The real innovation of Handshake is that is allows you to verify the public key associated with a name. This opens the door to enabling SSL/TLS without relying

The real innovation of Handshake is that is allows you to verify the public key associated with a name. This opens the door to enabling SSL/TLS without relying on Certificate Authorities, which is a vulnerability point in the security of the Internet today. The additional benefit is that the names are difficult to censor. Governments can still censor by IP of course, but the point is that it forces bad actors to censor at a deeper level (and there are other projects tackling solving that).