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by rasengan 2300 days ago
> explanation for what Handshake is

Handshake is a decentralized naming and certificate authority [1]. It decentralizes the DNS root and allows for the people of the internet to own names instead of leasing from a TLD provider like Verisign [2] among other things like removing trust from the SSL equation, instead allowing for verification on the blockchain (right now, we simply trust CA providers who have issued rogue SSL certs [3]). It launched in early February, and since then, has gained a lot of momentum [4].

One name, crypto, sold for 588785 HNS, which at today's exchange rate of $.30 [5], would be $176,000.

The system is live and works with the legacy TLDs (eg, verisign continues to own "com" on Handshake and thus all existing domains continue to work). You can download hsd [6] or use an extension for chrome from Namebase [7] to start using the Handshake Naming System.

Hope this helps!

[1] https://handshake.org/

[2] Verisign controls .com

[3] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/01/alrea...

[4] https://hnscan.com/

[5] https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/handshake

[6] https://github.com/handshake-org/hsd

[7] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/namebase-handshake...

1 comments

I see that “momentum” is measured by crypto-token mining/trading activity — this doesn’t seem the right metric for the project which claims to revolutionize DNS.

The really important metric is how much traffic on the web is accessed using Handshake names, and how how many users can resolve those names. Are there any numbers on that?