The Shake: May 8, 2022
A publication on Handshake and the DWeb. Towards a New Internet.
Handshake, by the numbers
On TLD Migration
This week, .wiki and .gay became the first ever ICANN top level domains to be bridged over and claimed on Handshake. You can view the name and token claims as well as the DNSSEC proofs for these TLDs on Handshake.
Top Level Design is the owner of these TLDs, along with two more (.ink and .tattoo) that they are in the process of bridging over as well. Top Level Design is no stranger to Handshake — they are also the parent company of Porkbun, one of the first registrars to support Handshake domains.
Now if something were to happen to their ICANN domains, Top Level Design can continue to operate the .wiki and .gay namespaces on Handshake.
Beyond a redundancy, Handshake has the potential to offer even more utility as a primary root anchor to these TLDs in the future. It’s less expensive to pay bi-yearly miner fees to renew Handshake domains than the larger recurring maintenance fees paid to ICAAN. It’s also less restrictive for TLDs on Handshake. Procedurally, you don’t need to go through ICANN’s review process called RSTEP to make changes, which has been critiqued as a friction to innovation. Technically, you can do new things like place TXT records in the top level zone.
ICANN top level domains are included in Handshake’s reserved names set, first, to prevent name collisions and, second, to extend the benefits of its root anchor to these namespaces if they so choose. Now that Top Level Design has normalized claiming on Handshake, we will keep a close eye on if and when the next ICANN TLD migrations follow.
This Week in Handshake
➟ Registrars An up-to-date list of traditional and DWeb-native registrars supporting Handshake domains
➟ Identity How Handshake solves the Crypto Identity Problem as a universal root naming and identity anchor.
➟ Data Report A deep dive on Handshake ecosystem stats from name markets to protocol revenue.
Tweet Check
Per this year’s tax filings, ICANN — the non profit that manages the global root zone for the internet — maintains a balance sheet of $576M in assets including $442M in publicly traded securities.
HandyGrants
Building on Handshake? Submit a proposal for a micro grant from HandyOSS.