What is the point of namecoin and a having a central domain registrar at all?
It seems like a publisher-addressable network (where documents are identified using a publisher's public key) or a content-addressable network (where documents are identified using a file hash) would be good enough by itself, so long as the protocol had builtin support for distributed document searching and ranking.
Casual internet users on the regular internet do not seem to be using domain names to locate resources anymore. They are using Google to locate resources, and only looking at the domain name to verify identity. If the primary purpose of the domain name is not to locate a resource but to verify identity, then it seems like this could be accomplished with a web of trust without a central name registrar.
It seems like a publisher-addressable network (where documents are identified using a publisher's public key) or a content-addressable network (where documents are identified using a file hash) would be good enough by itself, so long as the protocol had builtin support for distributed document searching and ranking.
Casual internet users on the regular internet do not seem to be using domain names to locate resources anymore. They are using Google to locate resources, and only looking at the domain name to verify identity. If the primary purpose of the domain name is not to locate a resource but to verify identity, then it seems like this could be accomplished with a web of trust without a central name registrar.