Handshake is a decentralized naming protocol for allocating ownership rights to Top Level Domains (TLD), such as a .com or a .org, which one can use for websites, email addresses, or crypto addresses. Handshake users can purchase the rights to a TLD through an auction system, where participants submit bids in the form of HNS tokens. The winning bidder then registers the TLD under their cryptographic keys by entering the pair into Handshake's Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchain, which acts as a distributed alternative to Certificate Authorities (CAs).
Founding and Vision Handshake was a long-secret project spearheaded by Joseph Poon (co-creator of Bitcoin's Lightning Network and Plasma payment channels), Andrew Lee (CEO of Bitcoin payments gateway Purse), Christopher Jeffery (CTO of Purse and creator of Bitcoin node software Bcoin), Boyma Fahnbulleh (Bcoin developer), and Andrew Lee (Founder of VPN provider Private Internet Access). From the start, its goal was to build a decentralized alternative to the existing system for allocating and managing Top Level Domains (TLDs).
The current Domain Name System (DNS) stack relies on a group of Certificate Authorities (CAs) that work to verify the authenticity of website ownership and prevent malicious actors from intercepting search requests. Handshake is attempting to remove the reliance on these trusted third-parties by having its public Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchain serve as the source of truth. Instead of registering a domain name with a CA and storing it on the root zone file, users can purchase a TLD with Handshake's native token, HNS, and register it under their public key on the decentralized Handshake network. The relationship between public keys and TLDs on Handshake is similar to that of an address and a user's UTXO account balance on Bitcoin. The Handshake software also originates from a fork of the Bitcoin client Bcoin, which was first developed by Christopher Jeffery.
Public Announcement and Seed Raise The project remained in stealth mode until early Aug. 2018, when the founders announced it raised $10.2 million from various financial contributors, including participation from a16z, Founders Fund, Polychain Capital, and Draper Associates. These investors combined to purchase 7.5% of the initial supply of HNS, valuing the Handshake network at $136 million.
Despite the influx of capital, the group committed to giving away the $10.2 million to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities. As of Jan. 2020, Handshake has granted a portion of this funding, as well as a discrete supply of HNS tokens, to 30 open source projects, including the Apache Software Foundation, the TOR project, and Wikipedia. The group also intends to give away the majority of HNS tokens to open-source contributors by way of a digital faucet, which is a software tool that allows users to generate free tokens.
How Handshake Differs from Previous Blockchain-based DNS Handshake is not the first blockchain project to try its hand at replacing the current DNS. Namecoin started looking into a similar solution as early as 2011. But Joseph Poon alluded to, Namecoin attempted to replace the TLD layer as well, which disincentivized existing domain name owners from adopting this new blockchain-based alternative. In contrast, Handshake blacklisted all 1,500 of the current ICANN TLDs to remain backward-compatible with the current DNS layer. With this setup, users can add their domain names to the Handshake network without altering how they access .com domains.
As for the more recent ENS (Ethereum Name Systems), Imran Khan of Token Daily says it operates as "a Second-Level Domain provider" that "uses the Ethereum blockchain to manage two centralized TLDs." On the flipside, Handshake is looking to replace the current root zone file, the DNS stack's base layer that manages all TLDs, with one managed by distributed infrastructure.
Network Launch and Current Contributors The Handshake blockchain launched on Feb. 3, 2020, at Bitcoin block 615,817 (Fun fact: the pubkeyhash of Satoshi's first Bitcoin transaction to Hal Finney was used to generate the genesis block, so Satoshi, and only Satoshi, can claim Handhsake's first coinbase transaction). The release allowed miners to start creating new blocks in exchange for newly minted HNS but little else. HNS wasn't available for trading until the following day, and on-chain transactions and ability to claim domain names remained locked until Feb. 17, 2020 (or Handshake block 2016). Now, users are able to bid on Handshake-based TLDs through auction process run on specialized smart contracts. Namebase, a company established to act as an exchange, cloud wallet, and registrar for Handshake names, serves as an interface to facilitate these domain name auctions.
On the development front, a group of teams collaborated under an entity called the Handshake Alliance to build the infrastructure and tools needed to prepare the network for its mainnet launch. Handshake Alliance members included Namebase as well as Urkel Labs, Connext, and Amentum, among others. Some of the developments included the HNScan block explorer and the HNSPool mining pool discovery tool. The alliance dissolved once Handshake's mainnet went live.
