[rasengan]

Namecoin is a great project. One of the issues however is that it introduced a .bit which essentially meant it was a new system/tld. Furthermore, the existing stakeholders in the naming system (domain owners) did not have an easy way to join the system without risk of losing their name or being sold their own name at a high price.

Handshake mitigates this by replacing the root zone entirely and, in addition, allowing existing stakeholders (.com, etc) to continue to own their existing assets.