @leofinance here, to hopefully bring awareness to this critically important issue, and the possible solution to it. If there is anyone else that you feel should perhaps see this, please tag them in the comments. This is a way to help make Hive a truly unstoppable force.

I finished everything up on Hive, bringing everything to a good pause-point, by just after 2:30PM yesterday, which is when I left the Flow House to go focus on some land work. I did, of course, take a little time to walk around the property to take photos for this post, before diving straight into work. When I was ready to focus on work, I returned to continue working with Ano on rebuilding the Octagon, which I did for a few hours. The raised floor of the Ocatgon is close-fitted, small-diameter, whole bamboo culms (canes), lashed together. My task was to harvest appropriate bamboo culms, cut off the branches, then fit and cut them to replace broken sections of the floor. I'd never done this before, but got the hang of it pretty fast, and the work I did turned out pretty well. After finishing with that for the day, Ano and I went to clear cane grass with machetes for about half an hour on the hill in one of the new orchards. Cane grass grows insanely quickly, and if we don't stay on top of it, pretty soon all we have are massive stands of cane grass and guinea grass everywhere. This stuff is elephant and rhinoceros food, so there's no wonder it grows so fast.

After working, I took a shower, made food, then headed back to the Flow House for my evening round of Hive catch-up and tasks, which I was able to finish by about 11:30PM. I could have gone to sleep then, but instead I stayed up until just after 1AM researching the above-mentioned dastardly DNS dilema. Even though I went to sleep late, I slept well, waking up around 6:30AM, and doing a short round of Hive tasks before finally getting out of bed to go make my superfood fire coffee just after 8:30AM. We had a community NVC meeting from 9AM to just after 11AM, so I started on this post later than I would have liked, but it flowed easily, so all good.

It's now approaching 2PM, so a marvelous time to end this post for now, so that I can get to my afternoon round of catch-up and tasks on Hive, which I intend to finish as early as I can so that I can get to land work earlier. Elohi asked me if I would help him to mulch the sugarcane beds, so when I'm done here, that's what I'll be doing! I deeply appreciate you all very much! Until tomorrow! Onward and upward, joyfully together! 😁🙏💚✨👍

All photos were taken with my Motorola G Power Android Phone.

Thank you all so much who have helped me get to where I am today, and allowing me to share more of the beauty and magic from my life and my world with you, and for your continuous appreciation and support! I am truly deeply grateful! 😁🙏💚

If you'd like to find me on other alternative platforms where I have accounts (I spend most of my time here on Hive), click on this signature image below to go to my LinkTree page.

If you'd like to send me a BTC Lighting Tip (made possible by the fantastic work of brianoflondon on @v4vapp), just scan the QR image below. 👇

Signature image created by @doze, and the dividers made by @thepeakstudio, with all tweaked to their present form by me.