Dom Williams has confirmed that the Internet Computer will bring DNS handling on-chain after last week’s Cloudflare outage created problems for some users trying to reach ICP-based applications. The apps themselves continued running during the disruption, but those relying on Cloudflare’s DNS services struggled to load. Dom described it as an avoidable bottleneck and said the team will move DNS onto the network using DNSSEC, the Network Nervous System and chain-key cryptography.
His post pointed out a contrast that developers in the ecosystem have often discussed. Because the Internet Computer runs applications fully on-chain, its compute layer is insulated from outages that affect traditional cloud hosts. When Cloudflare experienced issues, the canisters powering ICP apps kept operating. The problem was that users trying to access them through domains routed by Cloudflare hit a wall, which made it appear as though the apps had gone down when they had not.
The plan to bring DNS management on-chain aims to close that gap. Dom said the decision has now been made to move forward, which would mean domain resolution sitting inside the Internet Computer’s own infrastructure rather than depending on an outside provider. He framed it as a practical improvement prompted by real-world events rather than a theoretical idea.
From a wider industry viewpoint, reliance on centralised DNS providers has long been a tension point for blockchain projects that position themselves as decentralised. DNSSEC adds a security layer, but many services still depend on traditional DNS resolvers for routing. Some researchers argue that full decentralisation of DNS is difficult due to the way browsers and operating systems currently handle domain lookups. Others say that experimenting with alternatives is worthwhile, especially when outages highlight the limits of current systems.
For the Internet Computer community, the discussion around the Cloudflare incident also sparked debate about how fully self-contained the network should aim to be. Supporters of on-chain DNS see it as a way to reduce external dependencies and present a clearer value proposition for developers. Critics warn that managing DNS internally introduces complexity and will need careful testing to avoid creating new points of failure.
Dom’s messages suggest that DFINITY sees this as an area where the network can improve its resilience and create a smoother experience for users. The next phase will be understanding how the rollout is implemented, how it affects existing applications and what the transition means for developers who currently rely on familiar DNS workflows.
The incident has turned into a case study for the project: the compute layer stayed up, the routing layer faltered and the team now wants to bring both under one roof. Whether this approach influences other ecosystems remains to be seen, but for ICP it marks a move toward tightening the stack and reducing its exposure to external outages.
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