Hello I am co-founder of the Spaces Protocol, we are going live on mainnet on Nov 20 (block 871222).
You can find more info here: https://spacesprotocol.org/
Let me know if you have any questions
What's your edge over the competition?
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built on bitcoin, very little footprint on the blockchain cypherpunk (no premine, no separate token, no foundation) built in a scalable way
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Just how small is the blockchain's footprint, really? Can you break down the technical stuff for me?
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Most transactions are the size of a regular bitcoin transaction, and limited only to top-level spaces. Subspaces are handled off chain with zero knowledge proofs. So we can scale to billions of subspaces/names with little on chain footprint. The only data stored on chain is the top level space name in the transaction to open the auction. Top level spaces are limited to roughly 10 per day.
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but a subspace owner can go on chain whenever they want, or do subspace delegations always stay off chain?
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yes they can take their ownership on chain if they want, and it is treated as a top level space
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once they go on chain, can they go back off chain?
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i think so, yes - if they let the onchain subspace utxo expire and are included in the space owner receipt committed onchain afterwards
where is the data stored then?
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subspaces and data related to names can be stored off chain
we have a proof of concept for subspace management here: https://github.com/spacesprotocol/subspacer
you can see how we store data off chain for example with fabric: https://github.com/spacesprotocol/fabric
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @andy 10 Nov
how does one find that registry? For DNS we have NS records to know what server to fetch delegated data from. What do we do in spaces to find the relevant server starting from data on the blockchain?
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the space owner publishes the zk receipt on chain so all subspace key holders have proof of ownership
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What is your plan to get people resolving spaces DNS queries en masse?
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You can check out fabric: https://github.com/spacesprotocol/fabric Let me know if you have any questions
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What is your plan to get people resolving spaces DNS queries en masse?
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It depends on what you mean by "en masse." If you’re referring to the average user who doesn’t want to run their own Bitcoin full node, etc., then...
Spaces uses DNS, so you could easily leverage solutions like Fabric behind a mainstream resolver (e.g., 1.1.1.1) to benefit from its massive caching layer. Implementing this isn’t difficult, for example, by using SIP-02 (see: https://github.com/spacesprotocol/sips/blob/main/sip-0002.mediawiki).
Users don’t need to trust 1.1.1.1; they can verify the entire protocol state with a small zk-proof.
Spaces guarantees name ownership in a permissionless way, functioning somewhat like a certificate authority—but that’s where its role ends. Solutions like Fabric manage the records off-chain.
who controls the launch of block 871222 ? Why can't I launch spaced on mainnet right now?
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you can fork the repo and change the launch block number, just as someone can fork bitcoin and create a new chain
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so is there a genesis block hash or something in the start of the spaces chain?
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So, for this protocol, as long as people agree on a genesis block number and a set of consensus rules, the bitcoin blockchain is just used as a timestamping system for all transactions submitted? Is there anything else besides these 3 things that glue the trust in the system together? What else could cause a chain split in the spaces protocol?
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Do you have a demo video ?
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no sorry but if you have a question let me know
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what is the online requirement of spaced? Can it go online whenever it feels like, or does it need to come online at a certain frequency like a lightning node?
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it needs to view the relevant transactions in bitcoin blocks to update the state of spaces. It can come online whenever but it won't have updated data until bitcoin syncs and spaced gets the most recent bitcoin block data and transactions
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OK, so if I register my space, then I can go offline indefinitely? will it ever expire?
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you have to make one tx per year to renew it
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @andy 10 Nov
what enforces this? is there a set of consensus rules in spacesd that all users must agree on?
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yes it is client side consensus
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can spaces be transferred off chain, or just subspaces?
how are off chain subspace transactions secure? how does a third party find off chain transactions?
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spaces transactions are on chain
whoever holds the key for the subspace is the owner - they prove/verify all updates with their key. We have created fabric for updating data for spaces, and it can probably also be used for subspaces: https://github.com/spacesprotocol/fabric
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If you can delegate a subdomain in a zone file, why don't you just use DNS and DNSSEC for everything and avoid the need for subspaces in your protocol?
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how can you prove off chain that you own a subspace? Seems like without going on chain, the space owner could delegate the same subspace to more than one owner?
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the zk receipt is published on chain by the space owner so that subspace holders can verify their ownership
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is it really an off chain transaction then if there needs to be a zk receipt placed on chain? or, is it really that you get a benefit in that all off chain transactions can be aggregated into a single on chain?
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yes millions of subspaces can be aggregated into a single hash. Subspace ownership can then be verified off chain with things like fabric
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OK, so it seems like the transaction is not really done off chain, but instead, all metadata for the transaction is just not necessarily stored on chain?
for example, in the early days of spaces protocol, there won't be tons of subspaces per space, so if a subspace wants to be delegated, they aren't going to want to wait days or weeks for the space owner to have more transactions to aggregate delegation of, so each subspace transaction is practically going to require a single on chain transaction if there is no others to aggregate with?
i guess I'm trying to understand if this has a similar paradigm as zkcoins and taproot assets?
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with bob@bitcoin, bob is a subspace of the parent space bitcoin. What about sub-sub-spaces? What do those look like?
Why not user@bob.bitcoin as a delegation like is done with traditional DNS?
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a sub sub space would probably look like user.bob@bitcoin we wanted to avoid name collisions with traditional DNS which is why we chose this syntax
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @andy 11 Nov
what do you do for a sub sub space? user.subsubspace.subspace@space? the syntax just seems weird.
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do we even need sub sub spaces? what use cases do you have in mind?
0 sats \ 1 reply \ @andy 11 Nov
with this syntax, is there a way to distinguish between a subspace that was delegated via the spaces protocol or inside a zonefile that has been attached to the space?
but there are still going to be collisions with all TLD, right?
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sorry I mean we used this syntax to make it less confusing with any conflicts with other naming systems
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I agree this is an issue, but I don't know that I like the syntax you've chosen. Not sure what a good solution is though.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @andy 10 Nov
can a space have a . in it's name?
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no, it has the same rules as a traditional dns name
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since the inception of the internet no email addresses have been defined directly on the tld so practically no collisions sip-02 also attempts to make this as painless as possible to integrate even into mainstream resolvers
does spaced have a P2P connection or just an RPC connection? trying to understand the networking components used in the protocol.
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Confusing name considering spacechains.
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