A non-profit (ICANN) is the administrator of the DNS root zone. ICANN's model uses a multi-stakeholder model, so registrars, ccTLD holders (i.e. governments) al

A non-profit (ICANN) is the administrator of the DNS root zone. ICANN's model uses a multi-stakeholder model, so registrars, ccTLD holders (i.e. governments) all can contribute, but ICANN claims their board has ultimate decision. The actual zonefile is hosted by a group of volunteer organizations. The variety, and the use of anycast means that the root zone is fairly stable and as reliable as any other distributed system (i.e. cloud). You can even download the root zone and run it locally if you want. Handshake is interesting, but it conflates DNS and the CA ecosystem. They are different and used for different things. Most of the big issues around DNS isn't about the protocol, but the policies and legal issues around domain names and their ownership.