Decentralizing the Internet's Root with Handshake - Johnny Wu

hey uh early risers thanks for joining me super early um earlier than usual for me um yeah i think handshake is really relevant for each denver since we have plenty of crypto decentralization related projects but they're all built using they're all built on uh names that are rented but shout out to these guys they're the ones that really made this happen and got me here to talk yeah so we have all these decentralization focused projects that um all are building on rented domain names um so what i mean by that is the only way to actually own a domain name is by owning the top level domain the thing at the end the domain extension right so for example uh if you think about.com verisign is the company that owns com that's why they can rent it that's why they can sell it out to google.com facebook.com whatnot they are the owners right so to take away the only way to own a name is to own the top level domain but instead we're all stuck renting them and to kind of understand why the system is the way it is it's helpful to just step back to see how the actual domain name system works as a whole so when you visit a website like google.com your browser first consults something called the root uh the root will give it instructions to get to.

com.com will tell it how to get to google.com and then google.com will serve as a website if that's a little kind of hectic confusing for you that's okay here's an equally accurate depiction of dns [Music] ah jeez so uh the takeaway is everything begins at the root that's the first thing you can think of the root like a spreadsheet column a of that spreadsheet is com.net.

org dot tv here and then column b of the spreadsheet are the servers that those top level domains actually point to right so the very first step is to consult that root zone file and that rezone file is controlled by one organization called icann so if you wanted to get your own top level domain let's say dot eth denver the process is you go to icann and you say hello i can i would like dot east denver and then they ask you to fill out an application you pay an application fee of 185 000 so this um applications are closed right now so even if you have the money you can't get one but last time they were open they were 185 000 to apply so that is not the cost to get a top level domain right that is the cost for icann to tell you yes or no you're allowed to have one and then it takes a couple years something like 10 million dollars to get the actual top-level domain set up so that's where handshake comes in so handshake we're a decentralized blockchain layer one protocol and we just seek it's very simple we just seek to decentralize or shift control of that root zone file away from icann and onto a decentralized blockchain that no one controls so instead of going through this application process where there's this gatekeeper for handshake domains you get handshake top level domains just through auctions so highest bidder wins the name and that's really it something helpful to consider when evaluating how decentralized a naming system is is just following the money so for example asking yourself who dictates the price of each name in the case of handshake it's market driven right uh their each name the value is determined by an auction and then who gets paid the really cool thing about handshake is the winning bids do not get paid to anyone so there is no recipient of the bids when you get a name uh it just gets burned uh so it decreases the total supply of the coins maybe there's a small deflationary effect um yeah so what can you actually do with the handshake name small demo so i own dot johnny wu which means let me i own dot johnny wu which means i can have a home page set up at home.johnnywoo um i know we're zoomed in here uh if i switch this to twitter then that would just redirect you to my twitter page so a human readable redirect right but my favorite part of using handshake names is because i own the top level domain i don't even need the dot anymore i can just have a website that just lives at johnny woo so that's http colon slash johnnywoo that's my website so it's like a decentralized link tree this thing's pretty cool the website itself is stored on skynet so you have decentralized storage paired with decentralized naming for a fully decentralized website right and then one more use case is i keep calling them handshake names and not just handshake domain names because domain names are one of its use cases this right here is a wiki page that's created by our community members you'll notice there's no edit button here in order to edit the page you just need to own a handshake name and then just log in with it so i'll log in with the name that i just showed johnny wu login yes that is my name so what's happening in the background is it's checking a txt record that's set on my handshake name and then you'll see i'm logged in as johnny now i can edit the page as well so i've just logged in with my handshake name cool uh cool um if you've been following along um on your own phone then you might have attempted to actually uh shoot i gotta connect the remote um if you've been following along then you might have attempted to visit one of the websites that i showed like home.johnnywoo and you realize you couldn't because all these names do live on a blockchain that your browser probably doesn't know exists you have to do something to tell your browser how to actually get there the easiest way to do so is this thing called hns.2 so if i go to [Music] you can do this right now on your own phone if you go to h s dot t o so that's this website um if my internet is and then up at the top where it says enter a handshake name you can just enter johnny wu the name that i just showed johnnywood.hns.

2 [Music] and my internet is not liking me all right anyways point is if you use hns.2 you can visit handshake websites but the one thing that really has handshake stand that handshake stands out from is this thing i call level 2 resolution essentially you get the same trustless resolution benefits of running a full node without needing to run a full node which is super resource intensive right so it's going to be the only naming protocol with this um so what i mean is right now when you visit google.com which the example i've been using you probably rely on your internet service provider to serve you the proper records right like you are not locally resolving those names you're relying you're trusting a third party to hand you the proper records if you're running an spv resolver then that means you yourself are going to the handshake public blockchain you're looking at the records yourself and then you're taking yourself to wherever it goes right so more private because there's no uh intermediary that can see literally every domain name that you're visiting which is why there's all these issues with isps and why vpns are so popular now cool so yeah handshake the only naming protocol with this and how resource unintensive it is just for an illustration um bob extension i believe they just rolled this out so a browser extension can uh you know locally trustlessly resolve handshake names which is pretty cool this is just a quick example uh like the user experience of using a handshake name from a developer's point of view if you just compare the records the top is your traditional icann domains the bottom is your handshake domains this is for setting up a decentralized website on ipfs and you'll see that the instructions are nearly identical because at the end of the day handshake is just dns it's not trying to reinvent anything it does one thing it uh decentralizes the root of the dns zone but it's still just dns cool so some real live use cases that's not just my personal use case library genesis they're a pirating website for academic papers so you can imagine why they might want an unsensible domain name that won't get taken down because they have to deal with that all the time so now they're just always going to be available at library genesis and notice the dot list domain so pretty cool but it's not just for e-listed use cases either so argo they they call themselves like versel for decentralized web essentially they make it really easy to deploy stuff websites apps onto the d web um or other decentralized projects um they actually had their domain taken down by godaddy a couple months ago and the reason for the takedown request was email spam but it's ridiculous because their domain name literally did not have an mx record so you need an mx record to actually have an email address to send email from so they literally did not have an email but they still have their domain taken down for like email spam and they don't do anything like sketchy at all right they couldn't get the name back so that prompted them to set up on handshakes so now they're always going to be available here yeah uh we've spoken to like industry insiders at godaddy and such and the domain domain take requests have just been like skyrocketing these past years um and i think it will be especially relevant for just the crypto world uh yeah another use case audience their decentralized spotify what they've done is they own audience on handshake and they've given branded second level domains or subdomains for all their users so if you have a profile on audio then you also get your profile name dot audience branded domains so pi in the sky idea if you combine this concept with handshake logins that i introduced earlier then you can imagine having a community platform where your community members log in with your branded name right so i might be johnny.eathdenver and i log into my ether profile and then you combine that with an actual like revenue model where you're selling those second level domains and now you're generating revenue through your branded names that serve as logins and then the final use case is that people are really into emojis and i think it makes sense for handshake names because if you combine it with the dot less domain stuff then you can have a website that literally just lives at an emoji right so a really cool use case would be if someone like uni swap got the unicorn emoji and they set up their website the great so this is kind of what we're focused on um moving forward um coin listings everyone's focused on that uh browser adoption you can imagine i meant i mentioned that your browsers don't natively resolve handshakes so you need to do something to tell it how to actually get there so native browser adoption would be huge that means you don't need to do anything extra you just use your browser and you can access handshake names so opera just committed to integrating handshakes so that'll be really exciting to see this year and then i think what's actually most important is onboarding uh reputable d-web web 3 projects onto their decentralized handshake name um so then they're actually decentralized right you're like the very first uh layer of the internet that your end user interacts with is your domain name so if your domain name gets taken down it's going to be very very hard for them to actually get to your website not to mention dns attacks uh and whatnot as well yeah so if you really care about decentralization our community exists to help you get set up so we can help you get your name help you get set up on it so the main takeaway uh handshake names the only way to own a domain name is by owning the top level domain handshake names are top level domains that you can own they're unsensible they're secure and they're private uh cool uh i mentioned dns security but uh that's like another 15 minutes um but they're very real dns is like a 40 year old technology but attacks are very very modern and handshake can just completely revolutionize uh in the internet security system by replacing the certificate authority system certificate authorities are ridiculous uh if you want to chat more i'm happy to rant about that uh and we're hiring so um if you know node.js or go then you're pretty much a perfect fit nodejs is the only actual requirement here's our how you can contact us and me yeah that's everything