I was surprised to see underlying namecoin related stuff leaking through since you’ve announce intentions to migrate to blockstore.
If people build on the namecoin related aspects of the API, how will the migration work?
How do you envision the create passcard & transaction api calls being used? They seem too complicated & low level for a site looking to use Passcard for identity and authentication…are they intended for other registrars?
Thanks @larry! The API opens up our current production system to outside developers and the migration, when it happens, will work exactly how it would have worked without opening up the API.
When a namespace migrates to Blockstore, we can define which private keys own the usernames on the new namespace. For our API, we can simply take out Namecoin and replace it with Blockstore while keeping the API interface the same. A lot of higher-level modules will remain the same, only need to swap out the underlying blockchain.
You’re right that currently the API endpoints are a bit low-level e.g., we allow people to broadcast transactions but the client needs to make/sign the transaction. We plan to release clients in Python/Ruby etc that’ll make these operations simpler for developers. And yes, other registrars can also use this (although in the long run they really should run their own nodes and use the open-source software).