can you educate me? what are handshake SLD mean? i thought all meta.xxxx were taken
That's quite a long piece of string, I'll try & be brief. Here's a start ->
https://handshake.org/
Handshake is a community run blockchain alternative to the ICANN ROOT zone,
not supported by ICANN. You can register pretty much any TLD name, not already taken, except those in the Amazon trademark database & those in the ICANN ROOT - so emoji TLDs are really popular.
There are now over 2M names in the Handshake ROOT. All ICANN TLDs still work when using the handshake ROOT. All Handshake TLDs are sold in a pubic (blockchain) auction & paid for using $HNS crypto
Like ICANN TLD's you can offer second level registrations in your TLDs. Namebase is a popular platform for registering TLDs -
https://www.namebase.io/ but, like any blockchain, you can do it all directly from your PC (skills required). Namebase offer an option in their interface to offer up your TLD for SLD registrations, called "staking" your TLD.
Selling SLDs in your TLD can give you a passive income, but people who work at promoting their handshake TLD to the community get more sales. Currently popular are dot-1, dot-C, dot-TX, dot-API, dot-TXT, dot-DEFI, dot-JS
Some SLD registries are also blockchain, some are not. The Namebase SLD registry is
not blockchain, its exactly the same as an ICANN registry.
The Namebase registry currently has over 1100 TLDs staked & you can buy SLD's from Pork Bun, 101domains, epik and gateway·io
Right now, using them is tricky, but that will change very shortly - a fork of a very popular browser with built-in handshake support is in alpha-test.
BTW: IMHO we should have a handshake forum on this site, by now.
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