Uncovered by the 2026-08-13 subdomain-inheritance fix: once
`checkers.game.x` correctly picked the parent's `ip` record instead of
`s3`, the ip branch itself failed. Two reasons:
1. `fetch("http://<ip>/", { headers: { host: name } })` follows the
site's :80→:443 redirect into `https://<name>.<tld>/`, which isn't
in ICANN DNS → "fetch failed".
2. The site's cert is signed by a per-machine BNS root, not a public
CA; standard TLS validation rejects it.
Both are fixed by connecting to the IP with SNI = name, pinning the
presented cert's SHA-256 against the on-chain `tls` record, and only
then issuing the HTTPS request over the same socket. The on-chain
fingerprint is the trust anchor BNS uses everywhere else (see
Argus/src/lib/ca.js).
Gateway (public-gateway.mjs): new pinnedHttpsGet + httpGet + ipRequest
helpers; case "ip" delegates. No silent HTTP fallback on pin failure
(a mismatch means "not the site the chain says it is").
Theseus (main.js): parallel port of the same helpers, Tor-aware
(routes through SocksProxyAgent when Tor is on). serveBns's inner
serveIp() delegates to ipRequest.
Verified live: `curl -sI https://navigate.st/bns/checkers.game.x/`
returns 200 OK with the checkers game (1,179,215 bytes, apex
`game.x` unchanged, served from Sia).
Symptom: pasting https://navigate.st/search?q=coinspectrum.bch (or the
new default-search-engine redirect from any browser) returned 404 from
nginx. Same for any BCNR name whose on-chain record uses ip (h / s3 / p
were fine).
Cause: the gateway's ip branch used fetch() with { headers: { host: name } }.
WHATWG fetch defines Host as a forbidden header, so undici silently
drops it and sends Host: <ip>. nginx has no server_name for a bare IP,
falls to the default server, 404s. The whole point of the ip record is
to reach a server_name that matches the BCNR name, so Host must be set.
Fix: use http.request from node:http (no forbidden-header list) with an
explicit Host header. Same behavior for every ip record; nothing changes
for h / s3 / p / u branches.
Live-patched on the VPS gateway and restarted the bns-gateway systemd
service. coinspectrum.bch now returns 200 (116 KB) via
navigate.st/bns/coinspectrum.bch/ and via the /search?q= redirect chain.
Argus/src/gateway/public-gateway.mjs mirrors the on-disk change on the
VPS at /opt/bns-gateway/public-gateway.mjs so future redeploys keep it.
Adds handleSearch() to public-gateway.mjs: users add
https://navigate.st/search?q=%s
as their browser's default search engine and typing bare "silentmode.bch"
in the URL bar (which Chromium and Firefox otherwise send to Google as a
search query, since .bch isn't in ICANN's TLD list) arrives here. Native
BNS TLDs (.bch, .p2p, .bit, .nav) 302 to the relay; anything else falls
through to DuckDuckGo so ordinary search still works.
Live on the VPS gateway at /opt/bns-gateway/public-gateway.mjs.
Nginx now proxies location = /search to 127.0.0.1:8700 as well.
Solves: bare "silentmode.bch" in Chrome/Edge went to Google. It now
resolves to the site via the relay in every browser.
