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Onename Switches to Bitcoin, Ditches Namecoin’s Blockchain

In an announcement, open-source identity protocol provider Onename says that it is switching from Namecoin’s blockchain to Bitcoin. The startup Onename made a big announcement a couple of days ago at the Blockstack Summit 2015 where co-founder, Muneeb Ali, revealed during his lightning presentation the decision.

The organization believes that the Namecoin network is not decentralized and the mining group Discus Fish controls 60-70% of its hashing power and in result, it will is switching from Namecoin’s blockchain to Bitcoin. Ali also revealed the company’s decision to the audience to move the project and its “32,000 uses” from Namecoin to the Bitcoin blockchain.

The Blockchain-Based DNS

Namecoin is a blockchain-based Domain Name System (DNS) which became known an effective solution some five years ago. It was one of the first large-scale altcoins introduced in 2010; however, it has never been able to challenge the other competitors like Bitcoin, Litecoin and even Dogecoin.

When it was formed, the team had envisioned a simple decentralized interface that operated as a readable naming system. However, unfortunately for Namecoin, Muneeb Ali and his team don’t feel its blockchain is “not secure.” Interestingly, Ali and his company still admit that Namecoin played important role in their growth to the protocol.
Ali was quoted saying that Namecoin deserves full credit for originally solving naming on blockchain; however, in the long run, everyone needs to be on the most secure blockchain. The views are diverse when it comes to security and mining problems as some in the Namecoin community admit that the mining problem is not a big deal.

Victory of the Strongest Blockchain?

According to a statement made by Ali in the next week the startup will post a blog with more details on the latest decision. Interestingly, no commentary as of yet from the Namecoin founders has come. Onename is a tool that had used the Namecoin blockchain to work with decentralized identity systems (DIS).

According to the firm, DIS uses a unique way to create a ‘name’ or unique profile to accompany users’ online blockchain verified identity. Additionally, the open-source identity provider began its project in March 2014 with the ability to create a name instead of a binary number solution or a Bitcoin address.

After the decision was made public, a lot of people in the community showed their happiness and said that it is after all the victory of the strongest blockchain.

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