GNUnet has canonical names as well: Files can be located by their content hash (e.g. gnunet://fs/chk/...) or by the signature of the peer offering the data (gnunet://fs/loc/...)[1]
One of the disadvantages of the "public" DNS system, is there are companies[2] and governments[3] (sometimes having a history of oppression[4]) that can interfere with it. GNUnet on the other hand, is actually public.
Yeah, gnunet.org wins the single highest coolness factor to website quality ratio in my opinion (they have other projects besides GNS that are even less well documented), although there is stiff competition. Here is a short paper on GNS: https://gnunet.org/sites/default/files/paper_cans2014_camera...
The thing I don't like about it is the distributed hash table aspect, making it a "publish by default" system (with some obfuscation, but still). All that is really needed is a way to communicate your petnames with people you want to have access to them. I'd rather that be done more privately. Besides that, I think the system is a great way to do distributed names to values (send keys with names is much better than PKI).
One of the disadvantages of the "public" DNS system, is there are companies[2] and governments[3] (sometimes having a history of oppression[4]) that can interfere with it. GNUnet on the other hand, is actually public.
[1]: https://www.gnunet.org/fs-urisyntax
[2]: http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/06/millions-of-dymanic-...
[3]: https://www.wired.com/2012/03/feds-seize-foreign-sites/
[4]: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Black-Friday-birth-of-U-S...