GNU Name System seems interesting indeed. If I'm understanding it correctly you could mix'n'match centralized and decentralized stuff with it, eg you could delegate .com.gnu to VeriSign. But of course there is the little stumbling block that bootstrapping FoF/WoT style network is nearly impossible.
Actually I wonder if they could have used existing PGP key network as a basis for building their own system, eg do initial key exchange based on PGP keys.
Well, as I understand it, it is projected to work inside GNUnet, so, if they manage to get GNUnet, a highly challenging and multipurpose protocol (both to install yourself and much more to convince your friends to install) to be accepted by the public, the FoF network will be the easiest part.
I'm not into this existing PGP key network. What exactly do you mean by it? The key servers all around the world? Are there some apps/services that use this network for something? I always thought these servers were just sitting on piles of public keys and that nobody ever even looked at them.
This is pretty interesting. Where should I look at to get more information on this topic?
> I'm not into this existing PGP key network. What exactly do you mean by it? The key servers all around the world?
Keyservers are a small part of PGP WoT. The real magic is in the way keys are signed. I'm not going to try to explain how it works, there are many good writeups already on the net. You can start by reading the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust
The simplest way GNS could use PGP would be storing PGP public key => signed zkey mappings in the DHT, so that you could look up users zkey based on their PGP key. It is bit suboptimal because it still requires users to have separate keys, but I think it would be better than nothing.
Actually I wonder if they could have used existing PGP key network as a basis for building their own system, eg do initial key exchange based on PGP keys.