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Greg Slepak: The Turtle Crawl Towards Internet Decentralization

Episode Summary

Amidst all the discussion of alternative uses of blockchains, it is often forgotten that the very first fork of Bitcoin, Namecoin, pursued a daring vision for a decentralized, censorship-resistant internet. Greg Slepak, co-founder of the okTurtles Foundation joined us for an interesting discussion of DNS, Namecoin and how blockchains can be used to decentralize the internet.

Episode Notes

Amidst all the discussion of alternative uses of blockchains, it is often forgotten that the very first fork of Bitcoin, Namecoin, pursued a daring vision for a decentralized, censorship-resistant internet. Greg Slepak, co-founder of the okTurtles Foundation joined us for an interesting discussion of DNS, Namecoin and how blockchains can be used to decentralize the internet.

Topics covered in this episode:

• What DNS is and the role it plays in the architecture of the internet
• What man-in-the-middle attacks are and why certificate authorities offer poor protection
• How certificate authorities, SSL, IP routing and VPNs work
• Why the current model is broken from a privacy and security perspective
• How Namecoin and the blockchain could enable a decentralized and more secure internet
• The security risks when online identity is tied to a private key and how they could be mitigated
• What DNSChain is and what projects okTurtles is working on

Episode links:

• okTurtles Foundation
• Namecoin Primer
• Namecoin Website
• Airplane Wifi is not safe
• DNSChain demo

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/089