[cap-talk] Zooko/yurl terminology

[James A. Donald]

I am attempting to explain Zooko's triangle and yurls.

Zooko's triangle merely tells us that globally unique identifiers are 
bound to be unintelligible and non memorable, and therefore the user 
should not be expected to read them, recognize them, or type them in. 
Is it thepiratebay.com, or thepiratebay.net?

We don't seem to have a name for a user interface based on Zooko's 
triangle, a user interface that that minimizes user exposure to possibly 
incomprehensible globally unique identifiers by use of globally non 
unique nicknames and locally unique petnames- the triangle is a 
statement of the problem, rather than the name of the solution to the 
problem.  Perhaps simply call it a user interface based on Zooko's 
triangle?  Or use "Zooko's triangle" to refer both to the problem and 
the solution?

Since globally unique identifiers are apt to be unintelligible anyway, 
we may conclude that globally unique identifiers might as well be hashes 
of public keys, possibly combined with information helpful in finding a 
current network address controlled by the holder of the corresponding 
private key.

We might call global names incorporating public key hashes yurls, but 
yurl seems to refer to one specific proposal, rather than that class of 
solution in general.