Miquel Oliver, coordinator of the Research Group on Networking Technology and Strategies and professor in the Department of Communication and Information Technologies of UPF

There’s an issue the Internet has been unable to resolve since it first began: to become a one hundred percent distributed network. That means having a structure that does not depend on any central body for its organisation or for managing a part which is  essential for its operation. The great wonder of the Internet has always stemmed from its distributed, or decentralised, nature. “The intelligence of the Web is at its ends” we preach in the classroom, in the knowledge that a series of very simple protocols can allow us, with a single click, to download whatever content we want, however remote it may be.

But the story isn’t quite as wonderful as it might sound. One of the key pieces of the workings of the Internet lies in the hierarchisation of its system of domain names, or DNS. This mechanism is what allows us to humanise the Internet. In other words, instead of having to remember the number 84.89.128.15 each time we want to enter the UPF website, we can do so by typing in “www.upf.edu” (or just “upf.edu”, if we’re feeling lazy).

The DNS service is similar to a huge worldwide and open address book. Each time you want to make a call you have to go there to get the number you need. This address book is accessible for everyone but only very few people, the service providers, can modify it. So, when the service providers receive an order to eliminate someone who is “problematic”, it’s very easy for them. In just a few hours, a web service can cease to exist if it has been erased from the DNS address book. That, for example, is precisely what happened on 1 October with certain websites in Catalonia.

Right now, we are seeing this technology known as blockchain as one of the great promises for revolutionising the Internet. The fact that it is the driving force behind cryptocurrencies as famous as Bitcoin or Ethereum gives it unprecedented robustness and technological reliability. No company, nor even any hackers, have been able to compromise this feat of technological engineering, used to create something as sensitive and vulnerable to fraud as virtual money. Thus, blockchain can be seen as a list of transactions (accounting entries) with an inalterable and cryptographically secure (impossible to corrupt) timestamp. With these ingredients, many experts augur a sensational future for this technology, applicable to a wide range of situations and business sectors (banking and finance, electronic registries, car sales, university degrees, etc.), and ascribe it almost magical powers.

In recent months, there have already been several attempts to use blockchain technology to set up an entirely distributed DNS directory (ENS, Blockstat or DNSChain are a few examples of this). If this is achieved, then we could talk about a one hundred percent distributed Internet and one with less intervention. The number of “contacts” that would need to be included in the blockchain (a billion, approximately) makes it viable if we compare it with the volume of transactions associated with the bitcoin. Will this be the solution? Will it be adopted for the Web? If the answer to the last question is yes, then we could say that we certainly have found the philosopher’s stone that will further multiply the value of the Internet.