[saag] Hello from the Ethereum Foundation

[Virgil Griffith <[e-mail]>]

Hello everyone.

I was invited to this list by Walid Al-Saqaf.  I represent the Ethereum
Foundation and am joining this list because the Foundation is starting to
build-out our public platform. For an example of this build-out, we
recently launched the new Ethereum Name Service:

https://hackernoon.com/hosting-a-dns-domain-on-the-blockchain-58a41dc50028#.b5tetdpiw
https://github.com/ethereum/ens


As-is, the Ethereum Name Service allows any "smart-contract" or "dapp" on
Ethereum to be accessed via a human-readable name.  Normally this requires
access to the Ethereum system, but we've opened this up to the
world-wide-web by with the DNS proxy "ens.domains".  But we wish to do
better.  Particularly, we are interested in getting the TLD .eth as a
reserved name for the Ethereum platform and get .eth added to the list of
reserved names akin to these:

* https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6761
* https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7686

Our (very long term) aspiration is to demonstrate by example how a
blockchain can be used as a fully transparent, decentralized
domain-registry.  We hope that if other TLDs see that this can be done
securely, that they might be inspired to emulate us resulting in more
secure, transparent DNS for all internet users.

The Ethereum Foundation has two benefits to the IETF:

(1) There's been plenty of talk on the interface between the web and
blockchain systems, e.g.,
https://www.w3.org/2016/04/blockchain-workshop/report

As Ethereum is the most flexible blockchain platform in the world, we're a
good candidate for experiments in this direction.

(2) There's been talk of wanting to doing IoT with URIs, again particularly
referencing blockchain,

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603298/a-secure-model-of-iot-with-blockchain/
,

and Ethereum is a good fit for this as well.


I am writing here to get feedback just for how things work around here and
any suggestions for achieving our goals.  Outside of our interest in the
.eth TLD, if you have ideas for other ways Ethereum might help the IETF,
we're obviously interested in doing that, and we can discuss the
possibility of devoting some man-hours to doing that.

Thanks much,
-Virgil