Section: Application Domains

Identity management and naming

The GNU Name System (GNS) is a fully decentralized and censorship-resistant public key infrastructure. Names in GNS are personal, as each user is in full control of his ".gnu" zone. Users can delegate subdomains to the namespaces of other users, and resolve each other's names using a privacy-preserving, censorship-resistant secure network lookup mechanism. GNS is interoperable with DNS, and can be used as an alternative to the X.509 PKI or the Web-of-Trust.

Using GNS for identity management, we will build the foundation for fully decentralized social networking. Key design goals include never storing (or transmitting) unencrypted data at third parties, and the use of a messaging protocol for semantic extensibility, that is, to allow smooth migration of data to new revisions of the protocol.