Oh this is wonderful news:

DNS-PERSIST-01: A New Model for DNS-based Challenge Validation
https://letsencrypt.org/2026/02/18/dns-persist-01.html

> Instead of publishing a new challenge record for each issuance, you publish a standing authorization in the form of a TXT record that identifies both the CA and the specific ACME account you authorize to issue for this domain.

#DevOps #SysAdmin #InfoSec

DNS-PERSIST-01: A New Model for DNS-based Challenge Validation

When you request a certificate from Let’s Encrypt, our servers validate that you control the hostnames in that certificate using ACME challenges. For subscribers who need wildcard certificates or who prefer not to expose infrastructure to the public Internet, the DNS-01 challenge type has long been the only choice. DNS-01 works well. It is widely supported and battle-tested, but it comes with operational costs: DNS propagation delays, recurring DNS updates at renewal time, and automation that often requires distributing DNS credentials throughout your infrastructure.

@rysiek WOW! This is game-changing! Is there a fork of acme-tiny with support for it yet, or any other equally minimalist implementation?
@rysiek BTW here comes the next-stage idea: What if we simplify this further and just bypass the need for a CA entirely, storing a hash of the certificate's public key directly in DNS for clients to query and validate certs against? 🤔 😁
@dalias correct me if I'm wrong but you're basically describing DANE (RFC 6698)?
@rysiek Yes, thanks for explaining my joke to me. 😁 It was a snarky way of saying "what if we actually made use of DANE?"

@dalias sorry, I did not pick up on the sarcasm there! 😬

It's been a long year.