BlockDNS: Enhancing Domain Name Ownership and Data Authenticity with Blockchain

Abstract

The Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the most fundamental infrastructures of the Internet. However, due to its design philosophy and implementation architecture, the current DNS still suffers from the centralization problem and the data authenticity problem. In this paper, we analyze these two problems and propose a blockchain-based naming system called blockDNS to solve them simultaneously. In blockDNS, domain names can be applied and transferred freely in a decentralized way. Moreover, a lightweight verification mechanism is also proposed coupled with blockDNS. The verification mechanism allows website clients to verify the authenticity of resolution results with few overheads. Simulation results show that, compared to the Simplified Payment Verification method, blockDNS can cut down the overheads for data authenticity verification from 4.955KBytes to 380Bytes. Moreover, we also present an implementation case of blockDNS, which is compatible with the current naming system and can be deployed incrementally.