The Shake: Jan. 2, 2022
A publication on Handshake and the Decentralized Web. For more Handshake resources, visit theshake.xyz.
This Week in Handshake
↳ Timeline.handshake A 2021 year-in-review website. I’m only linking the HNS domain because after the year we’ve had, there’s plenty of options for accessing Handshake.
Truly, what a year it’s been: Impervious released its Fingertip resolver, registrars for .forever and .badass, and the iOS Beacon Browser. The community built Handshake email services, a search engine, name hosting, a name exchange protocol, identity tools, explorers, and much more. Handshake support was added by Fleek, ArGo, IPFS, Sentinel, and others. Namecheap began supporting domain registrations. Bob Wallet released a Chrome extension and integrated with Ledger. And on the last day of the year, Opera Browser did this…. 👇
↳ Opera Browser One of the most popular browsers globally following Safari and Chrome, Opera Browser has signaled their plans to natively resolve Handshake domains in-browser within the first half of 2022. Per the dWeb Foundation, Opera’s name resolution will use HNSD for now with further development on the roadmap to possibly support DANE.
↳ 👏 Applause.chat A Handshake site that lets users post and “applaud” posts by signing with the key associated with their Handshake TLD. Since only users with names in non-custodials wallet like Bob Wallet are able to sign messages, apps like Applause Chat incentivize self custody and can serve as a decentralizing force for the ecosystem.
↳ XNHNS The Cross Network Handshake (XNHNS) Protocol beta launched on Polygon. XNHNS let’s you manage DNS records on other chains and tokenize TLDs as NFTs on those chains.
What does XNHNS enable? For registrars, XNHNS enables experimentation with the programmability of smart contracts on scalable L2s. Get started with this SLD registrar factory contract. For protocols, XNHNS can bring naming to your community (i.e. username.protocol) that’s interoperable across chains and secured in a global root zone. And for individuals, it offers the potential for maintaining a single identity across chains.
↳ HandyHost Thomas from the HandyOSS team is doing a giveaway for a HandyHost Raspberry Pi plug-n-play kit. The DWeb protocol manager, with a native Handshake resolver, can be used to run Sia / Akash / Sentinel nodes and earn in their native tokens. Follow the link for participation details.
↳ Agaamin Registry The Indian-based Handshake registry starting with the sanskrit top level domain .भ launched on January 1st. 187 names were registered in the first 24 hours.
↳ Puma Browser New iOS update with improved HNS SLD and emoji resolution.
Stats
Network Hashrate: 13.7 PH/s
Hashrate has been hovering around all time highs for the last several weeks while block distribution has been healthily decentralizing.
Names Registered: 2.55M (December +181k)
Monthly name growth has been steady with a slight uptick in December to the highest registrations we’ve seen since last May.
Namebase Marketplace Volume (December): 1M HNS
December secondary trading is back over the seven figure mark, the highest since August. January is off to a fast start with a sale of spank/ for 50k HNS.
Around the DWeb
↳ ICANN is blocking 23 gTLD transfers over blockchain fears, specifically regarding ENS. Quite the existential dilemma for ENS, a naming system that wants to anchor into ICANN’s root zone while ICANN authority acts directly in opposition to that. ENS would, of course, avoid this attack surface by utilizing Handshake’s decentralized root zone.