World Wide Web and hypertext markup language (HTML) inventor Tim Berners-Lee said that if he were building a domain name service (DNS) today, he would make it “more decentralized.”
Speaking at ETH Prague on stage alongside Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Berners-Lee reflected on early internet architecture decisions.
“If I could go back […] I would make it more decentralized,“ he said.
DNS was invented in 1983 by Paul Mockapetris, replacing the previous hosts.txt file-based system with a scalable, distributed system for naming IP addresses. Still, while Berners-Lee was not personally responsible for DNS development, he could have opted for a URL structure not tied to the DNS we know today, or he could have pushed for a decentralized alternative.
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Centralization of the DNS
The DNS system is highly centralized, particularly at its top levels of hierarchy. The root zone, which governs top-level domains such as .com and .org, is managed by the US-based nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
Furthermore, the most authoritative servers are operated by a handful of organizations, further centralizing the system. This allows for easy censorship and control by governments that can unilaterally seize or block domain names.
This degree of centralization also makes outages due to centralized service disruption more likely. Control over root zones and domain policies is also concentrated in a few regions and among a select group of stakeholders.
There are also concerns regarding privacy because centralized DNS queries can be monitored, logged and intercepted by internet service providers and other intermediaries.
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Crypto’s solution to the problem
Decentralized alternatives to the DNS system are being developed. The most well-known is the Ethereum Name Service (ENS), which maps human-readable names to Ethereum addresses, content on the Inter-Planetary File System (IPFS), or other data.
Another alternative is Unstoppable Domains. Its system mints domains as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Ethereum and Polygon.
ENS has seen a fair share of adoption. In late 2024, ENS Labs also partnered with PayPal and Venmo, sparking speculation about how this partnership is likely to boost mainstream adoption.
IPFS runs on Ethereum smart contracts and aims to be user-owned and censorship-resistant. Currently, it is primarily used in Web3 applications, wallets and decentralized websites.
Another alternative is Handshake (HNS), which aims to be a decentralized and permissionless naming protocol that is compatible with traditional DNS. A project with a similar aim is Namecoin (NMC), an early Bitcoin fork designed specifically to offer .bit domains and store DNS records onchain with censorship resistance.
IPFS is also accompanied by its own Inter-Planetary Name System (IPNS), which enables mutable naming for IPFS addresses (hashes). URLs generated this way point to specific content, not servers.
A non-crypto alternative to DNS is OpenNIC. This is a user-run project that offers non-ICANN domains, aiming to decentralize control through community governance.
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