Namecoin
Namecoin is an experimental open-source technology which improves decentralization, security, censorship resistance, privacy, and speed of certain components of the Internet infrastructure such as DNS and identities.
(For the technically minded, Namecoin is a key/value pair registration and transfer system based on the Bitcoin technology.)
Bitcoin frees money – Namecoin frees DNS, identities, and other technologies.
What can Namecoin be used for?
- Protect free-speech rights online by making the web more resistant to censorship.
- Human-meaningful Tor .onion domains.
- Decentralized TLS (HTTPS) certificate validation, backed by blockchain consensus.
- Access websites using the .bit top-level domain.
- Attach identity information such as GPG and OTR keys and email, Bitcoin, and Bitmessage addresses to an identity of your choice.
What does Namecoin do under the hood?
- Securely record and transfer arbitrary names (keys).
- Attach a value (data) to the names (up to 520 bytes).
- Transact the digital currency namecoins (NMC).
- Like bitcoins, Namecoin names are difficult to censor or seize.
- Lookups do not generate network traffic (improves privacy).
Namecoin was the first fork of Bitcoin and still is one of the most innovative “altcoins”. It was first to implement merged mining and a decentralized DNS. Namecoin was also the first solution to Zooko’s Triangle, the long-standing problem of producing a naming system that is simultaneously secure, decentralized, and human-meaningful.
More Information
News
(RSS Feed)
Code Quality Improvements in ncp11
2025-05-13 As you may recall, ncp11 is Namecoin’s PKCS#11 module that enables TLS to work for Namecoin domains with standard TLS clients that use NSS or GnuTLS. I’ve recently made several improvements to ncp11:
Occlumask: A Content-based Anonymity Leak Detector
2025-05-11 A few weeks ago, we announced funding from Power Up Privacy for a number of different projects. One of those projects being “Occlumask”. We will be giving some details about Occlumask, the motivations behind it, its methods, challenges, as well as the current status on research.
Enhancing Proxy Leak Detection with SocksTrace: From ptrace to seccomp notify
2025-03-30 Initially, SocksTrace relied on ptrace to trace connect syscalls. While ptrace works well for simple programs, it wasn’t practical for high-performance applications, especially browsers.
Namecoin Receives TLS and Anonymity Research Funding from Power Up Privacy and NLnet Foundation’s NGI0 Core Fund
2025-03-30 We’re happy to announce that Namecoin is receiving three new grants:
38C3 Summary
2025-03-30 As was previously announced, several developers represented Namecoin at 38C3 in Leipzig, Germany. You know the drill by now: we had a lot of conversations with other attendees, and we won’t be publicly disclosing the content of those conversations, because I want people to be able to talk to us at conferences without worrying that off-the-cuff comments will be broadcast to the public. That said, a practical result of one of those conversations should be getting its own announcement in the next day or two.
Namecoin will be at 38C3 and FOSDEM 2025
2024-12-16 We’re happy to announce that at least three Namecoin developers will be at 38C3 (the 38th Chaos Communication Congress) in Hamburg, December 27-30. Additionally, at least two Namecoin developers will be at FOSDEM 2025 in Brussels, February 1-2.
Namecoin Core 28.0 (Almost) Released
2024-12-15 Namecoin Core 28.0 has been released on the Beta Downloads page.
Namecoin’s SocksTrace Receives Funding from NLnet Foundation’s NGI0 Core Fund
2024-10-21 We’re happy to announce that Namecoin is receiving additional funding from NLnet Foundation’s NGI0 Core (Next Generation Internet: Zero Core) Fund. If you’re unfamiliar with NLnet, you might want to read about NLnet Foundation, or just take a look at the projects they’ve funded over the years (you might see some familiar names).
Tor Meeting 2024 / GPN 22 / MoneroKon 4 Summary (UPDATED)
2024-07-24 As was previously announced, Rose, yanmaani, Hugo, and I (Jeremy Rand) represented Namecoin at three conferences in Europe. This was an excellent series of events for a number of reasons, not least the fact that this is the first time we’ve ever had 4 Namecoin developers attending a single conference (our previous record was 3 developers, at 37C3). Expanding our team size has been a priority for a while, and it’s great to see that this is starting to pay off. Of course, there were major substantive benefits as well. As usual for conferences that Namecoiners attend, we engaged in a large number of conversations with other attendees. Also as usual, we won’t be publicly disclosing the content of those conversations, because I want people to be able to talk to us at conferences without worrying that off-the-cuff comments will be broadcast to the public.
Reducing Size With Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) and Name Gifting
2024-05-17 Several new Electrum-NMC enhancements have been added.
For the latest news go to the Namecoin forum or check out r/namecoin.
Official anouncements will also be made on this BitcoinTalk thread.
Donate
Help keep us strong. You can donate to the Namecoin project here.
Participate
With Namecoin you can make a difference. We need your help to free information, especially in documentation, marketing, and coding. You are welcome at the forum. There may be bounties, too.