Greg Slepak: The Turtle Crawl Towards Internet Decentralization

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