The web, as a technology is probably not going anywhere for a few more decades at least - people have gotten very used to opening up a web browser - very few actually understand the technology beneath.
The CA/DNS issue is one based solely around them - can I type the domain name I saw on the tv/ my friend gave me/I heard about into a web browser (and these days) and it can direct me (securely) to the page where I can do business.
Telehash seems to fit in on another level. Perhaps one which we are heading towards - a world of machines securely finding and communicating with each other to achieve a goal set for them by some human actor.
This space is becoming more crowded and no good contender has emerged - and I think there is a good reason - they are either too radical as so they can't find a footing, or they are too conservative.
The documentation is slightly lax, but I feel telehash is the latter - it doesn't seem to be solving any problems already solved:
* Space/Storage/Data Transfer - I don't care what anyone says, the blockchain model is simply no scalable, any system where are full client has to hold onto/download gigabytes of information is a non-starter for me.
But still, in any new system - hopefully decentralised, we need to distribute information. Any kind of system we build must be tolerant of partitioning - I think the solution to this is injecting some trust (ala Convergence)
* Speed - Computers work in nanoseconds, the web currently operates in seconds (some sites in milliseconds) - we can't beat the speed of light, but we can certainly start removing the cruft from our communications - HTML, XML, JSON, CSV - are all formats designed for people. We need tools that let us manipulate formats designed for machines.
Our networking protocols are like this as well - as much as people hate ASN.1 it solved some problems decades ago allowing the phone system to scale on just duct tape and wd40
* Power - Blockchain bashing time again - we live in a world of limited, expensive power. We are getting much better at producing low power devices, people like wireless devices. Why should our networks be so power-hungry?
Just a few, rambling thoughts.
There's no blockchain involved in Telehash. It accomodates various cipher sets, including one suitable for ultra low power devices (there's a partially working implementation for Arduino). And you're correct, it isn't really aimed at enabling anything like trusting a URL from a television commercial.
Telehash is conservative in the sense that it solves useful problems, even within the current DNS infrastructure. No one's currently doing this, but you could easily map a DNS name to a Telehash address. But it also offers global resilience to partitioning, because the logical mesh can operate on any lower level network transport.
I like the multiple notary model of Convergence, but I think any of these trust models still need to separate the "human memorable names" component.
I guess, I still don't understand the point of Telehash. Even having read through the documentation. "Establishing private communication channels" is definitely a big problem, one with a huge threat model, and the solution is probably multi-faceted - I don't see where a system like Telehash fits in v.s. something like tor or i2p for example - does anonymity fit into the threat model?
Before dragging this thread off the page I will follow up with an email. :)
* sayI [http://www.ethos-os.org/~solworth/sayIgroups-20130614.pdf]
* MinimaLT: http://eprint.iacr.org/2013/310.pdf
* CurveCP: http://curvecp.org/
Telehash started out life as a more generalized global DHT-for-your-apps design circa 2010, and the spec has since evolved significantly to include the same kind of wire-level crypto.
Opening an issue is the easiest way to get the FAQ updated (and we'd definitely appreciate the feedback): https://github.com/telehash/telehash.org/issues
