Rethinking the Future of Domain Access Services

A recent incident has sparked a rethinking of the stability of traditional domain name access services. The fact that what we always believed to be an unbreakable domain resolution service can also encounter problems raises the question of whether decentralized solutions could be a viable alternative worth exploring.

Deploying a webpage on the blockchain may have the following advantages:

1. Decentralization: All modifications require collective consensus to avoid unilateral actions by a single entity.

2. No certificate required: The blockchain itself uses encryption technology, eliminating the need for additional configuration of certificates.

When I first encountered the domain name solution on TON, I thought it was just an interesting concept with low practicality. After all, traditional access methods are already quite stable and popular. But now it seems that this solution might really have its place and is worth further exploration.

Creating Websites on the Blockchain

This article will attempt to deploy a website on TON and make it accessible through a browser. The entire process is divided into three steps: 1. Purchase a domain name; 2. Prepare the front-end page; 3. Bind the page to the domain name.

The concept of domain names in blockchain is similar to that in the Web2 world, both serving as aliases for complex addresses. In blockchain, it represents user addresses, while in Web2, it represents server IP addresses.

Purchase Domain Name

Taking TON as an example, domain names can be purchased through the official website, priced in TON. Similar to Web2, the shorter the character length of the domain name, the higher the price, ranging from 1 to 100 TON.

If a domain name is not yet owned, you can place a low bid, and then enter the countdown phase where everyone can participate in the bidding. The auctioned domain name will be stored in the user's wallet in the form of an NFT and can be traded. The validity period of the domain name is 1 year, and it will be reclaimed after expiration.

In short, acquiring a domain name can be done through official auctions or trading with other users.

Prepare the front-end page

This step requires preparing a front-end page for display. To simplify the process, this article only prepares an html file and uses nginx to expose the page. Of course, a cloud server is also needed to run the front-end page. This step is the same as deploying traditional front-end applications.

Bind the page to .ton

After obtaining the .ton domain name, you can bind the ANDL address on the official TON DNS website. You can also use the binding tool provided by TON and follow the official guidelines to operate.

After binding is complete, you need to start a listening port on the server to listen for http requests and forward them as udp. You can use the official rldp-http-proxy tool, and enter the following command to start:

rldp-http-proxy/rldp-http-proxy -p 8080 -c 3333 -C global.config.json

Among them, 8080 is the TCP port on the local host that listens for incoming HTTP queries, and 3333 is the UDP port used for all outbound and inbound RLDP and ADNL activities. global.config.json is the global configuration file for TON.

Access .ton Domain

Directly entering a .ton domain name in the browser cannot access the website because the browser does not know how to resolve this domain. Therefore, some additional operations are required.

The process of requesting .ton

When requesting a .ton domain, the corresponding ANDL address will first be queried on-chain, which can be compared to an IP address in Web2, automatically generated when deploying a website. This querying process is similar to a DNS query.

Then, the request will be forwarded to the corresponding machine based on the ANDL address, returning the specified page. The entire process is similar to Web2, with the main difference being the different methods of querying address and domain name mapping.

Accessing the page through a proxy

It is recommended to use the official proxy tool Tonutils Reverse Proxy. After downloading, installing, and starting it, the proxy will start on port 8080, and you will then be able to access the .ton domain.

Summary of Use

Currently, the following issues have been encountered during use:

1. There are requirements for the website operating environment. The system needs to support glibc version 2.34 or higher, and the machine must be checked for compliance before deployment.

2. The documentation is not clear enough. This may be due to the low demand for the TON operating website, resulting in incomplete documentation that requires self-exploration. The Chinese version updates are also not timely, lagging behind the English version.

3. The access speed is relatively slow. The access speed lags behind traditional websites, but there are many influencing factors, and there is significant room for improvement in the future.

4. Lack of wallet support. The official provides a simple embedded browser page that can be accessed without installing a proxy. However, this website is currently identified as a phishing site by mainstream wallets.

Overall, the experience is average at the moment, and there is still a lot of room for improvement. However, this direction is very innovative and worth trying.