nameservers

Even then, there were almost a dozen (early 90s tech) Root Nameservers to handle the query load.

In 2010 I called 811 because two sets of unrelated nameservers disappeared at the same time.

I intend to contribute somehow, someday, in part by setting up some nameservers in cybercafes.

If you screw that up, then someone might be able to socially engineer the phone rep at the registrar to transfer the domain, change the nameservers, etc.

Also I would like to see support for alternative nameservers.

You could try checking if the nameservers assigned to the site are operated by the domain's registrar and if so if they are used primarily for that registrar's parked domains.

The NS records list reddit nameservers (usually you need to use CF nameservers for using their service, using your own nameservers require more config) but the A records list CF IPs (free users just get two IPs, reddit has quite a lot) reddit.com.

I'm sorry, but we have nameservers already.

If I do an nslookup or dig through them, it's fine, but when I use them as the default nameservers in my network configuration, they seem to reject my requests.

On the other hand, a VPN will generally bypass an ISP's own DNS servers, which could afford some speedup when performing domain name resolution/lookup if the ISP's nameservers are sluggish (though configuring your system to use alternate nameservers would do this without the overhead of a VPN).

But registrations with no nameservers, or registrations purely to "block" registration seems rather much opposite of resolving names.

The much harder part is serving those records authoritatively for billions of requests, which is why we have Root Nameservers.