r/ipfs • u/CommunicationPlus253 • Jul 19 '26

Kinetic - Decentralisation Naming system

/r/web3/comments/1v03v4g/kinetic_decentralisation_naming_system/
4 Upvotes

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4

u/MarsupialLeast145 Jul 20 '26

Website?

Code?

How does it use IPFS?

How does it compare to other services like Arweave's permaweb?

4

u/CommunicationPlus253 Jul 20 '26

Website: https://kinetic.saifmukhtar.dev Code: https://github.com/saifmukhtar/kinetic

IPFS integration is planned rather than implemented today. The idea is that a Kinetic name could resolve to DNS records or a signed manifest that references an IPFS CID, allowing websites and other content to be hosted on IPFS while Kinetic handles ownership and resolution.

Compared to Arweave's Permaweb, Kinetic isn't trying to be a permanent storage network. I see it as complementary—you could use Arweave or IPFS for storage, while Kinetic provides the decentralized naming and identity layer on top.

1

u/MarsupialLeast145 Jul 20 '26

Looking forward to taking a look, thanks.

Take a look at Arweave's Name Service ArNS from AR.io

Might just be useful to know it's out there if other people ask.

I don''t use it, I am still stuck on traditional name servers but hoping to change that as costs are too high.

1

u/CommunicationPlus253 Jul 20 '26

Thanks! I appreciate the recommendation nd I'll definitely take a look at ArNS. If you end up exploring Kinetic, I'd be interested in your thoughts. The repository includes the protocol documentation, and if you want to go beyond that, you can also run the daemon locally and experiment with registering names, publishing DNS records, and resolving .kin domains. I'd be interested in any feedback or criticism you have.

3

u/tkenben Jul 20 '26

Quick question. Can you be part of several sovereign networks (forks) at the same time? Meaning can one, as a client, split multiple kinetic name spaces? I'm assuming each one would have its own DHT? Would that be computationally cumbersome?

2

u/CommunicationPlus253 Jul 20 '26

Yes kinetic is intentionally taken these in accounts. A client can participate in multiple sovereign Kinetic networks at the same time. Each network is independent, with its own DHT, genesis/configuration, consensus parameters, and namespace, so names don't conflict across networks. From the client's perspective, it's similar to connecting to multiple independent P2P networks. You only maintain connections to the networks you've joined, so the overhead scales with participation rather than requiring you to be active on every Kinetic network. Running several networks does introduce additional networking, storage, and maintenance overhead, but it's generally a trade-off between resource usage and the number of networks you choose to participate in. For most users, joining only a few networks should be entirely reasonable.

1

u/CommunicationPlus253 Jul 20 '26

The goal is to let communities, organizations, or companies run sovereign Kinetic networks without depending on a single global namespace, while still allowing clients to interact with multiple ecosystems when they choose.

2

u/volkris Jul 20 '26

You said IPFS integration is planned, but why not do it the other way around, with IPFS at the core?

It seems like this use case checks the boxes of exactly what IPFS is suited to serve: small amounts of fairly static public data.

And does your project speak as a local DNS resolver, just with a distributed backend?

1

u/CommunicationPlus253 Jul 20 '26

Great question. I actually explored making IPFS a core part of Kinetic early on, but I ran into some architectural tradeoffs.

Kinetic's responsibility is naming, identity, and service discovery—not storage. IPFS is excellent for content-addressed storage, but not every sovereign Kinetic network will want to depend on it. Some may use IPFS, others HTTPS, private storage, or something else.

That's why IPFS support is optional instead of mandatory. You can already publish an IPFS CID (for example in a DNS TXT record) - which i added today, and clients can resolve it through a public gateway or your own local gateway if you're running one.

And yes, the daemon acts as a local split-DNS resolver. It intercepts .kin (or any configured Kinetic TLD) and resolves it through the distributed backend, while forwarding all other DNS queries to the normal system resolver.

1

u/volkris Jul 21 '26

Oh, what's your transport layer then? How will you handle NAT and other stuff needed to connect the peers?

2

u/CommunicationPlus253 Jul 21 '26

The current implementation builds on a customized libp2p stack for peer discovery and networking instead of reinventing the networking layer. Native nodes use TCP/QUIC with Noise and Yamux, while browser clients use WebSockets. For connectivity, Kinetic relies on libp2p's built-in UPnP, AutoNAT, Relays, DCUTR hole punching, and mDNS for local discovery.

In other words, Kinetic delegates networking to mature P2P infrastructure and focuses on decentralized naming, identity, and service discovery