They offer a proxy system on the KYC side, without requiring anything but a XMPP address. So sure, but since you can't really "own" a domain anyway other than legally (it is assigned and can always be seized from you by being reassigned to someone else) there's not much loss here.
But yes, if you want to do something robust, screw the DNS name.
Depends on who you want to reach. If your audience is 100% bitcoiners and techies, you may get away with an onion. But if you want to reach normies, it's not going to happen with an onion address because you can only view that if you have a tor-capable browser. So it's obstructive and it generally only works in the techie sphere.
Instead you may want to use domains that you plan to lose and re-established under another name or TLD if shit hits the fan. So the websites are part of your funnel but the final destination where you drive your audience to must be something you can fully own, for example, a nostr identity. That's basically where the candy must be for your audience, with the websites peripheral / tooling.
This is 100% contra to how most web things are designed: often everything is built around a domain / a brand / a trademark. But, and this is where @zuspotirko is absolutely right: DNS is fully KYC'd, so you bottom line can have no expectation of privacy if you go the KYC route, or any guarantee of durability if you fully work around your KYC (i.e. by proxying.) Personally I do use the proxies but my domains are disposable/replaceable, so I don't really care about durability.
There used to be the idea to use IPFS for this, but it's suboptimal, hard to get right and relatively expensive to run it reliably; and then, survivability of crashes and effups is on the low end unless you're investing big in it. I think it's not a good option, nostr is probably better, as long as you make sure your stuff is on enough relays (you can archive and re-relay old items.)
You can still have some brand persistence with disposable domains - i.e. look at what the pirate bay, or libgen or annas archive do: they just register the same domain under a different TLD, preferably multiple at the same time to have some continuity. Could become expensive quickly though.
This is definitely sound advice and I guess what I want to do targets normies too so onion alone wouldn't cut it but I am sure using both is the best for robustness and resilience
I personally would docker run alpine:latest. Then install tor. I personally would then install apache (httpd) or tomcat into the docker container. Highly depends on what you want to host.
Zero-KYC, full deniability option at https://njal.la [1] (but last time I checked, the sats are only mainchain, not LN)
https://njallalafimoej5i4eg7vlnqjvmb6zhdh27qxcatdn647jtwwwui3nad.onion/↩Onion links are by definition the only domains that can be KYC-free on hold
The DNS system is in its very fundamental design a KYCed system. The whois protocol is required to put domains on hold when kyc is unclear.
They offer a proxy system on the KYC side, without requiring anything but a XMPP address. So sure, but since you can't really "own" a domain anyway other than legally (it is assigned and can always be seized from you by being reassigned to someone else) there's not much loss here.
But yes, if you want to do something robust, screw the DNS name.
For something robust what would you recommend? Onion?
Depends on who you want to reach. If your audience is 100% bitcoiners and techies, you may get away with an onion. But if you want to reach normies, it's not going to happen with an onion address because you can only view that if you have a tor-capable browser. So it's obstructive and it generally only works in the techie sphere.
Instead you may want to use domains that you plan to lose and re-established under another name or TLD if shit hits the fan. So the websites are part of your funnel but the final destination where you drive your audience to must be something you can fully own, for example, a nostr identity. That's basically where the candy must be for your audience, with the websites peripheral / tooling.
This is 100% contra to how most web things are designed: often everything is built around a domain / a brand / a trademark. But, and this is where @zuspotirko is absolutely right: DNS is fully KYC'd, so you bottom line can have no expectation of privacy if you go the KYC route, or any guarantee of durability if you fully work around your KYC (i.e. by proxying.) Personally I do use the proxies but my domains are disposable/replaceable, so I don't really care about durability.
There used to be the idea to use IPFS for this, but it's suboptimal, hard to get right and relatively expensive to run it reliably; and then, survivability of crashes and effups is on the low end unless you're investing big in it. I think it's not a good option, nostr is probably better, as long as you make sure your stuff is on enough relays (you can archive and re-relay old items.)
You can still have some brand persistence with disposable domains - i.e. look at what the pirate bay, or libgen or annas archive do: they just register the same domain under a different TLD, preferably multiple at the same time to have some continuity. Could become expensive quickly though.
This is definitely sound advice and I guess what I want to do targets normies too so onion alone wouldn't cut it but I am sure using both is the best for robustness and resilience
I'm a noob to all this so pardon my seemingly dumb qsns but how can one setup an onion address?
Thousands of possibilities
I personally would docker run alpine:latest. Then install tor. I personally would then install apache (httpd) or tomcat into the docker container. Highly depends on what you want to host.
https://hosterbox.com/
That just looks like a VPS company. Where are the domains?
They sell hosting and domains
Thank you for this 🙏🏻
https://www.namecheap.com/support/payment/bitcoin/
Thank you 🙏🏻
Namecheap and njal.la
mynymbox.io