The Shake: Feb. 20, 2022
A publication on Handshake and the Decentralized Web.
Access HNS domains → Fingertip Resolver | Beacon Browser | More…
Namecheap acquires Namebase
Namecheap was early to DNS, a registrar founded in 2000 that has since become the second largest domain seller in the world. Namecheap was early to crypto, the first registrar to accept Bitcoin payments starting back in 2013. And Namecheap is early yet again — this time to Handshake — acquiring a controlling interest in the Handshake registry and exchange, Namebase.
While Namebase will continue to operate as an independent brand, Namecheap has wasted no time allocating new resources into the ecosystem — they are hiring developers to work on Handshake.
This week, we got to hear directly from Namecheap CEO Richard Kirkendall as he answered some initial questions on Twitter.
On the current DNS landscape:
What I see on the horizon for the current naming system is more regulation, censorship and a less free internet. Handshake, if done right can fix a lot of these problems by removing the service providers from the equation and making it entirely community driven. - RK
On Namecheap’s role in Handshake’s decentralized ecosystem:
[Non-custodial solutions] should be central to everything. The less ability we have to make unilateral decisions on your assets, the better. We should be there for transactional purposes only and the community as a whole should be the driver around the bigger decisions (abuse, etc.) - RK
On Namecheap’s roadmap for Handshake support:
Our first order of business is to allow all TLD holders full access to our search and customers as well as make it easier to access any/all registrars. 2. We want to make SLD's fully decentralized and transactions peer to peer. That doesn't exist today. - RK
On Handshake’s path to mainstream adoption:
In a nutshell; getting HNS in front of every day users (as well as educating them on it) and building more and more tools to make it useful. - RK
On the role of $HNS:
The entire handshake ecosystem should be powered by HNS and that includes anything and everything transactional. - RK
There appears to be a strong understanding of the problems Handshake is trying to tackle, the work it will take to get there, and an appreciation for the community’s open source ethos. I’ve been covering the Handshake ecosystem since the protocol launched and I’m excited about this next chapter. I hope you are too. Now, for the rest of this week in Handshake.
This Week in Handshake
↳ The Handshake Tarot Matthew Zipkin released collectible tarot cards on Handshake. Every card is a top-level domains with ASCII-art embedded as TXT records, a fully-on chain Handshake NFT project!
Next month, the tarot cards will be auctioned off via ShakeDex with a portion of proceeds going to HNS Fund. In the meantime, Matthew has left us plenty of easter eggs, so go explore the site on HNS or DNS and find your favorite cards!
Try drawing a random tarot card! The authoritative nameserver has been modified to serve random CNAME records, effectively dealing a random card each time a DNS request is made to the card subdomain. You can try this out by copying a command here and pasting into your terminal.
↳ Niami It’s hard to succinctly describe Niami because the site is a lot of things. It’s a block explorer, a name rating system, and an on-chain auction interface.
With this week’s update, Niami has released a new set of features including:
Login: Sign in with Bob Wallet
Portfolios: Create and browse TLD bundles
Profiles: Add social data to your TLD
To make a Niami profile for your TLD, simply set your TXT records using the format: caption=[caption], avatar=[link], twitter=[handle], etc.
Niami will render these on-chain records as profile data.
↳ Skyname An authoritative nameserver on Skynet
↳ Expiring-plugin A script to find expiring names soon available for auction
↳ hs-help Install a Handshake full node in three minutes or less
↳ Nameboard The marketplace aggregator queries names for sale across Namebase, ShakeDex, Parking, and direct listings
Stats
