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Handshake is a decentralised, permissionless, peer-to-peer, blockchain-based naming protocol, Certificate Authority (CA), and DNS root zone [1]. It aims to replace ICANN-maintained DNS root zone servers that the heirarchy of trust online today currently relies on. It is a full implementation of a distributed, backward-compatible, alternative DNS root zone. Building upon the notion that the internet should be decentralised, just like how DNS was initially designed, Handshake is designed around the idea of using cryptography to secure and maintain control of domain names, rather than having to rely on organisations who may have financial interest in working with ISPs ( Internet Service Providers) in blocking or otherwise censoring DNS records through DNS poisoning and deep packet inspection. With increasing censorship and government overreach happening globally. With the most notable being China, but by far not the only country.

Thanks to its use of peer-to-peer blockchain technology, it relies on no central authority. Meaning domain ownership and transfers are carried out collectively by the network. Leading to censorship resistance as anyone can run a handshake node on their local environment

Due to the nature of the protocol, there is no official singular Foundation, Committee, Corporation, or entities in permanent unitary control of the protocol. Development of the protocol is managed by community members on public forums such as Discord, Telegram, Twitter, Clubhouse, etc.

A user looking to own their own domain name may wish to look into a Handshake domain as an alternative to a traditional ICANN domain due to the much lower barrier for entry to newcomers and experts alike, as they offer the same security, privacy, and utility as legacy domains. Domains need to be renewed through the handshake blockchain every two years using a fluctuating mining fee. This mining fee is based on the current network load, with the more miners being on the network, the lower the mining fee. At the time of writing 22/02/2022, the mining fee was 0.02 HNS, fractions of pennies/cents. When compared to the renewal fee of traditional domain names that come under traditional TLDs, this renewal fee is miniscule. Along with the potential for TLDs themselves to cost very little at the auction stage.

Handshake names can be acquired a multitude of ways.

  1. At auction on the handshake blockchain:
    1. This can be done through:
      1. A full node (hsd)
      2. A Handshake domain registrar such as Namebase.
  2. Handshake domain registrar marketplace
  3. Transfer
    1. A user would send a domain from one Handshake wallet to another

Users can mint (register) Top Level Domains (TLD) and manage registrations of Second Level Domains (SLD) outside the restrictions of ICANN's strict registration process and oversight, allowing the domains to be censorship-resistant by removing the need for reliance on the existing root zone under ICANN's control as well as removing the need to blindly trust potential bad actors like ICANN and CAs ( Certificate Authorities).

Currently, TLD registrations are governed by an American organisation called ICANN. New TLD applications can be put forth to ICANN so long as the potential registrant is able to pay the prohibitively high fees in doing so. For example, an initial application currently costs in the region of $200,000 for ICANN to simply look over your proposal for the TLD and decide whether they want to implement this domain or not. Individual TLDs are owned by entitiies outside of ICANN.

Some common TLD ownerships are listed here

Resolvers

Resolving Handshake domains has become easier with the creation of projects that implement a light resolver to be used by a user on their device, but can also be used on a DNS server and simplying changing one's DNS would allow for the resolving of Handshake domains.

Official Handshake Resolvers:

Handshake-capable DNS:

Bridge Services:

Compatible VPN providers:

Reason for creation

Certificate Authorities are a central, single point of failure that have been hacked in the past [3], potentially leading inumerable quantities of online users and websites vulnerable. Handshake's ability for users to truly own and manage TLDs allows them to not only own a sovereign name that belongs only to them online, but also to register unlimited SLDs, with SLD owners currently having to trust the TLD owner not to tamper with SLD DNS records, but support for on-chain SLD security is currently being discussed, use their TLD as a form of authentication using OIDC [4]

Development Progress & Publicity

Handshake was first released in 2019 by a group of developers who had the idea to decentralise the root zone file and take back control of the internet from organisations like ICANN who retain ultimate control over new TLD registrations. Currently they have the final say as to what's acceptable as a TLD, applying for a new TLD to be created costs around $250,000, in addition to other fees

A timeline/list of milestones can be found at: Handshake Timeline

At the end of 2021, Opera announced its support for handshake and expressed their intention to introduce a built-in resolver to their browser within the first half of 2022.

In February 2022, Namecheap, the world's second largest domain name registrar, acquired a controlling stake in Namebase, previously the only Handshake domain registrar. With the Namecheap CEO, Richard Kirkendall asking for developer support on Twitter to progress the open protocol [5]

ICANN released a statement regarding alternative root zones and explicity mentions Handshake. [6] They go into detail about how the protocol operates and the risks this may entail

Related Articles

External links

Official Website
Related Projects/Publicity

References

  1. ^ "Handshake". handshake.org. Retrieved 2022-02-22.
  2. ^ "Private Internet Access users can now resolve internet names with the Handshake Naming System (HNS)". PIA VPN Blog. 2019-08-05. Retrieved 2022-02-22.
  3. ^ Staff, Ars (2011-03-24). "How the Comodo certificate fraud calls CA trust into question". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2022-01-27.
  4. ^ "Handshake-based OIDC Authentication Protocol".
  5. ^ "https://twitter.com/namecheapceo/status/1493273136376295424". Twitter. Namecheap CEO, Richard Kirkendall. Retrieved 2022-02-22. {{ cite web}}: External link in |title= ( help)CS1 maint: url-status ( link)
  6. ^ Challenges with Alternative Name Systems - ICANN Office of the Chief Technology Officer, Alain Durand. 2022-04-27
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