Zooko's triangle

Zookos triangle (English Zooko 's triangle ) is a theory of Zooko Wilcox - O'Hearn, after a namespace in a decentralized computer network only two of the three properties, safe and can meet meaningful at the same time.

In a namespace names are mapped to addresses or other values. The three above-mentioned properties are in large, public namespaces typically desirable.

• Decentralized: there is no central authority issuing name or decides on its validity. The namespace is managed by several authorities, which do not all trust each other to the same degree. The decisive criterion is that there is no hierarchical relationship of trust, but trust networks set up at random.
• Safe: The integrity of name mappings is maintained. An attacker can not manipulate an allocation without the tamper attempt is detected.
• Meaningful: The significance of a name means first, that a name is human readable and, secondly, that a person can derive a meaning of a name. As meaningful apply themselves any name, but not auto-generated, random translucent strings.

According to the theory, a compromise must be made in the design of a name space is omitted in the one of the three properties. Examples:

• The Domain Name System uses meaningful names in a hierarchical structure. With DNSSEC, the integrity and authenticity can be checked by name mappings. The name space is distributed, but not decentralized because of the hierarchical relationship of trust.
• OpenPGP public key maps or their hashes ( fingerprints ) to email addresses. Assignments can be signed by other parties, thereby to establish a decentralized web of trust. The associations between public keys and e- mail addresses are safe, but the public key as a name not meaningful. The email addresses alone are indeed meaningful, but not sure without specifying the public key.

Solution attempts

Aaron Swartz described in January 2011, a naming system based on Bitcoin and after his testimony satisfies the three properties of Zookos triangle. Dan Kaminsky 's criticism of Swartz ' name system, the vulnerability by delays in information propagation and Sybil attacks. He calls into question whether such a system is still Zookos triangle justified by the weaker security guarantees, and compares the security model with the SSH.

The concept described by Swartz similar Namecoin, which was released in April 2011 as a fork of Bitcoin.