The Internet Blockchain: A Distributed, Tamper-Resistant Transaction Framework for the Internet

While the importance of the global Internet cannot be overstated, existing security mechanisms for the Internet infrastructural resources like IP addresses, AS numbers, BGP advertisements and DNS mappings rely on a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) that can be potentially compromised by state actors and Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs). In this paper, we advocate the use of a blockchain based mechanism to secure the Internet infrastructure. We describe how a blockchain derived from Bitcoin's blockchain can be used to create a tamper-resistant framework for core Internet resource transactions, thereby securing the Internet from malicious actors. The key advantages of this approach include the elimination of any PKI-like root of trust, a verifiable and distributed transaction history log, multi-signature based authorizations for enhanced security, easy extensibility and scriptable programmability to secure new types of Internet resources, potential for a built in cryptocurrency and compact encoding of transactions using multiple inputs and outputs per transaction.