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Handshake – A Namespace for the Decentralized Web
- cedricdahl 6y agoIf you're looking to easily play with Handshake, checkout https://namebase.io https://namebase.io Recently chatted with the co-founder, Tieshun. He does a good job of making the case for Handshake and why it's so important for the internet. https://youtu.be/YRU0DE6zj5o https://youtu.be/YRU0DE6zj5o
- playcache 6y agoThis decries domain registrars as bein evil and pitches that with this platform you can become the same as them: ----- Earn money selling subdomains off your TLD. Get paid recurring income for every subdomain you sell. Distribution — Plug into Namebase's network of registrars, like gateway.io, to supercharge distribution for your TLD. Peace of mind — We've got you covered. Namebase handles domain registration, revenue collection, and renewals. Sit back and collect your profits! ----
- lazzlazzlazz 6y agoHow is "a few people controlling top domains" the same as "many people controlling top domains"?
- playcache 6y agoBecause its still centralising control. If I want to use myrealname.tld, I need to pay someone sitting on that TLD while they 'sit back and collect the profits`. Its like a tech pyramid scheme.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- lazzlazzlazz 6y agoSo decentralizing control among potentially thousands of TLD owners is... centralizing control? If you have a point you're not making it very clearly.
- playcache 6y agoI don't get why this is so hard to understand. You keep putting forward a strawman of it being less entities, but that's missing the point entirely that it's still centralised, it being to a lesser extent does not negate that simple fact.
- lazzlazzlazz 6y agoIt's quite plainly not centralized to me. Could you explain what decentralized means to you?
- playcache 6y agoI would turn this around and ask you the same. Using your own understanding of the term, what is centralized about the current status quo?
- boublepop 6y agoYou keep using that word, but I don’t think you intend its normal meaning. Let’s take a different example, is home ownership in US centralized? Every reasonable person would say no, we don’t have few large entities that own every home. But you would say “Yes, because if I want to buy a home, the current owner would have complete ownership of that home, and a central entity I have to deal with!” But that’s not what centralized means in common parlance or litterateur.
- playcache 6y agoThat's an awful comparison and a strawman.
- DoctorOetker 6y ago
- bleeding 6y agoWhile I do agree that this is a significant departure from the current system, is there some mechanism other than individual domain owners refusing to sell that prevents this from re-centralizing? As in entities with sufficient capital coming in and buying up huge amounts of domains and rent-seeking on those and effectively re-creating the existing system?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- lucasmullens 6y agoWhat's the path to actually make these domains usable? Does a browser just have to start supporting Handshake? Too many blockchain pitches say things like it "would be great" if everyone used it. Yeah, it'd be great if we all moved to a decentralized everything, but users don't care enough. Could a browser like Brave or Firefox decide to start supporting this? Then some websites would only work on Brave/Firefox, eventually forcing Chrome and Safari to support it too.
- rasengan 6y agoYou can browse Handshake sites with Firefox by using the NextDNS [1] resolver (it's an option in Firefox's Settings). You can also use hnsd [2] or hsd [3] as your resolver. There are a lot of sites and you can see who has claimed their names and/or put up resolvable names on DNS Live [4]. [1] https://nextdns.io/ https://nextdns.io/ [2] https://github.com/handshake-org/hnsd https://github.com/handshake-org/hnsd [3] https://github.com/handshake-org/hsd https://github.com/handshake-org/hsd [4] https://dns.live/ https://dns.live/ </shameless>
- 0df8dkdf 6y agoHandhake is one of those service that is not over hyped. Check out their sponsors: https://handshake.org/grant-sponsors/ https://handshake.org/grant-sponsors/ Also a decentralised DNS is exactly what we need.
- ohazi 6y ago
- llimos 6y agoSometimes there are advantages to centralized DNS. Wouldn't this make taking down botnets' c&c servers that much harder? I suppose there could be a blacklist that gets periodically downloaded by the OS. But then you're back where you started - who maintains the blacklist?
- rini17 6y agoIf you can't live without blacklists, then maintain them yourself. No protocol will do it for you, if DNS or IRC gets inconvenient, then botnets move to reddit or twitter (some already did).
- warkdarrior 6y agoDecentralized DNS is fantastic for botnets that use Domain Name Generation (DGA). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_generation_algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_generation_algorithm You can easily control the domains, schedule their use, and not worry about takedowns.
- 0df8dkdf 6y agoMaybe don't think it as a DSN, but rather how the Root Files are hosted. Currently there are national security issues with the way how Root Files are hosted. It is ONLY fair since the Internet is for the world that the Root Files are decentralised in that fashion as well. Although I'm not entirely sold on BlockChain, there are other more energy saving gossip based Byzantine fault tolerant protocol to consider for use. However, everyone is just prototyping in this space. So for one I'm big supporter for the Root Files to be stored in this fashion, even if it is on a blockchain.
- evmar 6y agoFrom the site: "Stop paying for new domains" Also from the site: "Buy Handshake coins" :(
- capableweb 6y agoBit simplified. More accurate (at least from my understanding of the article): From the site: "Stop buying domains that are owned by third-party for-profit companies who control the market" Also from the site: "Use the Handshake currency to participate in auctions hosted by no one in particular, in a market controlled by code"
- themihai 6y ago>> Use the Handshake currency to participate in auctions hosted by no one in particular Well, it looks like the short/good tlds were either reserved or already bought. To me it's just another failed distribution model/project. How many active handshake websites are there? 99% of the domains sold seem inactive, purchased for speculative resale value. Guess what? I'm working on my own fork with a more value-based distribution(IMO).
- capableweb 6y ago> Well, it looks like the short/good tlds were either reserved or already bought That's up to debate I guess :) I'm sure people say the same about the web/internet today, but still good domains are being created every minute, because someone is more creative than the ones before.
- themihai 6y agoThe whole point(or at least most of it) of handshake was to have a fair distribution model. It's not like handshake is the first blockchain DNS system.
- masukomi 6y agoactually... the tlds are gradually being parceled out via a seemingly random algorithm to prevent exactly the type of squatting you're complaining about. a LOT of TLDs still aren't available for purchase yet. the ones that are already in the top Alexa results were reserved for the people/companies that already owned the names in existing TLDs... again, to prevent squatting.
- fmi11 6y agoRob Pike is doing something similar with Upspin. See https://upspin.io/ https://upspin.io/
- redsolver 6y agoIf you want to try out an application which is already using Handshake, check out my decentralized Android App Store based on Domain Names: https://skydroid.app https://skydroid.app
- rektide 6y agoI love the discussion & effort. On the other hand, relying on proof of work & creating an economy just to have distributed naming, to me, seems unnecessary & limiting. Users ought to be able to generate & use names heavily if they so desire, without having to do meaningless work to do so. Systems like wireguard and HIP aren't name systems but they are connective systems, built around cryptographic identity. They assume a system of plenty, where folks & systems can be generating & using new identities regularly. To me, i'd much rather create a name system build around identity & assumptions of plenty, than a more name oriented systems built around restricting/controlling/limiting/funnelling distributed naming, through a Proof of Work pipeline.
- Taek 6y agoMost proponents of Proof of Work don't celebrate the use of energy. They celebrate the use cases that PoW enables. I don't know of any other way to trustlessly establish a consensus ordering, and I believe that being able to trustlessly establish a consensus ordering is very valuable, therefore I believe PoW is worth the expense. These decisions get made on an open market, it's not like anybody is forced to put money into a wasteful system if they aren't getting value out of that system.
- rektide 6y agoI personally don't feel like identity & naming want or need concensus ordering. I cited HIP & Wireguard, which don't require that total ordering. The issues of control & power that come into play when we create distributed systems then make them all agree & work in the same way seems antithetical, to me, to the very idea of distributedness itself. I'm far more interested in systems that can range & explore possibility spaces untethered from any notion of root consensus. I would have us rely on informal weak trust models, friend of a friend, web of trust relations, rather than distributed-but-totalizing. Thank your for your reply. I've talked some about my questions & what I want to explore, but I appreciate your comment a lot. Talking about what proof of work buys us, that it's there for total ordering, is I think a wonderful assessment, & even though it's not my priority or desire, I do think it buys a lot of interesting technical capabilities & assurances we may otherwise not be able to have.
- tedunangst 6y agoSo I install the handshake daemon on my laptop, and I resolve paypal.com. Where do I go?
- joosters 6y agoWhat happens when the handshake blockchain forks (say, because the developers can't agree on a change), which of the two 'trustless' forks am I meant to trust from that point on?
- haarts 6y agoThe one with the most hashing power. Just like Bitcoin.
- joosters 6y agoI mean when contentious changes are made, e.g. bitcoin vs bitcoin cash, or ethereum vs etc. Hashing power doesn’t come into it.
- Taek 6y agoUltimately you'd have to decide which one you want to treat as the canonical chain. There would be two (or more) parallel histories, and users would have to figure out which one they wanted to follow. By default, all users would go along with the original chain. To follow the chain with the updated rules (whatever rules the developers couldn't agree on), a user would have to manually opt-in to that updated set of rules.
- setr 6y agowell, that, or the primary client decides a direction and forces it onto everyone as soon as they update... :)
- sieabahlpark 6y agoThank goodness it's decentralized then
- Taek 6y agoA lot of blockchain clients (including Bitcoin) have no auto update feature.
- 6y ago
- sprash 6y agoHow is this better than Namecoin? Namecoin has the unique advantage that you can do merged mining with Bitcoin which would make the network as secure as Bitcoin without further waste of resources.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ca98am79 6y agoIMO namecoin screwed up distribution - 99.9% of names were squatted on. Handshake tried to solve this with an auction system and names are released over a 52 week period. Also, they reserved the alexa top 100,000 names for their owners. Another thing is that namecoin is just on one tld (.bit) whereas with handshake you register names as a TLD.
- joosters 6y agoRemember, all of the talk about 'distributed' and 'trustless' for just about any blockchain is a lie. Just take a look at the mining pool statistics to see how many organisations are really in control. e.g. for Handshake, the largest two mining pools control about 60% of the hashrate, meaning that only two groups (possibly both run by the same person) control the whole chain. So much for decentralized! Even bitcoin suffers from the same centralization - the top 4 pools have over 50% hashrate (and so effectively control the blockchain). Where did the 'distributed' blockchains go?
- colordrops 6y agoExcept they don't "control" the blockchain. They just have a bit more leverage about which transactions are included in future blocks. That's not optimal, but still a far cry from complete control.
- 411111111111111 6y agoAren't most (including bitcoin) cryptocurrencies ledger confirmed by the continued confirmation of current hashing powers? That's at least what I understood the 51% attack to be. Basically have >50% quorum and you can just add any transaction to the shared ledger If this is actually done, the currency's with would be basically done for, so unlikely that anyone would do that
- colordrops 6y agoIt wouldn't necessarily be done for because you can't steal coins with a 51% attack. You can double spend and block transactions, which is not the end of the world.
- asutekku 6y agoIf someone can double spend or block transactions, that's pretty much the end of the network if no-one can do anything to it.
- intotheabyss 6y agoHow is this any better than ENS? I can currently visit .eth domains that are hosted on IPFS using Metamask.
- noworriesnate 6y agoAre those static sites only, or can they resolve to an actual server IP address that does computation without sharing the code?
- dfischer 6y agoI don’t think we need anything besides a hash and del.icio.us decentralized.
- Eric_WVGG 6y agoThis looks really cool. I've been trying to advocate for the existence of a system like this for RSS feeds. IMO, RSS "failed" (it didn't fail, it's still around… but obviously it doesn't have the traction of Instagram or Twitter) because discoverability of RSS feeds is abysmal. If RSS is ever to go mainstream, or we're ever going to have a federated answer to corporate social media, it's going to require some kind of decentralized phonebook. HNS might solve that problem.
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoOne of the challenges for RSS is that even a lot of hobbyist blogs that aren’t big "corporate social media" depend on ad income. The blog owner might keep an RSS feel going either out of ignorance (because his Wordpress setup automatically generates it, but he doesn't think about it) or because he thinks it important for SEO, but he really doesn't want people using it. He needs people to visit his site whenever they want to see the latest posts, so that then they can be exposed to ads. I have seen blogs where even mentioning in the comments section that you subscribe to the site’s RSS feed, is an automatic ban. So if we want feeds to become popular again, we need to encourage support models for indie content that don’t depend on ads. So far, blog owners are seeing a dearth of donations and sponsorships to keep them motivated, so of course signing up for an ad network is the only choice they think they have.
- remram 6y agoYou can always truncate the content of the feed to have people visit. For smaller sites which don't have new content every day, an RSS feed means I'll come back, no feed means I'll probably forget about it and never come back at all.
- jacobjonz 6y agoI have always wondered. What prevents them from sending ad links in the feed? If the clients could render them, that there's a workable model, right?
- SrslyJosh 6y ago> As a standalone blockchain, Handshake has room to grow all on its own and govern itself without interfering with other projects or having to compete with different priorities with other use cases (like gaming or DeFi) trying to run in parallel on the same network. So, as soon as someone with enough resources decides to take it over, it's no longer decentralized. Cool, cool. Also, there's that whole CO2 thing that we really shouldn't be exacerbating by relying on proof-of-work.