discuss Handshake domains

[Synozeer]

There's been talk about .eth and .crypto, but I haven't seen many posts on here about Handshake.

Handshake is a naming protocol that's backwards compatible with the existing DNS system. It does not replace the DNS protocol, but instead expands the root zone file where TLD ownership information is stored by adding a distributed and decentralized blockchain-based system that no one controls and anyone can use. This allows for a root zone that is uncensorable, permissionless, and free of gatekeepers like ICANN.

https://learn.namebase.io/about-handshake/about-handshake

This is what I believe the next step in domains will potentially be. Instead of just registering domains under new TLDs, you actually own the TLD and can sell subdomains (my.wallet/, use your TLD as a web address (synozeer/), and also use your TLD as a username on sites that allow it.

A few domain registrars already allow registrations under various Handshake TLDs, and you can bid on new TLDs along with buy/sell from the marketplace at https://namebase.io. Namecheap just bought the p/ TLD for $230,000 and they said they are looking to support Handshake. Brave browser should also be releasing an update soon that will allow for Handshake domains to be accessed using their browser.

It's really interesting technology and I can see it being adopted by a lot of big companies in the future. Of course, it's all speculative, but people have been making good money buying/selling TLDs and subdomains.

The best two TLDs I own in my opinion are .visit and .articles. Lots of end user uses (hawaii.visit/, seo.articles/, etc.) but there are some killer ones out there. The owner of .c/ has already sold several hundred domains under his TLD and some others like xr/ and defi/ are doing well.

 

[HotKey]

This may be a game changer for anyone who has invested in Handshake domain names.

Impervious Creates A Privacy and Security-Focused Browser That Can Resolve Handshake TLDs Natively.

"ICANN, registries, registrars, DNS providers, web browsers - the gatekeepers to the internet no more. Introducing Beacon, a privacy and security-focused browser to replace certificate authorities with decentralized p2p naming systems, DNSSEC and DANE"

You can also visit https://impervious.com/beacon to download the browser to your iPhone. Android is coming soon. Possibly for desktop in the works, but we will have to wait and see.

Great first step. Congrats to Mike Carson and the Engineers at Impervious.

Right on! Thx for the share, looking forward to the desktop browser.

Handshake engineers, these guys/gals are geniuses. Often hear them say shake domains were never meant to be used as sole TLDs, but these things take a life of their own. Something riveting on seeing your own TLD resolving without the second-level.

 

[dannielfrans]

If you can get someone to use your software, or extension, you can have whatever domain you want.

 

[Global Rebrander]

There's been talk about .eth and .crypto, but I haven't seen many posts on here about Handshake.



This is what I believe the next step in domains will potentially be. Instead of just registering domains under new TLDs, you actually own the TLD and can sell subdomains (my.wallet/, use your TLD as a web address (synozeer/), and also use your TLD as a username on sites that allow it.

A few domain registrars already allow registrations under various Handshake TLDs, and you can bid on new TLDs along with buy/sell from the marketplace at https://namebase.io. Namecheap just bought the p/ TLD for $230,000 and they said they are looking to support Handshake. Brave browser should also be releasing an update soon that will allow for Handshake domains to be accessed using their browser.

It's really interesting technology and I can see it being adopted by a lot of big companies in the future. Of course, it's all speculative, but people have been making good money buying/selling TLDs and subdomains.

The best two TLDs I own in my opinion are .visit and .articles. Lots of end user uses (hawaii.visit/, seo.articles/, etc.) but there are some killer ones out there. The owner of .c/ has already sold several hundred domains under his TLD and some others like xr/ and defi/ are doing well.

Can you send me what other handshake domains you have. Might be last but would be great to grab a few

 

[Big Mac]

Handshake Domain Name Investors Have A Happy 2022! The Opera browser is finally coming.

Opera to integrate Handshake for blockchain-based, decentralized domain naming​

"On this last day of 2021, we have some plans to share. Today, we’re announcing a partnership with the dWeb Foundation over an integration of the decentralized blockchain domain name system, Handshake. Handshake is a decentralized, permissionless naming system that disintermediates the old guard of Certificate Authorities operating in the traditional DNS namespace hierarchy by providing a more advanced, secure, open, and accountable network. The integration will go live in the first half of 2022."

"A truly democratized Web 3.0 can only be fully realized once we’ve moved onto new infrastructure. Handshake is a critical piece of the puzzle to make that paradigm shift. Opera pioneering the path forward as the first major browser to support HNS speaks to its forward-thinking vision and positioning in the browser space. This partnership just marks the beginning of the work that lies ahead for building a decentralized web,” said Chjango Unchained, Executive Director at dWeb Foundation."

Opera Announcement On Twitter

 

[Dan Names]

metaverse.247

last hs domain that was available at porkbun

 

[jamesau]

Handshake Domain Name Investors Have A Happy 2022! The Opera browser is finally coming.

Opera to integrate Handshake for blockchain-based, decentralized domain naming​

"On this last day of 2021, we have some plans to share. Today, we’re announcing a partnership with the dWeb Foundation over an integration of the decentralized blockchain domain name system, Handshake. Handshake is a decentralized, permissionless naming system that disintermediates the old guard of Certificate Authorities operating in the traditional DNS namespace hierarchy by providing a more advanced, secure, open, and accountable network. The integration will go live in the first half of 2022."

"A truly democratized Web 3.0 can only be fully realized once we’ve moved onto new infrastructure. Handshake is a critical piece of the puzzle to make that paradigm shift. Opera pioneering the path forward as the first major browser to support HNS speaks to its forward-thinking vision and positioning in the browser space. This partnership just marks the beginning of the work that lies ahead for building a decentralized web,” said Chjango Unchained, Executive Director at dWeb Foundation."

Opera Announcement On Twitter

This is great news. One more step on the way to adoption.

 

[HotKey]

Handshake Domain Name Investors Have A Happy 2022! The Opera browser is finally coming.

Native browser support coming. That's somewhat exciting. Will try to contain it. | whistling along the way, feigns disinterest | Nope, can't

;

 

[Global Rebrander]

Next should be Brave and Firefox, both open-source and Microsoft’s discontinued IE can finish eating its own ass, it’s been doing that since a decade

 

[MKM]

Anyone knows what happened to Name.Space and their suite of TLDs - http://namespace.us/tlds.php ?

Last I checked, they couldn't secure the rights to their own brand of .space as they had to settle for a .us domain, let alone securing the other TLDs for which they "claim" service marks.

 

[ryan29]

I have some questions about these if someone is willing / able to answer them. Overall I think they have a lot of problems that will keep them from being adopted by the mainstream, but seeing Namecheap and Porkbun start selling them is enough that I'd like to try to register one to match a .com I own if it's possible to do it without doing KYC verification or spending too much.

I found an old ETH wallet I used to learn about mining 5 years ago and it had 0.1 ETH. I spent .05 to get an ENS domain for 10 years and I think I could use Uniswap to convert some to WHNS to get a Handshake domain.

My questions:

1. Who owns the encryption / wallet keys if I use namebase.io? Is BobWallet the only option if I want to own the keys?
2. Is WHNS a namebase.io thing or could I get WHNS via BobWallet?
3. Are there frontrunning issues? The auction system is probably the worst design possible for someone that wants to register a brand name. I looked through recent auctions and there are a lot of surnames that have 3 or 4 bids where they go .40 HNS, .41 HNS, 5 HNS (or similar). It looks like automation to me.
4. The docs say the first bid triggers a 5 day auction followed by a 10 day reveal period, but one of the finished auctions I looked at says bids were placed on Jan. 7 and Jan. 14 even though the auction didn't start until Jan. 24. I don't understand what's going on there. Can someone explain it to me?
5. Do I have to worry about bid sniping? Almost every finished auction I looked at has a bid on the last day. Is there a way to see which block those bids were included in to gauge the likelihood of it being a bot?
6. What's the point of people making $0 bids like this? If the HNS gets burned like the docs say I don't understand who benefits from trying to inflate the price like that.

My impression so far is that if I make a small bid (<$50) and trigger an auction I'll get outbid by a bot and lose the domain I want forever with no recourse.

Assuming I can get $50-$100 worth of HNS or WHNS via Uniswap, what's a decent bidding strategy? Right now I'm thinking to start with a low bid like 1-2 HNS (<$0.50) and hope no one else bids. If someone bids on the last day either let the win it if they bid a lot more (>$5) or re-bid up to about $5 (~25 HNS). If a bot outbids me, just let them win and offer to buy the domain from them for increasing amounts up to my limit of $50-$100. There's $0 resale value in the name I want, so they could either take the easy money or keep it forever.

I guess this post can double as one of my criticisms about Handshake domains. The bidding system is brutal for anyone that wants to buy domains to use rather than to flip.

 

[Namer2000]

I'd like to try to register one to match a .com I own if it's possible to do it without doing KYC verification or spending too much.

... what's a decent bidding strategy? Right now I'm thinking to start with a low bid like 1-2 HNS (<$0.50) and hope no one else bids. If someone bids on the last day either let the win it if they bid a lot more (>$5) or re-bid up to about $5 (~25 HNS). If a bot outbids me, just let them win and offer to buy the domain from them for increasing amounts up to my limit of $50-$100. There's $0 resale value in the name I want, so they could either take the easy money or keep it forever.

Skip KYC by buying with BTC on Namebase (any HNS obviously can't be sold until account verification).

I'd recommend starting an auction low (0.40) and bidding again in the final hour (4-6 blocks left is usually safe, 1-3 blocks is riskier since your bid may not get mined in time). Your second bid should be the max you're willing to pay. Last second sniping is common on cheap auctions with bids, including from bots, so bidding too low is risky. Even names with little perceived resale value are often sniped and snipers will likely raise the price well beyond what you'd pay at auction.

If you want to increase your chances of winning a name, I'd also recommend starting a dozen similar auctions at the same time. For example, if the name you want to win is "johndoe", when starting that auction, also start "janedoe", "mikedoe", "johnsmith", "janesmith", "mikesmith", etc. Other Namebase users won't know which name means the most to you until you bid a second time near the end of the auction.

(Possibly too much info, but if you have the HNS and really want to confuse snipers when bidding a second time, bid X on *each name*, with X being an actual bid on "johndoe" and a blind bid on the other names. For example, you could bid 50 HNS on each name in the final hour, but only "johndoe" would be an actual 50 HNS bid, whereas the other names would be a 50 HNS blind (0 HNS bid). Snipers won't know which name has a real bid and which is a blind, further reducing the likelihood that a sniper picks your desired name and extorts you after.)

 

[jamesau]

1. Who owns the encryption / wallet keys if I use namebase.io? Is BobWallet the only option if I want to own the keys?

Namebase own everything if you buy on Namebase. Bobwallet is my preferred GUI option, or you can install the HNS wallet itself (HSD)

2. Is WHNS a namebase.io thing or could I get WHNS via BobWallet?

If you go via WHNS you may have to KYC to redeem them into HNS at Namebase. There are more bridged tokens expected but none yet. Best to swap ETH > HNS.

3. Are there frontrunning issues? The auction system is probably the worst design possible for someone that wants to register a brand name. I looked through recent auctions and there are a lot of surnames that have 3 or 4 bids where they go .40 HNS, .41 HNS, 5 HNS (or similar). It looks like automation to me.

I actually think it's a perfect design to extract the maximum value for the network. It ensures good domains sell at a fair price.

4. The docs say the first bid triggers a 5 day auction followed by a 10 day reveal period, but one of the finished auctions I looked at says bids were placed on Jan. 7 and Jan. 14 even though the auction didn't start until Jan. 24. I don't understand what's going on there. Can someone explain it to me?

Looks like a front end problem with Namebase. You can see the auction transactions here: https://e.hnsfans.com/name/pichlmaier

5. Do I have to worry about bid sniping? Almost every finished auction I looked at has a bid on the last day. Is there a way to see which block those bids were included in to gauge the likelihood of it being a bot?

Yes sniping happens. If you value the domain you should prepare to bid thousands of HNS. Remember you only pay the second highest bid (not your highest bid). If you bid 2000 HNS the odds of you paying even 100 HNS are almost nil. I wouldn't think there are many widely desirable names unclaimed.

6. What's the point of people making $0 bids like this? If the HNS gets burned like the docs say I don't understand who benefits from trying to inflate the price like that.

The blinds are refundable if claimed in the 10 day window. It's just an interesting mechanism to play around with but I would ignore blinds if you only want the one name. Just bid your absolute max as a bid.

 

[ryan29]

Thanks for the answers. They helped me a lot.

If you go via WHNS you may have to KYC to redeem them into HNS at Namebase. There are more bridged tokens expected but none yet. Best to swap ETH > HNS.

I don't think I can swap ETH > HNS. The only option Uniswap gave me was ETH > WHNS, but I also noticed that .02 and .03 ETH were offering me the same amount of HNS, so maybe there's a just a lack of people selling. I don't really understand how the swaps work.

I actually think it's a perfect design to extract the maximum value for the network. It ensures good domains sell at a fair price.

The issue for someone like me is that I picked a name where the .com was available. IMO that's enough to make the argument that the experimental crypto alternative should be nearly worthless.

The way I view most crypto currency is in the context of there being limited liquidity which creates incentive for early adopters to buy any potential assets that can be purchased with their low liquidity tokens. Then hope for the tech to take off and you own a huge chunk of the market.

So I feel like I need to overpay with real money and still risk losing my name to an early adopter that's spending "found money" as soon as it hits public auction. That name is worthless to them beyond trying to sell it to me, so the best outcome for me is if Handshake domains simply fail.

If you want to increase your chances of winning a name, I'd also recommend starting a dozen similar auctions at the same time. For example, if the name you want to win is "johndoe", when starting that auction, also start "janedoe", "mikedoe", "johnsmith", "janesmith", "mikesmith", etc. Other Namebase users won't know which name means the most to you until you bid a second time near the end of the auction.

This is a great idea. I'm not sure about trying to make a last minute bid though because I'd be doing it by hand and someone trying to front run will probably be using a bot to snipe.

Yes sniping happens. If you value the domain you should prepare to bid thousands of HNS. Remember you only pay the second highest bid (not your highest bid). If you bid 2000 HNS the odds of you paying even 100 HNS are almost nil. I wouldn't think there are many widely desirable names unclaimed.

So combined with the other suggestion above, I think the best strategy for anyone to register a name is to find a person with a large float of HNS to obfuscate the desired name in a bunch of fake auctions to make frontrunning / sniping unattractive. I think it works best with a large volume of auctions so you can bid the total lockup on the desired name.

• Find someone with a bunch of HNS.
• Give them money, the desired name, and a list of (ex) 99 plausible sounding decoy names.
• Have them place $0 bids and $Y blinds on the decoy names with a $Y bid and a $0 blind on the desired name.
• Do nothing else. If the decoy names are plausible a frontrunner would need to spend 100x$Y to guarantee they get the desired name.
• Trust the helper to be satisfied with some profit and have them transfer the name if the auction is won. Assume they'll keep your name and your money. Lol.

Looking at the transactions James linked it looks like you can put lots of bids in a single transaction and like you can redeem the blinds in the same way. Is that right? If so, my best bet would be to find someone willing to spam the system with thousands of decoy names with my desired name mixed in. If I read the fee on those bulk transactions right (0.1 HNS = $0.02) it's mainly an issue of floating the HNS during the auction.

So someone should build what I would call an Obfuscated Handshake Domain Registration System where they obfuscate orders for Handshake domains. Use me as an example. Since everything is on the public blockchain I can easily verify I got what I paid for.

Charge me a non-refundable obfuscation/attempt fee plus a refundable registration fee. For example, charge me a $10 non-refundable fee for 100 decoy auctions, plus a refundable $10 registration fee to cover the cost of winning the real auction.

Start $10 auctions for all 101 names using my suggested strategy above (fire and forget, never get into a bidding war). That's a $10 profit for floating $1k worth of HNS for about 1 week (7 days), but you retain control and are guaranteed to get it all back since it's all refundable blinds. That's an RoI of 1% per week or 52% per year with basically no risk beyond holding the HNS anyway, so the more you can do it the more money you make.

A frontrunner would have to bid $1k to guarantee a win of a name I'm willing to pay $20 to get. That's a bad bet IMO and the risk to a frontrunner can be increased if I'm willing to pay more. For example, if I pay a $100 obfuscation fee for 1k fake auctions a frontrunner would have to spend $10k to guarantee a win. The obfuscation service makes the same margin regardless.

Either way, it's all too complex compared to "first come, first served" like the existing system or ENS. Since I only have $100 of ETH max that I can move into the system the best I could do is 10 auctions with $10 lockups and I don't think $100 will deter a frontrunner / squatter, so I'll have to take a wait and see approach. The odds of someone registering the name I want within the next couple of years is basically 0%, so it's not worth the risk of triggering a public auction right now IMO.

Thanks again for the answers!

 

[newdawndomains]

I have some questions about these if someone is willing / able to answer them. Overall I think they have a lot of problems that will keep them from being adopted by the mainstream, but seeing Namecheap and Porkbun start selling them is enough that I'd like to try to register one to match a .com I own if it's possible to do it without doing KYC verification or spending too much.

I found an old ETH wallet I used to learn about mining 5 years ago and it had 0.1 ETH. I spent .05 to get an ENS domain for 10 years and I think I could use Uniswap to convert some to WHNS to get a Handshake domain.

My questions:

1. Who owns the encryption / wallet keys if I use namebase.io? Is BobWallet the only option if I want to own the keys?
2. Is WHNS a namebase.io thing or could I get WHNS via BobWallet?
3. Are there frontrunning issues? The auction system is probably the worst design possible for someone that wants to register a brand name. I looked through recent auctions and there are a lot of surnames that have 3 or 4 bids where they go .40 HNS, .41 HNS, 5 HNS (or similar). It looks like automation to me.
4. The docs say the first bid triggers a 5 day auction followed by a 10 day reveal period, but one of the finished auctions I looked at says bids were placed on Jan. 7 and Jan. 14 even though the auction didn't start until Jan. 24. I don't understand what's going on there. Can someone explain it to me?
5. Do I have to worry about bid sniping? Almost every finished auction I looked at has a bid on the last day. Is there a way to see which block those bids were included in to gauge the likelihood of it being a bot?
6. What's the point of people making $0 bids like this? If the HNS gets burned like the docs say I don't understand who benefits from trying to inflate the price like that.

My impression so far is that if I make a small bid (<$50) and trigger an auction I'll get outbid by a bot and lose the domain I want forever with no recourse.

Assuming I can get $50-$100 worth of HNS or WHNS via Uniswap, what's a decent bidding strategy? Right now I'm thinking to start with a low bid like 1-2 HNS (<$0.50) and hope no one else bids. If someone bids on the last day either let the win it if they bid a lot more (>$5) or re-bid up to about $5 (~25 HNS). If a bot outbids me, just let them win and offer to buy the domain from them for increasing amounts up to my limit of $50-$100. There's $0 resale value in the name I want, so they could either take the easy money or keep it forever.

I guess this post can double as one of my criticisms about Handshake domains. The bidding system is brutal for anyone that wants to buy domains to use rather than to flip.

As someone who has scooped up hundreds of Handshake domains over the past 1.5 years, here are my thoughts:

1. Namebase is just a UI interface between your TLDs and the blockchain. You can go to Handshake's website and learn more about what you're asking.
2. Any token can get wrapped but why not just get HNS so you don't need to unwrap it to use on Namebase?
3. I've done a 0.41 vs 0.40 HNS bidding strategy before but I've found it's not going to really guarantee you getting a domain if a bot is in your midst (not all auctions have bots btw)
4. If you bid on a name that isn't in auction, a 5 day auction begins. Then, if you won, you will get told so and have to wait 10 days until it's 100% yours and your HNS you bid gets returned to you.
5. Yes you do. My strategy is to bid as high as I possibly can for names I really want.
6. The minimum bid is 0.4 HNS afaik but what you show is people hiding how much they actually bid. I never quite got it but I think they're just trying to pull a fast one but I never really played with that option.

Looking at the names being bid on these days, all of the good ones are no longer available. I have a bunch of single-emoji, single-world, 3-letter TLDs but that's because I got into things mid 2020. There are still some decent ones out there up for bidding but you may just want to start off the bid high because the way these auctions work is that if you bid 1000 HNS and nobody else bids, you get all 1000 HNS back. If someone sees you bid 1000 HNS, they HAVE to bid higher than that, and are putting up all 1000 HNS to be taken from them if they win the auction, so it's a lot more risky for them. For you, if you start out with 1000 HNS, it's of no risk to you.

 

[Global Rebrander]

After losing many mints I finally now win most of my mints… the idea is put a decent amount to start the bid…say 20 hns bid and 75 hns blind… with 100 hns locked people are less likely to bid and if there are more than 1 bids, it goes top of the list so you want to bid high while minting and prevent it being sniped. If it’s a name no one cares, no one will outbid anyway… but a 0.4 bid is a risky one as its Probable to be sniped. If you win single bids, you get it for 0.09 transaction fee only … and of course you have to make sure you’re wake and watching the auction when it finishes if it’s likely to be sniped

 

[Namer2000]

In my own experience, opening high and gaining attention for days invites the highest bids. I don't like increasing the second highest bid amount that I have to pay, let alone losing to a whale. Opening low and bidding higher later limits price paid and chance of loss. Namebase auction time is not even extended due to late bids like GoDaddy/NameJet/etc, making this approach particularly effective.

 

[firefly2002]

ice.c sold for 12.5k looks like.

 

[DeniseDahmer]

My husband owns Bourbon . Peach and Cherry in dot elite. What if this is a repeat of 1995? Definitely worth exposure just in case.