What Is Handshake? Is It Worth Investing? $HNS

By dai- | WAX Gaming | 6 Mar 2020

What Is Handshake?

Handshake officially went live on February 4 2020. It is a UTXO-based blockchain protocol which manages the registration, renewal and transfer of DNS top-level domains (TLDs). A decentralized, permissionless naming protocol compatible with DNS (Domain Name System, a hierarchical and decentralized naming system), created by Namebase, an exchange, cloud wallet, and registrar for Handshake names and native coin HNS.

UTXO stands for the unspent output from bitcoin transactions. Each bitcoin transaction begins with coins used to balance the ledger. UTXOs are processed continuously and are responsible for beginning and ending each transaction. Confirmation of transaction results in the removal of spent coins from the UTXO database. But a record of the spent coins still exists on the ledger.

According to Coindesk, Handshake is attempting to replace digital entities that authenticate web payments, and during that process, rewards those who built the essential infrastructure for the internet itself.

Handshake is spearheaded by co-creator of bitcoin’s lightning network, Joseph Poon. During an interview,Poon mentions: “There’s this notion that crypto tokens when they go live, it’s similar to late-stage venture financing, and this gives an alternate model for that. Essentially we give tokens as a gift, we’re giving the coins as a gift to the community.”

The goal of handshake according to Poon, is ensuring what they framed as a recreation of the web, but without a shake-up in its stakeholders. In this way, Poon described Handshake as a donation, one that he hopes will set the tone for a new wave of more philanthropic blockchains. “One of the goals is to kill the ICO ecosystem and narrative,” he said.

Handshake was also released on Coinmine on the 4th of February. Allowing its users to accumulate to about 100 HNS after about a month of mining, which roughly translates to about 400,000 Sats or $36.5. Personally, though Handshake has a lot of utility, I don't see Handshake taking off anytime soon.