Haha, I like "cBozos" personally, or "cozos".
66 karma · joined October 31, 2014
1. I want a project like Handshake to be successful as well, and I agree it has a long way to go - the trade-offs are numerous, high-magnitue, and (sadly) opaque.
But also, 2. Having seen first-hand how these things take shape over long periods of time (the second decade of Bitcoin's existence is just getting started), Handshake needs help, is designed to be flexible, and you can help. In fact, I'd argue you already are helping, and in ways the average crypto-native community member trumpeting blind-eyed optimism - is not. :)
My view is that maturity of the project will bring some of the answers everyone is looking for.
As an anecdote, the first name auctions are actually ending in the next 48h.
Mean bids for early names (a few hundred) from the last time I looked in a cli were under 10 HNS, so under 5 USD at current prices. .coin for low thousands of USD. .11 for low hundreds of USD.
So that may give you a bit of an early view of what the prices are looking like. All subject to change of course because the auctions are not done yet.
For what it's worth, as someone enthusiastic about Handshake, crypto, and decentralized systems in general...I can totally empathize with the irritation you've expressed here. There's so much noise out there and 2017-2018 blockchain projects are notorious for over-promising on vague and impossible things, and then fading to nothing when the impossible things turn out to actually be impossible.
One thing I'd like to emphasize: Handshake's community may be what ends up being the differentiator against ICANN, less so anything financial or crypto related. I think that is what Rasengan is trying to accomplish here: build a true grassroots effort to work together to make Handshake a real contender. Because many of the readers here already have a piece of the network (majority of the coin supply being given not to investors, but Foss developers).
The simple notion that skilled, knowledgeable, opinionated, and generative individuals can have an outsized impact when raising concerns like this can be very powerful. Because it's an open network, many, many things are malleable, even economics/pricing/miner influence.
Decentralization has it's trade-offs. As Steve Waldman likes to say: "it's powerful at the edges, where Hayekian information flows can cover the blindspots of centralized efficiency".
https://www.interfluidity.com/uploads/2019/02/tao-of-decentr...
In the same vein, you could consider learning more about why the poor design decisions are the way they are. At all levels (from building and city UX to individual products), there are myriad uncertainties and trade-offs when building something.
Some commenters are gesturing at to mental health issues - I don't know you well enough to feel comfortable with making a judgment like that, but on some level, if this is bothering you deeply, anger and depression may be symptoms of a deeper mental health issue: this might help! https://ncase.me/mental-health/#toc_4
I don't know what other links have been posted beside this thread, which a colleague sent to me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22310604
That said, you are probably right. It doesn't surprise me that there is a lot of Handshake-related activity on HN right now. The project was conceived over two years ago, and today marks its second week of existence and the first day that people can actually try it out. Respectfully, is it possible that most of this is genuine interest/excitement in a new project instead of, as you put it, "PR astroturfing"?
1. Bob is an electron application that also is a Handshake resolver and full node - you can find these projects at: http://github.com/handshake-org
2. We're looking for contributors and help of all kinds! Like any other open-source project, bug reports, suggestions, and contributions are very much welcome. Personally, my concerns as an engineer are around the scalability of the UI (electron can be hard to work with) when many (possibly hundreds) of domains are being watched or bid on. This is behaviour I believe is possible to see, from observing early internet domainers.
3. Like many non-custodial 'wallet' projects, it is meant to be a reasonable alternative to exchange custody, but we don't provide any guarantees as the user is responsible for self-custody. We intend to add hardware wallet support in the future. The goal is for the average person to have an easier time working with Handshake and Handshake names, by using Bob instead of a cli.
4. Bob is maintained by Kyokan, and I am the CEO there. It is not maintained by the Handshake team, and there is no Handshake foundation or business that runs the project. Kyokan is a separate software engineering consultancy that is working on multiple projects - we are also not a part of the Handshake team. Our contact info for security disclosures is in the repo.
5. Name Auctions and Airdrop claims on Handshake's mainnet start today (in under 8 hours), so it felt appropriate to share this repo, which we've spent a lot of time and effort working on. One can also find details about this in the repo, but we all hope you have a good time using the software!
Again, we're looking for feedback and suggestions. Even in the process of making this post, I found a few bugs, filed them and made minor improvements to the documentation. Thanks for reading!
1 - for Handshake, VCs are 'used' primarily as a signal to price the coins - like in Bitcoin, the asset having a price helps on many dimensions, for example, security (miners mine it).
2 - in Handshake, unlike most VC projects and startups - the capital raised was not used to pay salaries or enrich the developers building it - development was funded by other means. This is what is meant by "one-way non-destructive 'proof-of-burn'" -> in fact, it's not really a burn but a generative action since funds were donated to FOSS projects that put the capital to use!
That's why 1 and 2 are not incompatible.
I don't think that means the sponsors of the protocol are entitled to profit: they also took risk by putting up initial capital. The downside is capped in that if the project doesn't go anywhere and the coin goes to 0, FOSS projects that received $10.6mm benefitted.
Transfers will be enabled on Block 2016, and blocks are ~every 10 minutes - right now ~1960.
https://hnscan.com/?page=/blocks
If you are reading this on Feb 15th or afterwards, claims and auctions are working. Non-custodial options are Bob and using cli. Namebase is the only custodial option right now.
That's fair - may help to compare this with the current tld system, not just the regular domains (x.com). Right now, getting a new tld takes months and a six figure investment. Here it is 5+ days.
After that tld is claimed, it's up to the owner to administer it and make a profit on selling the names, or not.
I don't think so - note that these are for tlds, so a lot of existing internet infrastructure can be used for Handshake names.
Someone who wants elementary school kids to be able to buy them would allow for the purchase (at low, no, or negative cost) of subdomains (traditional domains) - it may allow for a proliferation of hundreds of little self-sovereign registrars with different policies.
`${name}.namesforschoolkids`
First - I tend to think an idea with clear similarities being tried before and failing is default a non-negative (sometimes good) sign: shows us what didn't work, and deepens everyone's understanding/validation of the problem space.
I would also say that it's more similar to Bitcoin than most people would think. Looking at the software, I think it's pretty cool that handshake's first implementation is a fork of a bitcoin implementation that has seen production usage for years (bcoin), one important change is the addition of opcodes to support covenants, so that blinded vickery name auctions can be done fully on-chain.
Basically, Handshake can build on top of the security and reliability that Bitcoin-like systems have validated for us over the last few years: namely, UTXO systems, proof of work, user knowledge/habits around self-custody.
I think Bitcoiners could consider looking at Handshake from this perspective: there is a lot of core technology, architecture decisions, and spirit that is similar. Perhaps if you believe in the potential of public blockchains like many early Bitcoiners do, the solution might not be things like sidechains (which are mentioned as a potential scaling option in the design notes), but extending the core technology in a minimal, single-purpose way (to support auctions)?
Perhaps it is possible that Handshake goes down as one of the best examples of an ambitious new project actually "using Bitcoin" (albeit in a way most Bitcoiners would not immediately agree with) instead of creating "yet another token"?
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p.s. I've been a fan of yours for years and your content was some of the first I ran into when I was entering crypto full-time. I guess at the end of the day I'm simply curious what you thought of the other projects so far (including Namecoin and ENS) - do you own any names on other decentralized naming systems?
What do you think prevented Namecoin from getting sufficient traction from your perspective?
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But first - would like to +1 troquerre's answer - the DNSSEC proofs provide some degree of long-term primacy and compatibility/transferability to Handshake - it'll help minimize conflicts/disputes.
Adding to that answer: I think something often left unsaid is how Handshake is attempting to create incentives for everyone (not just the early devs) to work together and make the internet better. The wide distribution to FOSS developers and donations have been mentioned by the team in other replies, but I'd like to add more:
From the design notes: (source: https://handshake.org/files/handshake.txt)
``` ICANN has been the root namespace for the internet. ICANN (CA, US) is allocated 24,480,000 of the initial coin supply by the Handshake community.
Cloudflare, Inc. (DE, US) is a corporation doing fundamental research for naming, caching, and certificate authorities. They are allocated 6,800,000 of the initial token supply.
Namecoin is a decentralized naming blockchain. 10,200,000 of the initial supply was allocated to leading current and prior Namecoin developers.
Verisign, Inc. (VA, US) is the registrar for .com and .net. They are allocated 6,800,000 of the initial token supply. The .com and .net TLDs on Handshake will be given to Verisign with a DNSSEC proof.
Keybase has been innovating in the naming and certificate authority space. Keybase, Inc. (DE, US) are allocated 0.25% of the total token supply.
Public Internet Registry (VA, US) maintains the .org namespace. They are allocated 3,400,000 of the initial token supply. The .org TLD on Handshake will be given to PIR with a DNSSEC proof to pir.org.
Afilias plc (IE) has been the service provider for the .org namespace. They were allocated 3,400,000 of the initial supply to a DNSSEC proof of afilias.info. Note for both PIR and Afilias, this allocation was made before the proposed sale of the .org namespace. ```
These aren't trivial amounts for typical "ICO project marketing buzz / fake partnerships", they add up to percentages of total supply claimable by DNSSEC proof.
Because of this attempt to align incentives, I imagine there could be a world where community members (FOSS developers and wider mainstream 'internet' folks, not just 'crypto' folks) can get the best of both worlds, where any conflicts between ICANN and Handshake are minimized or the user pain mitigated by resolvers/other service providers.
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*returning to the original question on cocacola -- the dnssec proof setup helps with .com domains where the holder wants to claim and use the Handshake tld there are a lot of situations where this is not enough.
What if someone registers cocacolacompany, or thecocacolacompany, or coke? It could totally happen:
Source: https://github.com/kyokan/namegrind ``` cocacolacompany,4032,2,false thecocacolacompany,22176,20,false coke,50400,48,false ``` Note: - that output is ${name},${blocknumber},${weeknumber},${reserved} - it can be generated with this tool https://github.com/kyokan/namegrind
If one puts together the pieces from some of the other posts from the team - someone can claim anonymously with GooSig and buy the above names, and the multinational that is "The Coca-Cola Company" will probably attempt to find and enforce trademark protections against the holder -- if they cannot find that person, and it is flagged as an infringing name -- resolvers or some other downstream service providers may have to block it. Of course, I am not condoning this - talk to your lawyer before you knowingly attempt to buy a name -- just pointing out that it is possible. From there, we could extrapolate various ways the legal system gets involved, or "pretty complicated governance models" attempt to protect The Company's claims, or the holder's privacy/control.
So, to answer your question: Handshake is definitely less centralized than existing systems (no entity to send a takedown request to), but it's also not clear if strictly incompatible with laws in most jurisdictions.
I don't think anything of this kind has been done before - my intent is to provide a bit of context and spark further discussion, but I'm not qualified to do more than speculate on how the legal stuff may play out.
That said, for some jurisdictions, "B)" may very well happen.
They've worked with small startups and a variety of projects as well: glad they're productizing this service.
For us, where everyone is remote (I haven't seen my team's faces for over 6 months), the marginal utility of a tool's delightfulness/stability is quite high. Maybe we're just picky. :)
In a past life I played a lot of online poker, and was able to travel without any cash just by meeting fellow poker players and exchanging USD for cash at whatever the local rate was. There are definitely more developers than online poker players, so the liquidity of a peer-to-peer BTC (or other coin) forex marketplace would be high. Does something like this exist for remote workers?
I haven't worked on a team where everyone was happy with hangouts. Yeah, maybe a few people go "eh, works, no major issues", but that's different from "we like using this software and increases our productivity". There's always some humor/a running joke when someone's sound dies, or we need to restart the call.
I also haven't observed any distributed company in my network where they had >15 engineers and haven't invested in some paid software with collaboration features beyond hangouts: Zoom, Bluejeans, Screenhero (if a face-to-face video isn't needed, or rarely). One example, pairing: being able to "drive" your coworker's screen for a few minutes without no setup is better than Floobits. Hangouts does not allow this. I believe on some browsers you also can't see the sharer's mouse.
Does that answer your question? Defnitely curious, to learn of other remote teams' tools, and what works for them. I'd love to hear more about what your workflow is like and what you like about it.
I've done more lifetime remote dev work than onsite work. Happy to answer more detailed questions if you're interested. Have fun!