Hi @Biolizard89,
Hello! Sorry for the delayed reply, it seems I've been failing to check this thread for a couple weeks.
I am quite new to all of this, but have been cautiously reading as much as I can about alt-coins, which of course led me to the wonders of blockchain and various projects underway. I can't believe how disconnected much of the world is from something so transformative for all of us. For obvious reasons, Namecoin stood out to me and I have invested for the long-run. Much appreciation for the relentless work you and your team have and are putting into Namecoin.
Thanks for your support!
What I would like to know: Are the Namecoin and Monero teams still actively working alongside each other on common projects, as stated on Namecoin's official webpage and the presentation you gave in London last year? I just did a bit of reading about OpenAlias and I know that Monero mentioned receiving assistance from NLnet Labs, but it appears that this is their own, in-house project. Is there a collaboration that will be announced in the near future? What would such a collaboration mean for Namecoin?
The Namecoin and Monero teams are continuing to collaborate on areas of common interest. One example is that Namecoin's anonymity properties are very poor, and this is a roadblock for Namecoin's usage as a naming system for Tor. The way we're going about fixing that is by trying to support a workflow where a user purchases NMC using a more anonymous currency. (This could be Monero, Zcash, or any other asset that can be traded for NMC.) This isn't Monero-specific (I've talked to Riccardo from Monero about it, as well as Zooko from Zcash), but since Monero will need to do a consensus fork in order to support this use case properly (and Zcash won't, to my knowledge), more coordination is happening between Namecoin and Monero than between Namecoin and Zcash. Also, Riccardo tends to hang around #namecoin-dev, and Zooko doesn't, so naturally there's more interaction with Riccardo than with Zooko. Namecoin as a project doesn't endorse any particular anonymous cryptocurrency as the best one -- in fact we explicitly decided not to integrate ring signatures or zk-SNARKs into Namecoin, specifically because we want end users to have a choice about what anonymous blockchain technology they use.
Also note that NLnet Labs and NLnet Foundation are two different entities. NLnet Foundation's primary role is funding projects; NLnet Labs' primary role is development. NLnet Foundation funds NLnet Labs, but any collaboration between Monero and NLnet Labs is unrelated to Namecoin's funding from NLnet Foundation.
What are your general thoughts about potential fallout surrounding BIP 148 at the beginning of August? Do you think a lot of the miners will seriously think about rejecting SegWit? I know you are focused on AAA at the moment, but what would it mean for Namecoin and everyone else if they take that position, and why would they (re: history lesson from BIP66!)?
Ah, I see you were paying attention to my QCon talk. Kudos to you! Yeah, the fact that CSV and SegWit are blocked until AAA happens does set up a scenario similar to the BIP66 issue. You probably noticed that I alluded to this a bit in my talk, when I mentioned that even if you're diligent, you'll find yourself in a situation occasionally where you need to maintain a patchset against your upstream, and that effort should be made to minimize the duration where this is the case. We are expending effort on this front, but unfortunately coordinating a hardfork takes time. All we can do here is try to activate AAA as fast as can do safely, and hope that CSV and SegWit don't become the next BIP66.
Other than the BIP66-like scenario, we should be mostly unaffected by Bitcoin consensus issues. Namecoin blocks don't need to have a parent block that's actually part of the Bitcoin blockchain; as long as the parent block has valid SHA256D PoW, it's accepted by Namecoin. So if Bitcoin has a chainfork, both sides of the Bitcoin chainfork will be valid as Namecoin parent blocks. (Some people have speculated that this might even result in Namecoin having a higher hashrate than Bitcoin for a short period of time.)
Like I said, I am new to all of this so excuse me if my questions are a bit rudimentary.
On the contrary, your questions are excellent -- clearly you did your homework before asking them.