ICNS x Psychedelic: Our Plans for the Internet Computer’s Naming Service

Roadmap update time! Today we’re talking about our partnership with PsychedelicDAO and laying down our roadmap for the short to medium-term future.

Joining PsychedelicDAO 👽

ICNS Roadmap Updates

We’re humbled by the response to our genesis launch.. but we’ve still got a lot of ideas to make ICNS even better. Here’s what our roadmap looks like:

Short Term⚡ ICNS-js, ICNS Shortlink, & Plug Integration

(1) ICNS-js is a javascript library that we will be releasing very shortly to make it easier than ever for applications to interact with the ICNS profiles of their users, as well as the ICNS protocol overall to, for example, surface a name’s metadata and records.

Medium Term 👷 .xyz Replaces .host, Plug Extension Domain Resolving, & ENS Integration

(1) In order to align ourselves further with the crypto community, we’ve acquired icp.xyz and will soon replace .host with .xyz as the gateway between your web3 username and web2 browsers. Instead of accessing your favorite ICP projects from xxxx.icp.host, it’ll be xxxx.icp.xyz ✨

ICNS Q&A ❓

Now, let’s answer some questions. Since genesis, you guys have had a few burning questions regarding ICNS and some of its features… let’s get those suckers answered 💪

Are ICNS names actual domains?

In principle, yes! ICNS domains perform the exact same function that other domains do, they translate a human-readable name into less verbose information. This could be a website, IP address, or even a Principal ID.

What is the .host / .xyz service?

Until browsers natively integrate resolving of Web3 name providers (ENS, ICNS, HNS, etc…), in order to resolve the content that ICNS domains point to, we’ve made use of an existing TLD: .host.

Why use centralized gateways at all?

Unfortunately, unless we’re able to get a browser to add in the ability to fetch directly from ICNS (Brave browser, pls 🙏) when resolving a .icp top-level domain, the only way is to go through existing top-level domains like .host & .xyz, and create subdomains that do the work of fetching and resolving ICNS domain content.

Signing Off

Thanks for tuning in! We’re really excited to be bringing a new identity primitive to the Internet Computer. We’d love to hear all of your thoughts, concerns, and ideas for future updates and improvements.

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