Human-meaningful, Decentralized and Secure. Zooko's triangle defines the three desirable traits of a network protocol identifier asand

Zooko's triangle is a trilemma of three properties that are generally considered desirable for names of participants in a network protocol:[1]

Human-meaningful: Meaningful and memorable (low-entropy) names are provided to the users.

Meaningful and memorable (low-entropy) names are provided to the users. Secure: The amount of damage a malicious entity can inflict on the system should be as low as possible.

The amount of damage a malicious entity can inflict on the system should be as low as possible. Decentralized: Names correctly resolve to their respective entities without the use of a central authority or service.

Overview [ edit ]

Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn conjectured that no single kind of name can achieve more than two. For example: DNSSec offers a decentralized, human-meaningful naming scheme, but is not secure against compromise by the root; .onion addresses and bitcoin addresses are secure and decentralized but not human-meaningful; and I2P uses name translation services which are secure (as they run locally) and provide human-meaningful names - but fail to provide unique entities when used globally in a decentralised network without authorities.

Solutions [ edit ]

Several systems which exhibit all three properties of Zooko's triangle have now been created, including:

Several platforms implement refutations of Zooko's conjecture, including: Twister (which use the later Aaron Swartz system with a bitcoin-like system), Blockstack (which can run on any blockchain and currently uses Bitcoin), Namecoin (separate blockchain), and Monero OpenAlias.[5]

See also [ edit ]