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discuss Handshake domains

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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.
 
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The issue is native support.

You can have any "domain" you want if you get people to use special software, extensions, or nameservers.

I personally don't anticipate a lot of consumer demand. It is like trying to re-invent the wheel for no major reason.

Brad
 
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Too complicated.

“im out.”

“Invest in what you understand.”

Samer
 
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The issue is native support.

You can have any "domain" you want if you get people to use special software, extensions, or nameservers.

I personally don't anticipate a lot of consumer demand. It is like trying to re-invent the wheel for no major reason.

Brad

It's in the early days and obviously isn't usable by most people at the moment unless they have the technical know how. But it's the same way with .eth and .crypto domains - most people cannot access those domains for the same reasons. But while those are just new domain extensions and both are centralized, Handshake is a possible future domain naming system that can work alongside the current DNS system and is decentralized, meaning no one can make you take down your site which is pretty relevant these days with all the Twitter/Facebook bans. People have set up fully decentralized websites using Handshake and other decentralized hosting services.

Most people are buying .eth and .crypto for speculation, resale, and see it as a form of NFT. The same can be said for Handshake, except there is a lot more upside and potential with Handshake. There's also the fact the Handshake economy works off a crypto, HNS, which also have investment possibilities (it's up 700% from January to now). People also didn't believe in bitcoin and crypto in general and look where that is now.
 
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It's in the early days and obviously isn't usable by most people at the moment unless they have the technical know how. But it's the same way with .eth and .crypto domains - most people cannot access those domains for the same reasons. But while those are just new domain extensions and both are centralized, Handshake is a possible future domain naming system that can work alongside the current DNS system and is decentralized, meaning no one can make you take down your site which is pretty relevant these days with all the Twitter/Facebook bans. People have set up fully decentralized websites using Handshake and other decentralized hosting services.

Most people are buying .eth and .crypto for speculation, resale, and see it as a form of NFT. The same can be said for Handshake, except there is a lot more upside and potential with Handshake. There's also the fact the Handshake economy works off a crypto, HNS, which also have investment possibilities (it's up 700% from January to now). People also didn't believe in bitcoin and crypto in general and look where that is now.

Some people act like "decentralized" is some miracle. The vast majority of people just want stuff to easily work without a bunch of hassle or effort.

Also, is this really "decentralized" if there is a Handshake token? Who controls the supply?

It reminds me of something like Ripple. How is that decentralized?

Throw in trendy words like crypto, blockchain, nft, etc.

At some point there needs to be a real world case use that makes people's lives better.

I just don't see the actual use case for these personally. The domain system works fine, as is, for almost everyone.

New extensions, in large part, failed because of lack of real world demand. Those worked the same way as existing domains.

This change would require a different format, on top of special software, extensions, or settings.

And as far as .crypto goes, ICANN will just end up delegating the actual extension, on the actual root servers, at some point that will be accessible in a normal browser.

It is nothing new. ICANN did the exact same thing before - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New.net

Brad
 
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As easy as native support is now included in some browsers, the top browser makers may be required to effectively block handshake sites in the future. This can be done in the same way browsers now deal with HSTS preload lists. The claim that a website cannot be shut down may be technically correct, but any technology that becomes somewhat popular and widely used will be influenced by governments at some point.
 
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Some people act like "decentralized" is some miracle. The vast majority of people just want stuff to easily work without a bunch of hassle or effort.

Also, is this really "decentralized" if there is a Handshake token? Who controls the supply?

It reminds me of something like Ripple. How is that decentralized?

Throw in trendy words like crypto, blockchain, nft, etc.

At some point there needs to be a real world case use that makes people's lives better.

I just don't see the actual use case for these personally. The domain system works fine, as is, for almost everyone.

New extensions, in large part, failed because of lack of real world demand. Those worked the same way as existing domains.

This change would require a different format, on top of special software, extensions, or settings.

And as far as .crypto goes, ICANN will just end up delegating the actual extension, on the actual route servers, at some point that will be accessible in a normal browser.

It is nothing new. ICANN did the exact same thing before - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New.net

Brad
These aren’t decentralized because you still need a third party to hold the asset. I bought hns when it was .06 I believe, so it was cheap to bid and acquire a few. Today, hns is .75 and there’s more eyes on these. Not worth it IMO.
 
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Also, you never actually "own" these. Just like with regular domains there are renewal fees.

https://handshake.org/faq/

How long are my names good for?

Handshake names are registered for two years at a time. Names can be renewed biannually by paying a standard network fee. There are no social or technical guarantees with the renewability or ownership, this is an experimental system, please read the code to see details of how it currently works.

Who gets the renewal fee?

Renewals for names are bi-annual and cost a standard network fee. Currently, miners will receive the transaction fee as part of their block reward.
 
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Thanks for bringing this new provocating idea of handshake domain. I like the concept but then realise that it is still not providing real independence or following the actual decentralised approach. Instead of a few big registrars in the legacy domain field, here in Handshake, we will have many first movers who will control your privacy and future through their extension like in your case through .visit or .article. In short, it will be like Coinbase who owned your cryptocurrency or bitcoin and you feel empowered that your bitcoins are independent of the bank or govt but not aware that the CoinBase stored your bitcoin is still not in your full control and could be more dangerous and vulnerable to market volatility (we have witnessed recently the day after Coinbase IPO) until it in your own cold vault/ wallet.

Also, I am not convinced that through one-time payment without an annual fee how they will maintain such infrastructure in future maybe they propose some Gas fee concept later on because nothing is free in life and normally cheap option cost more dearly.

Anyway, It is a good development and will certainly put pressure on legacy domain registrars to be more innovative, affordable and a bit humble.

Thank you!
 
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These aren’t decentralized because you still need a third party to hold the asset. I bought hns when it was .06 I believe, so it was cheap to bid and acquire a few. Today, hns is .75 and there’s more eyes on these. Not worth it IMO.

You can hold them in a wallet where you own the private keys. And within the wallet you can buy/sell and configure your names.

https://github.com/kyokan/bob-wallet

Also, you never actually "own" these. Just like with regular domains there are renewal fees.

The fee is a "keep alive" fee. It's there so that if someone loses their private keys, dies, or never accesses those names again, the names are released back into the wild. Otherwise over time you'd lose complete access to various TLD's forever when the above happens. The fee is only .01-.02 and the pros of having this system in place far outweigh any negatives IMO.

As easy as native support is now included in some browsers, the top browser makers may be required to effectively block handshake sites in the future. This can be done in the same way browsers now deal with HSTS preload lists. The claim that a website cannot be shut down may be technically correct, but any technology that becomes somewhat popular and widely used will be influenced by governments at some point.

This is entirely a possibility. However, there will always be browsers that will still allow access to Handshake sites. But if that were to happen, it would certainly not be a good thing. I could see a situation like that making Handshake more into an alternate internet/DNS.
 
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What if all the browsers allow the visibility of these .HS and .crypto domains. Let's say somehow .c/ actually works exactly like the .com (the point is can today's broker become tomorrow's builder).
 
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I think a decentralized namespace protocol like Handshake is exactly what we need to get away from the centrally-controlled ICANN mafia. I know it's very new and the older stalwarts like what they got going with legacy TLDs but this really is the future. Handshake isn't the only blockchain that has decentralized TLDs being offered, but it is the largest and fast-growing one. I have around 300 TLDs myself and made 20x more money selling TLDs than I ever did selling ICANN-controlled domain names...and now I have started selling domain names under one of my TLDs, .i1, and plan to begin domain names under several country TLDs I was fortunate enough to win at auction.

Even if you aren't a big believer in it, a wise person would at least jump in and view it as a speculative investment worth at least getting your hat in the ring.
 
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The issue is native support.

You can have any "domain" you want if you get people to use special software, extensions, or nameservers.

I personally don't anticipate a lot of consumer demand. It is like trying to re-invent the wheel for no major reason.

Brad

There are VPNs that let you opt into using Handshake, as your DNS servers can get automatically changed when you connect into a VPN, but these are issues that will be solved - its still very early days - e.g. it would be extremely trivial for any ISP to also offer an opt-in capability.

There are already over 700K TLDs, only a few ICANN TLDs are bigger than that, and the second-level market is quite active, despite being only really active for a few weeks, so there already is demand

Right now, there may be no obvious benefit, apart from having almost no restriction on what domain name you can register, but I think in time new uses for DNS will emerge that are currently not possible / practical.
 
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What if all the browsers allow the visibility of these .HS and .crypto domains. Let's say somehow .c/ actually works exactly like the .com (the point is can today's broker become tomorrow's builder).

You can do this, you just have to change your DNS Servers to ones that are Handshake capable.

Its possible there may be some issues with some domains in some browsers (for legacy reasons etc), but on the whole I'd expect most of them to work, so long as their DNS can be looked up.

dot-C is already selling quite a lot of sub-names
 
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All that has to happen is brave browser or say a duckduckgo decides to allow these then you will have a token price of 10-20 dollars and not in the cents imo. One could even build a browser from ground up to allow these. It takes 1 minutes to download a new browser and allow these. It is coming the question is will it be in 3 months or 3 years?
 
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What is to stop anyone else from doing the same thing? If you can get someone to use your software, extension, or DNS you can have whatever domain you want.

Brad
 
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Only Ethereum NS has joined the DNS-OARC. The rest of Alt's still toying around + they're dependent on the browser plug-in (vulnerable) and must kiss the browser / plugin company ToS.
 
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i agree that at some point the world will make a move towards something like this. there are actually quite a few diff examples right now. the current system doesnt work for more people right now, although most ppl get by with it
 
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Again, marketing fluff aside, I fail to see what problems these really solve.

The average person doesn't own a domain so couldn't care less.
It is also trying to introduce an entirely new format.

These certainly don't fit my definition of "decentralized" for a number of reasons.

On top of that, just like normal domains, what premium terms are available to an average user? Pretty much nothing. You either have to buy an extension or buy a subdomain under the extension owner.

"Decentralized" is not real great when it comes to TM and other legal abuses of the system as well.

This is outside the obvious technical issues, and no barrier to entry of another party doing the exact same or similar thing.

Brad
 
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Again, marketing fluff aside, I fail to see what problems these really solve.

The average person doesn't own a domain so couldn't care less.
It is also trying to introduce an entirely new format.

These certainly don't fit my definition of "decentralized" for a number of reasons.

On top of that, just like normal domains, what premium terms are available to an average user? Pretty much nothing. You either have to buy an extension or buy a subdomain under the extension owner.

"Decentralized" is not real great when it comes to TM and other legal abuses of the system as well.

This is outside the obvious technical issues, and no barrier to entry of another party doing the exact same or similar thing.

Brad

this implementation may not be the one, but you can bet your ass that something similar will usurp the current system in the future
 
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Some technical hurdles still in Handshake, shouldn't that be expected. There's movement and adoption with the domains, so stick with what I know.

I have a handful of TLDs I bought into last year too, some from the secondary market and others I actually "created" from scratch! That was dam cool, making a top-level domain and watching it go to auction, and few weeks later in my account. Among:

pwrx/ (created)
bells/ (bought)

No harm no foul to me, speculating is part of domain investing and can still use one's head when doing so. Was able to find some solid names at entry pricing. I think Handshake is doing very well for just a barely 1-year old.

What if all the browsers allow the visibility of these .HS and .crypto domains. Let's say somehow .c/ actually works exactly like the .com (the point is can today's broker become tomorrow's builder).
Exactly, what came first, the investor or the builder? Right? Takes two to tango. Native browser support is the carrot in front of the donkey that's for sure. Really though for now it is nothing to change a dns address to resolve Handshake domains, no excuses there.

There's been talk about .eth and .crypto, but I haven't seen many posts on here about Handshake.
by Bob:
https://www.namepros.com/blog/what-...ain-investors-a-chat-with-steve-webb.1227910/

by Johnny:
https://www.namepros.com/threads/handshake-tlds.1207019/

and a few newsworthy in the Domain Industry News section
 
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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.


you believe? :)
you are late to the party..

I 'believed' when posted this 14 months ago and no one cared:

https://www.namepros.com/threads/handshake-decentralized-internet.1181812/

Now when it's hyped on every corner - this is not a 'belief' - this is jumping on a leaving train.
 
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Also, you never actually "own" these. Just like with regular domains there are renewal fees.

https://handshake.org/faq/

How long are my names good for?

Handshake names are registered for two years at a time. Names can be renewed biannually by paying a standard network fee. There are no social or technical guarantees with the renewability or ownership, this is an experimental system, please read the code to see details of how it currently works.

Who gets the renewal fee?

Renewals for names are bi-annual and cost a standard network fee. Currently, miners will receive the transaction fee as part of their block reward.


As much as I read comments like this - I understand how clueless most people are and how many will be left behind :)

No one ' controls ' the supply - this is a protocol. Same as Bitcoin (I won't be surprised if you also believe someone controls Bitcoin's supply).

To keep network up and running, secure and immutable - you need miners (or stakers in other protocols).
In case of ICANN - you end up, eventually, paying them fees because they own it. In a decentralized world you pay fees to miners who keep the network up. Nobody can take a name from you, by filing UDRP or just because they want so.

If you sell a SLD for you HNS TLD - for now you have to act through Namebase (I do sell some SLDs for my TLDs), you have to sign some basic papers and have a semi-centralized entity, but only because you do want to sell your second levels...


"What is to stop anyone else from doing the same thing?"

How many Bitcoins do we have? Cash, Diamond, Gold, Trash...



______________________________________
One of my favorite quotes :

'If I have to explain, you wouldn't understand'
- O. Wilde

and I don't know why I'm not following it today:xf.grin:
______________________________________
 
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This is so easy to understand, some people say they can't understand it. If your a domain investor and you have a problem understanding this you should do something else. It is like adding 1 + 1.

It is natural for any new thing for people to get scared. NFT, Bitcoin, Handshake domains. LOL

No one cares what you think, this is the new generation. You think young people give a shi- about the olds ways. They don't care. This is a private way for you to search. That's it. Your either in or out.
 
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In my opinion, there will never be a resale market for this. I thought it looked neat enough to sign up and try to grab a brandable name that I have. I went to the site, credit card in hand, ready to spend money and, after I register, I'm greeted with this:

> Before you can start trading HNS, you must first verify your profile. This is because Namebase is an incorporated company that has to follow normal AML/KYC laws like other onramps such as Coinbase.

Hard pass. I'm not giving KYC (know your customer) levels of personal information to some random internet company just so I can spend $5. I use a prepaid credit card for stuff like this, so if I'm not even willing to give them my real CC number, what on earth makes anyone think I'm going to start handing over things like my photo ID, SIN (like a SSN), etc.?

All these crypto businesses are DOA if you need to provide KYC documentation to spend money. Plus, just to make it even worse, in my jurisdiction (Canada), every transaction is considered a taxable event where I'm supposed to track capital gains and losses vs "fair market value" so I can claim them on my taxes.

The idea of a blockchain based DNS is very cool, but tying it to crypto currency that fluctuates in value and is treated like a security in most western countries ruins its usefulness IMO.
 
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