E is for envisioning
After three days and four Handshake-specific panels at NamesCon 2022, things wrapped up with a live auction of Handshake top-level domains. Ultimately, Namecheap walked away with .e for 5M HNS (~$300k). This was the highest sold domain at NamesCon this year and the highest publicly sold Handshake domain (in $HNS) to-date. But the story here is not about the winning bid.
Many of the bids that fell short would have still broken records. And behind those losing bids were major domain industry players from Porkbun, Epik, and NamesCon. Handshake’s legitimacy was acknowledged by the domain industry at-large this week, as folks from these organizations bid hundreds of thousands of dollars for the chance to own and operate the .e top-level domain.
The ICANN businesses early to Handshake have served as signal to their peers, de-risking the opportunity for a new wave of industry players to get involved. So while the losing bidders aren’t leaving NamesCon with a rare single-letter TLD, they are likely walking away envisioning what’s possible with Handshake.
This Week in Handshake
NamesCon HeyTX was on the ground this year at NamesCon 2022 and you can read a full review of conference highlights in their recap post.
ShakeDex The decentralized marketplace is back online to list and trade Handshake names. Interact with the protocol using ShakeDex.com or from inside the newest version of Bob Wallet.
HS Hub A new Notify page let you set up email notifications when anything happens for any Handshake name or address.
BlockChannel New podcasts out with conversations around the ecosystem from Clay Collins, Kiba Gateaux, Zach Brown, Nole Opperman, and Mike Carson.
Agaamin The (greatest?) pitch for Handshake, from the Agaamin registry.
The internet used to be a bigger place. Now there’s four, five websites that people typically visit. It wasn’t always like that. There was always weird little cool communities you can find on the web, tons of internet forums, and different places you can hang out. So it’s pretty clear things centralize over time.
These projects — projects like HNS and ENS — attempt to solve this problem. We want to revert to the decentralized model. Because it protects you from centralized planners like ICANN. It protects you from middlemen like Unstoppable that attempt to control you and exploit you. That’s what we are trying to achieve with Handshake.
📈 By The Numbers
With name expiries picking up, the burn rate jumped this week to 305 $HNS per block, the highest it’s been in eighteen months.
🌎 HNS Nodes
Sep 4, 2022
Summary of 756 IPs (Finland 31%, United States 28%, UK 10%)
📅 DWeb Events
↳ Web of Trust | Sep 26-30 | The Netherlands
↳ IPFS Camp | Oct 28-30 | Lisbon