Handshake (Blockchain)

Handshake is a peer-to-peer root Domain Name System (DNS) that aims to supplement and eventually replace ICANN's root zone servers with an open marketplace for top-level domains (TLDs). This enables participants to bid on, trade, and transfer ownership of TLDs as non-fungible tokens on a permissionless and pseudonymous platform. The protocol was created with the initiative of giving anyone the opportunity to own their own TLD with a private key, free from censorship or domain seizure by Certificate Authorities. Handshake is an experiment that attempts to solve Zooko's Triangle, which describes naming systems as an impossible trinity between decentralization, security, and human-readability.

Handshake is a blockchain that is secured by Proof of Work and serves as the decentralized source of truth for its domain ownership registry, without the need for a central authority. A data structure called an Urkel Tree serves as an authenticated copy of the root zone file. The Urkel Tree enables names to be safely resolved on a light client with a minimal amount of data required from a full node for local verification. The Urkel Tree is routinely updated and its root is committed to a Handshake block header. The native cryptocurrency of Handshake is called HNS. The base unit of HNS is the dollarydoo, with every HNS being divisible into 1,000,000 dollarydoos.

Handshake is fully compatible with the existing DNS in place today, and can be accessed directly by users who run their own full node or indirectly by users who change their DNS configuration to point to a trusted Handshake full node which starts a DNS server. A light client incorporated into a browser would allow end-users to seamlessly (even unknowingly) navigate between legacy domains and Handshake domains and without changing their DNS configuration, toggling a browser extension, or running a full node. Handshake also opens up the potential of allowing end-users to browse the internet without connecting to ISP-owned DNS servers, thus keeping their browsing history hidden from corporate entities that have a financial incentive to collect and monetize user data.

Handshake was forked from the Bcoin Javascript implementation of Bitcoin in 2017, and development was incubated by Purse.io and Private Internet Access. The Handshake Foundation was formed prior to launch in order to promote awareness and foster interest in the project among the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) developer community. The foundation raised $10,200,000 in venture capital funding in exchange for HNS allocations. Notable institutional sponsors include a16z, SV Angel and Draper Associates. These funds were then donated in their entirety to various FOSS and nonprofit organizations. HNS allocations were also awarded to some of these grant recipients, and an extensive airdrop of HNS was conducted to Github and Hacker News users. The Handshake Foundation was then dissolved and the Handshake project is now considered a community-led initiative.

The Handshake main net went live on February 3rd, 2020. its genesis block, dubbed "The FIrst Handshake", was mined shortly after BTC block height 615,817. The hash of block 615,817 was committed into the Handshake genesis block. This requirement was implemented in order to prevent a bad actor from mining a long chain in advance and then releasing it immediately after launch, thus creating a fairer launch by ensuring that all miners began mining on the main net at the same time.

Handshake uses a combination of SHA3 and BLAKE2b for its mining algorithm. In order to encourage mining pool support for Handshake, the Proof of Work also includes a mechanism to prevent block withholding attacks. Similar to Bitcoin, there is a target block interval of ten minutes, however difficulty adjustments in Handshake are made after each block, rather than every 2016 blocks as in Bitcoin. The initial block reward of 2000 HNS is slated to be halved every 170,000 blocks, estimated to occur every 3.25 years, until block 5,270,000 (projected around 2119), at which point block rewards cease and miners will be compensated entirely by transaction fees. This provides for an overall miner subsidy of 680,000,000 HNS. On March 5th 2020, the first publicly available ASIC miner for Handshake was announced.

A pre-mine of 1,360,000,000* HNS coins was allocated as follows:

• 102,000,000 (7.5%) HNS were allocated to the pre-development team.

• 102,000,000 (7.5%) HNS were allocated to financial contributors, who pre-purchased coins at a fixed price of $0.10/HNS, totally $10,200,000 in funds raised for FOSS and nonprofit grants.

• 27,200,000 (2.0%) HNS were additionally granted to some of the aforementioned FOSS and non-profits that also received USD funding.

• 136,000,000 (10%) HNS were granted to existing domain owners.

• 68,000,000 (5%) HNS were granted to various Certificate Authorities as well as other blockchain-based naming projects such as Blockstack, Ethereum Name Service (ENS) and Namecoin.

• 924,800,000 (68%) HNS were granted to a widespread airdrop, which included Github developers, keys from the PGP WOT Strongset and Hacker News accounts that had been linked to Keybase.

*A large number of pre-allocated coins have technically not yet entered circulation, as they are not minted until airdrop recipients, HNS grant recipients, domain owners etc. submit their claims, which then need to be mined into a block. Unclaimed HNS do not show up in the circulating supply on block explorers.

Handshake allows for strings of up to 63 characters in length to be auctioned as TLDs, provided they meet certain syntax requirements and have not been preemptively blacklisted. A number of TLDs are ineligible for auction if they are reserved for the following reasons:

• Pre-existing ICANN TLDs are reserved for their respective registrars (e.g. .com and .net are reserved for Verisign).

• The top 100,000 Alexa ranked subdomains, excluding duplicates and generic words, have their own TLDs reserved for them (e.g. Google.com has .google reserved). This equates to roughly 80,000 TLDs reserved for subdomain owners.

• Trademark owners were able to contact the Handshake community during a sunrise period prior to launch in order to reserve their names.

Reserved names have a reward attached to them, denominated in HNS, that serves as further incentive for domain owners to claim their Handshake names. Reserved names and their rewards are able to be claimed using DNSSEC ownership proofs. Miners are also granted an additional reward for name claims to incentivize mining them into blocks.

In order to prevent congestion of the mempool during the bootstrapping phase, various names become available for auction in random batches on a weekly basis for the first year after launch. Once a name is available, anyone can open up a bid which begins the auction after 37 blocks (~6 hours) The auction type used is a Vickrey Auction, where bidders are able to mask their bids and add to their bids for 720 blocks (~ five days) followed by a 1440 block (~ten day) reveal period. The highest bidder that reveals wins the auction and then pays the second highest bid, which is burned (permanently removed from circulation). On March 7th, 2020, the auction for .crypto closed with a top bid of 1,088,783.49 HNS, although only 200,000 HNS of that was burned as that was the second highest bid. To mitigate the practice of domain-squatting, names require biennial renewal in the form of spending the name to a RENEW output. Names that are not renewed become available for auction again.

• https://dns.live/ compiles Handshake TLDs currently in use by their owners as well as claimed Alexa top 100,000 domains. It also runs a proxy that can be used to access Handshake domains as subdomains.
• https://www.namebase.io/domains can be used to research name release schedules and auction details.
• https://hsd.tools/ can be used to explore potential domain names in a myriad of different languages. It also compiles lists of top domains ranked by metrics such as amount of HNS locked up in auction and total number of bids.
• https://easyhandshake.com/ hosts a Handshake full node and provides services such as acting as a trusted resolver and interaction with a web browser SPV node
• https://hnscan.com/, https://hnsxplorer.com/, and https://shakescan.com/ are Handshake block explorers.