Owning a domain? \ stacker news ~devs

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562 sats \ 28 comments \ @jasonb 15 Jan devs

I feel like I'm just full of newbie questions for stacker news this week. Sorry.

I recently took the killer pleb devs courses and now confidently feel like I have some programming skills kinda-sorta (the classes are great, but I was starting from 0) under my belt. My end goal was to stick it to the man and be a part of the bitcoin revolution. That said, I've made a couple of projects that I really want to share with more folks, but would like to actually make them into cooler sites.

For my actual long-term business, I've been renting a domain name for decades and never thought too much about it since it was a business expense and I really didn't care what happened to it after I was gone. However, for these fun coding projects, I wanted to get a domain so that everything doesn't end in .onrender or .vercel.app and I assumed that since I was using a more silly name, it'd be cheap to just by something forever. But that doesn't seem to be the case. In fact...as most of you know...but which is news to me, you can't actually buy domains forever at all. Am I correct about this? If so, doesn't that mean the whole decentralized nature of the internet is a sham? I'm feeling very confused and not finding much helpful info.

My goal is to buy a landing page for a bunch of bitcoin-themed games I've built (something like bitcoingames.stupid) and my nostrminusnostr client, something like nostrminusnostr.nostr. Anyway, I found some stuff in the range I'd be willing to spend on Vercel, but am just a little confused how domain hosting actually works.

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376 sats \ 15 replies \ @megaptera 15 Jan

yes, you are correct. You only rent them from a provider which can shut you down any moment. And whats worse is that you have to kyc for every domain you rent. There are some providers that don't require kyc but then the domain is not "yours" and its even easier to shut it down... If you use the tor network, you can own your domain (private-/publickey) but that's a whole other story...

300 sats \ 10 replies \ @supratic 15 Jan

not true, @jasonb you don't need to KYC to buy domain, you just need to provide certain info, but does not need to be your personal information. For example NameCheap and others offer the option to ~~buy~~ rent domain names with bitcoin, you just create an account using an anonymous email and register the domain you want.

Think about top-level domain (TLD) names like home addresses, is not and never will be yours (or maybe I'm just unaware of the buy forever option). Here the list of all available TLD https://tld-list.com/tlds-from-a-z

You'll see, the .nostr TLD is not there (it will be super cool though) that's because, as @megaptera mentioned providers are centralized and slaves of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)

51 sats \ 3 replies \ @jasonb OP 15 Jan

For example NameCheap and others offer the option to buy rent domain names with bitcoin, you just create an account using an anonymous email and register the domain you want.

Nice! Super glad I didn't pull the trigger yet!

You'll see, the .nostr TLD is not there (it will be super cool though) that's because, as @megaptera mentioned providers are centralized and slaves of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)

I'm learning some pretty disturbing stuff today. I'm surprised bitcoiners don't discuss this more. ...or maybe I'm not paying enough attention.

50 sats \ 2 replies \ @supratic 15 Jan

It is discussed believe me, ICANN will be obsolete really soon, like many other centralized bs.

I like the fact you highlighted, a domain can not be bought... only rented! So true!

I probably does not apply to .onion domains... not sure how it all works yet

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @justin_shocknet 15 Jan

ICANN will be obsolete really soon

lol

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @supratic 15 Jan

stay tuned

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @megaptera 15 Jan

Try register on namecheap with a fantasy name. They wont let you.

50 sats \ 4 replies \ @supratic 15 Jan

have you tried? I just did for you

50 sats \ 2 replies \ @supratic 15 Jan

Can someone fund the account so I register and we gift to @jasonb the domains https://bitcoiner.game and https://bitcoiners.game, it's only 0.00639820 BTC

NameCheap BTC address: bc1q06dut7rut6w9my38wmjk8kqcjydngja84sz4pp with payjoin: bitcoin:bc1q06dut7rut6w9my38wmjk8kqcjydngja84sz4pp?amount=0.0063982&pj=https://btcpay.namecheap.com/BTC/pj

11:44" left

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @jasonb OP 16 Jan

Holy moly! That would be a lot of sats to gift lil' ol' jasonb for making silly bitcoin games! Thanks for showing it's possible though!! I'm totally doing this (with a way cheaper domain name) ASAP.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @megaptera 16 Jan

I got canceled after paying. This is no real proof.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @megaptera 16 Jan

Did it worked out? I got canceled AFTER paying so this is not a proof.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @jasonb OP 15 Jan

Thanks so much! This is helpful, albeit a major bummer. So if I do it over tor, is it then only avail on the dark net or can you make it accessible to everyone this way?

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @nikotsla 15 Jan

Check https://www.tor2web.org/ ...

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @megaptera 15 Jan

yes correct and this is quite an issue as a lot of people don't know or want to know how to use tor. You can find more information about how to setup a tor site here: https://community.torproject.org/onion-services/setup/

But if you want to share your information to a broader audience, you better use a regular domain on the clearnet.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @supratic 15 Jan

this is really useful indeed!

50 sats \ 2 replies \ @nullcount 16 Jan

https://porkbun.com

Search for a .top domain

Get 10 years for ~$4/yr

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @jasonb OP 16 Jan

Woah! Is there a catch? I'll check 'em out.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nullcount 16 Jan

Catch is it's a .TOP domain, but the registrar is legit: https://www.trustpilot.com/review/porkbun.com

50 sats \ 3 replies \ @supratic 15 Jan

@jasonb Njal.la is another domain registrar that cares about privacy and accept bitcoin

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @megaptera 16 Jan

Yeah, they are great. Keep in mind that they register the domain in their name which means you don't have to kyc but the domain belongs to them which means they can probably take it away easier that other registrars.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @jasonb OP 16 Jan

Checking them out too now.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @supratic 16 Jan

is just a bit more expensive

1 sat \ 1 reply \ @justin_shocknet 15 Jan

confused how domain hosting actually works

Looking forward to your first post about SSL 🍿

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @megaptera 16 Jan

LOL, indeed.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @realBitcoinDog 15 Jan

I mean for me I’ve made a page with Wordpress, TeeSpring, and Netlify. They all jump at the chance to then sell me a domain! So I don’t even go on GoDaddy.

Netlify makes it easy to link your GitHub and spin up any webpage

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @nikotsla 15 Jan

Domain are like shitcoins :( so... if you can, avoid at all cost, if you can't, think of it as "not my property".

If you find some pubkey (Like Tor) services that allow you to "share" your work, use that.

And if you are afraid or worry about the actual real web, don't even try to look into "hardware" :( ... we are floating in a lava ocean.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nym 15 Jan

I agree with you there. Domains are a racket.