Web Bridge
The .BTC web bridge is a service that allows you to access .BTC names in three different ways. It means that you can browse websites that are hosted on .BTC names right from your browser, for example. The web bridge is still experimental but you can try it out today.
How to use
No-setup required
You can use the web bridge without any setup. The btc.us domain acts as a conventional domain bridge. To use it, simply append ".us" to any .BTC name. For example: take the name example.btc, if you want to visit it in your browser, simply go to example.btc.us. Note that not every name might have a website associated with it. The owner of the name decides how the name is used.
Browser configuration (DNS over HTTPS)
If you want a more seamless experience, you can tell your browser to use the .BTC web bridge to look for domain names. By using our so-called "DNS Over HTTPS" service, any .BTC name can be visited directly.
- Chrome and Brave:
go to Settings > Security > Advanced, set 'Use secure DNS' to 'Customised' and use the following address:https://ns1.btc.us/dns-query. - Firefox:
go to Options > General > Network settings, enable 'Enable DNS over HTTPS' with the provider option set to 'Custom' and use the following address:https://ns1.btc.us/dns-query.
Important notice: using this configuration makes your browser resolve all domain names via the web bridge. The web bridge only handles .BTC names and will pass all other requests to Cloudflare's DNS resolver. The bridge does not log any requests.
System configuration
The web bridge exposes a DNS server which can be added to your system's network configuration. Doing so should make .BTC names available for any application. Like the DoH service, it only handles .BTC names and will pass all other requests to Cloudflare's DNS resolver. It is advised to create a so-called split-DNS setup to only use the web bridge DNS server for .BTC names.
The DNS server address:
ns1.btc.us
This configuration is considered advanced usage, please make sure you know what you are doing.
How it works
The web bridge takes all incoming names and looks them up via the Blockchain Name Service (BNS). When using the first method described above, it maps the requested sub domain to the corresponding domain name: example.btc.us becomes example.btc. If the name is found, the web bridge will respond in a manner that your browser or system can understand. It therefore seems like any ordinary domain name, even though it actually exists on the decentralized Stacks network. If you are interested in the source code, check out the GitHub repositories.