IPNS/DNSLink as ID

[Winterhuman]

IPNS + DNSLink as Hyprspace IDs

Intro

Currently, connecting to Hyprspace nodes requires writing out the PeerIDs like so...

PEER A

interface:
  name: hs0
  id: QmFoo...
...
peers:
  10.1.1.1:
    id: QmFoa...

PEER B

interface:
  name: hs0
  id: QmFoa...
  ...
peers:
  10.1.1.2:
    id: QmFoo...

This is tedious, but, also hard to avoid. The PeerID is derived from the private key, which is important to how IPFS even works, so we can't just derive a PeerID from a memorable string similar to how discovery_key worked.

So, what could we do to avoid typing out the PeerID?

DNSLink

Pointing DNSLink to each node's PeerID is one possible solution, a TXT record pointing to /ipns/PeerID can be created which IPFS nodes can resolve (how Hyprspace should go about integrating DNS resolution is unknown to me), using DNSLink should mean this won't add any significant delay to discovery times. It'd look something like this:

PEER A

interface:
  name: hs0
  id: QmFoo...
...
peers:
  10.1.1.1:
    id: /ipns/peer2.domain.tld    [Create a TXT record stating '_dnslink.peer2.domain.tld -> QmFoa...']

PEER B

interface:
  name: hs0
  id: QmFoa...
  ...
peers:
  10.1.1.2:
    id: /ipns/peer1.domain.tld    [Create a TXT record stating '_dnslink.peer1.domain.tld -> QmFoo...']

Advantages

• Reuses existing features and tools (DNSLink and IPNS resolving)
• Mimics Wireguard's ability to use domains as endpoints
• Won't add significant delay when using fast DNS servers

Disadvantages

• Requires obtaining a domain and configuring DNSLink

[alecbcs]

@LynHyper this is an interesting idea, I've used DNSLink before in another project and I think you're right this could work here too. I'll add this to my list of ideas for upcoming releases and see how much work this would be to implement.