The Shake: Nov. 21, 2021
A weekly recap on Handshake and the Decentralized Web
Chris (JJ) Jeffrey releases Mako
“No deadline. I just have a tendency towards obsession when I’m working on a project I’m very interested in. I tend to get into a kind of manic phase where I can’t sleep even if I wanted to. There’s no real telling when that phase will end. So I end up coding for an unhealthy amount of time.” - Handshake creator Chris (JJ) Jeffrey on his newly released project, Mako
Mako is a from-scratch reimplementation of a Bitcoin fullnode written in C, and a massive lift from a single developer over just a few months time. This is a herculean effort from JJ worth taking a moment to recognize.
For an introduction on fullnodes, start here.
Of the several reasons for reimplementing a Bitcoin fullnode in C, JJ explains “all data structures and primitives are written by hand and not subjected to any particular platform’s implementation of them. On top of that, mako makes sparing use of the C standard library. This makes mako more auditable than a Bitcoin implementation written in C++, JS, Rust, Go, etc.”
Mako was also built “to be used as the base for a port to the handshake protocol.” First-Bitcoin-then-Handshake is the same order of operations that JJ’s work has followed previously — reimplementing bitcoin in node.js for bcoin while at Purse before later using that as the foundation for Handshake’s first daemon and client library, HSD. Mako as the predecessor for the next Handshake fullnode ensures backwards compatibility of the Handshake implementation with its Bitcoin counterpart, meaning that Bitcoin developers can enter the Handshake ecosystem more easily even if the DNS elements of Handshake are still new. As a sister UTXO PoW chain, we welcome the Bitcoin community to join us in building the New Internet.
Multiple fullnode implementations and client libraries are a crucial component in keeping Bitcoin — and now Handshake — development decentralized, with as many technical subject matter experts as possible distributed all over the globe. As the first in-production Handshake fullnode, HSD has had time for an initial developer community to form and governance to begin to emerge — shout out to all the early contributors and maintainers of HSD. With HSD (Node.js), a port-in-progress of Mako (C), and work-in-progress libraries of Gohan (Go) and Handshakes (Rust), there are four libraries in various, albeit very early, states of development. Over time, these further implementations will allow new developer communities to form.
Handshake is a public good sitting at the root of the New Internet and it is imperative to optimize for decentralization. Technically, in our design choices. And socially, in our communities — of developers building on HNS, protocols integrating HNS, and users using HNS.
Ok, now let’s get to our weekly recap.
This Week in Handshake
↳ Community
HN Mako on the front page of Hacker News
HNS on iOS A Handshake iOS app is in the works. More on this soon.
AMA Mike Carson speaks on Impervious and it’s mission, HIP 5, Handshake app ideas, bringing Handshake to iOS, and more
Intro to HNS Matthew Zipkin presented Handshake at the Priv8 Summit
OpenSea HNS TLD listing on the OpenSea marketplace
↳ Tech
United We Shake Cross team collab on Chrome extension/ledger integration
HTools A dissector for Wireshark that decodes HNS packets, for the upcoming DVPN router
Mempool A Telegram channel with auction bids coming into the mempool
Stats
Names Opened 2.23M (+2% 7d)
Hashrate 10.18 PH/s
Network hashrate nears all time highs reached in May 2021
Secondary Markets X/ sold for $140,000 (333,333 HNS) at the Priv8 Summit auction
Around the DWeb
HandyHost Handy Host Raspberry Pi Kits. Plug and play to run a $DVPN node, Sia Node, and Akash Master Node.
Skynet The Sia L2 network is currently doing an estimated 20 billion micropayments per day.
DWeb Documentary 12-part weekly documentary series from Filecoin launching Dec. 15th.
DAO Canon A collection of resources on decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs)