That works great until the only names that are left are all too long to remember.
And if you buy space from someone else's TLD, well... you've just given someone the power to censor you.
Or am I missing something here?
For owners, it's important that their domain names can't be taken down or seized from them. Sci-Hub has dealt with this issue numerous times and has had to register a pool of domain names to try too counteract this issue before getting their Handshake name. Domain registrars can seize domain names and there isn't much recourse for the owners — it doesn't even need to be for a good reason[1]. On Handshake, ownership is controlled by your wallet's private key (similar to owning Bitcoin). As long as you control your private key no one can take your name from you.
For consumers, it's important that you can 1) access the domain name and 2) trust that the DNS records you're seeing are authentic. Handshake is a distributed network so as long as you can connect to a single node you can access it. This mechanic is what gives other distributed networks like Bitcoin and BitTorrent their strength. Furthermore, you can verify the authenticity of the records since each DNS update is reflected on the blockchain similar to how you can verify transactions on Bitcoin.
[1] https://www.izoologic.com/2018/12/20/zoho-domain-taken-mista...
Do you really believe this is a serious problem? I don't think it is by any stretch of the imagination.
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> It seems like the answer is "everyone buys their own TLD", right?
Yeah, why not? The conceptual distinction between a domain and a TLD isn't necessary. From the Namebase docs:
> For instance, if you own "nakamoto" on Handshake, you can use "nakamoto" as a domain itself. In that case, you would point "nakamoto" to your website and visit it at http://nakamoto/ in your browser. You can also use "nakamoto" as a TLD and issue your own subdomains. In that case you can create "satoshi.nakamoto" and visit it at http://satoshi.nakamoto in your browser. A Handshake name can be used as both a domain name directly and as a TLD at the same time.
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> And if you buy space from someone else's TLD, well... you've just given someone the power to censor you.
Maybe? Buying from someone else's TLD isn't the point of Handshake, for the reasons I mentioned above. But if you wanted to buy a subdomain for some reason, and still wanted it to be uncensorable, you should buy one from someone who revokes their censorship capabilities programmatically.
And that point is the big picture: reasoning about transparent code for very important things gives you a level of control you can't obtain through trusting people.