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I know the handshake devs/maintainers are active on here. I've heard explanations from y'all about how handshake tries to solve the squatter problem. As far as

I know the handshake devs/maintainers are active on here. I've heard explanations from y'all about how handshake tries to solve the squatter problem. As far as I understand those explanations: - Names are released at a trickle, meaning no one can buy all of them in one go. - Names have to be constantly renewed (it's not a buy-once-keep-forever scheme), and (correct me if I'm wrong), you can't buy 10 years out in advance. - A large portion of the initial names are reserved for Open Source developers, under the assumption that squatting won't be so much of a problem if they get first pick. It's still not clear to me how this solves resource scarcity. - If names are released at a trickle, does this mean I might want to register a domain for a project and there literally won't be any able available for me to choose from? - If names have to be renewed on a year-by-year basis, is there any mechanism for archival? Won't this be strictly worse for link rot? - If names are released at a trickle, doesn't this create an even greater incentive for both good and bad actors to grab them as soon as they become available? I'm mildly interested in Handshake because based on very limited research it seems in general to be an improvement over what we have. I get that perfect is the enemy of the good, I would take almost any improvement over the existing system. But at the same time, I still just don't understand how this helps solve the squatter problem -- every once and a while I ask and get an explanation, and then think about it for a while and end up having more questions. My perspective is, we want everyone to be online. We want everyone to have their own blog, we want people to be able to create websites on impulse. And we want resilient, long-term links that can serve as permanent addresses for content. The idea of combating squatters is based on the assumption that domain names will continue to be a scarce resource. But you fundamentally can't have domains be a limited resource that are difficult to hoard if you also want random/poor elementary school kids to be able to buy them. Handshake talks about solving Zooko's triangle: human-meaningful, decentralized, or secure. But the way I originally heard Zooko's triangle explained to me (which may have been wrong) was: human-meaningful, secure, high-availability. Am I correct in assuming that in the second version, Handshake is optimized for human-meaningful and secure at the expense of high-availability? That domains will continue to be a limited, scarce resource that are susceptible to hoarding by people with lots of money? Or are there other mechanisms here that I don't understand?

troquerre 7y ago
- Names are released over the course of 52 weeks. Determined by hash(name) % 52. So at worst the name you want to register will not be available until ~51 weeks from now (Handshake launched last week!). - Names have to be renewed bi-annually. You don't need to pay a fee, you just need to submit a transaction to prove you still have access to the private key. I don't think this will be any different than the existing DNS in terms of link rot. - I think the main thing names being released over time does is it allows for more people to find out about Handshake and start competing for the good names before they're gone. In an ideal world, everyone would know about Handshake at the same time, and so any name that is registered has the maximum competition for it. That world is not feasible but we can get closer to it by releasing names over time. - I've only heard Zooko's triangle described in the first way, which matches the wikipedia article on it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooko%27s_triangle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooko%27s_triangle Disclaimer: I'm the ceo of Namebase.io, we built a registrar for Handshake domains and exchange for Handshake coins (HNS), so I'm pretty bullish on Handshake.
- danShumway 7y ago
  If I'm understanding you, the 52 week release is a one time thing, not a continual thing? So it's not that names will be continually trickle-released it's that for the next 52 (51) weeks, they'll be trickle-released, and then everything will be out there and this will work just like normal domain registration? I was under the impression that the trickle release was just how registration would work in general. That doesn't seem to me at first glance like it's going to be that much of an improvement over squatting, but again, I get that there are multiple goals here worth accomplishing. And it is a much simpler system than needing to go into a queue to register a domain. Just to make sure I understand -- am I correct in saying that Handshake is not designed to solve domain name scarcity, more to decentralize it so that an organization like ICANN can't rent-seek on top of that scarcity?
  - troquerre 7y ago
    You are correct in that Handshake is trying to decentralize DNS more so than solve the scarcity nature of naming. That said, Handshake will increase the supply of TLDs by multiple orders of magnitude so the names do become less scarce overall.

troquerre 7y ago

- Names are released over the course of 52 weeks. Determined by hash(name) % 52. So at worst the name you want to register will not be available until ~51 weeks from now (Handshake launched last week!). - Names have to be renewed bi-annually. You don't need to pay a fee, you just need to submit a transaction to prove you still have access to the private key. I don't think this will be any different than the existing DNS in terms of link rot. - I think the main thing names being released over time does is it allows for more people to find out about Handshake and start competing for the good names before they're gone. In an ideal world, everyone would know about Handshake at the same time, and so any name that is registered has the maximum competition for it. That world is not feasible but we can get closer to it by releasing names over time. - I've only heard Zooko's triangle described in the first way, which matches the wikipedia article on it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooko%27s_triangle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooko%27s_triangle Disclaimer: I'm the ceo of Namebase.io, we built a registrar for Handshake domains and exchange for Handshake coins (HNS), so I'm pretty bullish on Handshake.

danShumway 7y ago
If I'm understanding you, the 52 week release is a one time thing, not a continual thing? So it's not that names will be continually trickle-released it's that for the next 52 (51) weeks, they'll be trickle-released, and then everything will be out there and this will work just like normal domain registration? I was under the impression that the trickle release was just how registration would work in general. That doesn't seem to me at first glance like it's going to be that much of an improvement over squatting, but again, I get that there are multiple goals here worth accomplishing. And it is a much simpler system than needing to go into a queue to register a domain. Just to make sure I understand -- am I correct in saying that Handshake is not designed to solve domain name scarcity, more to decentralize it so that an organization like ICANN can't rent-seek on top of that scarcity?
- troquerre 7y ago
  You are correct in that Handshake is trying to decentralize DNS more so than solve the scarcity nature of naming. That said, Handshake will increase the supply of TLDs by multiple orders of magnitude so the names do become less scarce overall.