The Shake: Jan. 9, 2022
A publication on Handshake and the Decentralized Web. For more Handshake resources, visit theshake.xyz.
This Week in Handshake
↳ Decentralizing search HNSsearch, the aptly named Handshake search engine, is evolving. A version of the search engine frontend will be available to run locally using Skynet’s Homescreen. All aspects of the search engine will be open sourced from the resolver to the crawler to the indexer to the frontend. This toolkit will let anyone host their own search engine. If a privacy and security-focused browser like Beacon wants to implement their own opinionated take on what Handshake search should look like, no problem.
Zooming out, we’ll soon have a search engine that indexes a decentralized web through Handshake, uses a decentralized nameserver with Sia, runs an indexer on Akash, and can be fully customized to search the DWeb the way you want.
↳ hs-anyone While Handshake TLDs can be owned by anyone for the first time, that also enables them to be owned by noone — burning the keys and enabling truly decentralized domain registrars like Forever Domains. Top level domains that are unowned by anyone still need a way to be renewed on Handshake and Matthew Zipkin created a nodejs package to do just that.
↳ Market Sentiment Report A comprehensive report from survey respondents who’ve accounted for more than 36,000 TLDs purchased across primary and secondary markets.
↳ HNS Bridges While the best way to access Handshake is through a native resolver, gateway resolvers have been stood up as alternatives. A new gateway “rsvr.xyz” was released along with a guide for setting these up.
Stats
Names Registered: 2.64M (+4% 7d)
Bid volume has spiked to levels not seen since Spring 2021 and January has seen 100k name registrations through just the first nine days of the month. We will most likely break the current all time high for monthly names registered (227k, May 2021).
Network Hashrate: 12.5 PH/s
Namebase Marketplace, Jan 2022: 413k HNS
Off to a quick start, January is on pace for ~1.5M HNS in resale volume.
Around the DWeb
↳ Osmosis Liquidy on Osmosis, an Akash-powered decentralized exchange, crossed $1 billion this week.
↳ Lighthouse One time payment, permastorage using IPFS and Polygon
↳ Skynet Kernel With Skynet’s priority for community run portals, the core kernel code is multi-portal. Users can use their favorite portal(s) and the kernel can seamlessly switch between them and failover to new portals if some are down.
Tweet Check
Regulatory pressure may catalyze the decentralization of DeFi frontends