The Shake: Jul. 10, 2022
A publication on Handshake and the DWeb. Towards a New Internet.
Handshake, by the numbers
On Name Collisions
.Wallet domains went live this week on Gateway.io at the low price of $1.99 and quickly crossed 3,000 registrations. You can get one here. Expect more Initial Name Offerings to come as Handshake registry systems ramp up this year.
The top level domain .wallet is one of ten TLDs also offered by Unstoppable Domains, Inc (UD). The success of .wallet’s initial name offering on Handshake led UD to respond by sending Gateway.io a “cease and desist” letter. Gateway does not intend to stand down here, and it turns out that UD’s trademark application for the mark “.wallet” was declined anyways.
A “cease and desist” is a tactic of a centralized organization. A for-profit company that arbitrarily chooses TLDs to issue domains under and responds to competition through legal threats is not in line with the goal of decentralizing DNS chokepoints, as it should be here. UD is acting as a mini-ICANN wanting to play arbiter of truth.
You can send a “cease and desist” letter to a domain registry, but you can’t send one to Handshake itself. Blockchains are anti-fragile in that sense — .wallet will always exist in the Handshake root. If UD were to buy their TLDs on Handshake, they could map them to their existing namespaces. Otherwise, in the case of .wallet, we get name collisions.
Ultimately, the issue of name collisions gets pushed up the stack to DNS resolvers. Both independent resolvers and browser-operated resolvers will choose which namespace to prioritize and users can opt for whichever aligns with their preferences. In a free market, let the best namespace win.
This Week in Handshake
¹ Palm Reader Beta is a newly released HSD user interface plugin. Among several features, Palm Reader is a tool for Handshake multisig that makes it easier to manage cooperatively-owned namespaces a.k.a. TLDAOs.
² Bob Wallet Technically in beta the last couple years, Bob Wallet is finally nearing a V1 release. Highlights include: 15 GB of reclaimed disk space through tree compaction with HSD V4, address aliasing for sending / receiving assets to Handshake names using HIP2, and much more. Great job to all contributors!
³ MXroute New Handshake support from email hosting service, MXroute.
[Handshake domains] are a bit new, a bit wild, and opinions will vary. However, this feature has been requested and we're going to concede that the domains are kind of cool…
For example, we purchased "mxroute" and you might think "Oh, so we would email jarland@mxroute." That isn't quite the intent. You see, "mxroute" is the TLD. The subdomains of that TLD are what would be most similar to the domains you are used to working with... So in our test, my email is actually jarland@email.mxroute.
⁴ Namebase Registry It appears that the Namebase Registry will be opening up to all Namebase users this coming week. The fee has been raised to 5,000 HNS (~$350) to participate in order to filter for quality.
Handshake nodes around the globe
Around the DWeb
Skynet Kernel debuts at ETHNewYork
Gnosis Safe transaction simulations
RiskDAO measures bad debt in lending markets
Aave introduces a stablecoin, GHO
DWeb Events
July 13 DOTS Monthly Assembly
Aug 24 DWeb Camp
Full Calendar curated by GetDWeb + Friends. There’s an email address for submissions if Handshake community members would like to suggest an event to be listed.