Pantera Partner: Understand Handshake and the foundation of the decentralized Internet

Original title: "Pantera Partner: Understand Handshake and learn what the foundation of the decentralized Internet is"
Original source: Chain News

What exactly is Handshake, which is of interest to top venture capital firms such as a16z, Sequoia Capital, and Pantera Capital? Pantera Capital partner Paul Veradittakit takes you to understand the logic and value behind Handshake as the foundation of the Internet.

Written by: Paul Veradittakit, partner of blockchain investment institution Pantera Capital
Translated by: Lu Jiangfei

Handshake is a decentralized domain name system. In August 2018, it raised $10.2 million from 67 institutions and individuals, with a valuation of $136 million, including top venture capital firms such as a16z, Sequoia Capital, Greylock, Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Polychain.

Why did this project attract the attention of these well-known investment institutions? Previously, Lianwen published an article "Understanding blockchain domain name resolution services, popular projects Handshake and ENS in one article", which introduced the core features of decentralized domain name resolution services and important players in this field.

Recently, Handshake has successfully launched its mainnet. When Handshake officially launched its mainnet, Paul Veradittakit, a partner of the famous blockchain investment institution Pantera Capital, wrote an article to explain the logic behind investing in the Handshake project and authorized it to Chain News for publication.

Paul Veradittakit pointed out that the greatest value of Handshake is that it is the foundation layer of the decentralized network, one of the most core basic components, and a key step towards a decentralized Internet.

The following is Paul Veradittakit's analysis and introduction to Handshake:

In fact, the traditional Domain Name System (DNS) is not popular. As an Internet protocol, the Domain Name System can map domain names (such as "google.com") to the servers and resources that users intend to use (such as Google search engine servers). Currently, this mapping relationship is maintained by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and certified by 12 "certificate authorities" (CA) (you can see the green lock logo in the browser). The work done by these certificate authorities is actually to provide certificates to top-level domain name owners, nothing more.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and certificate authorities are highly vulnerable to cybersecurity, censorship, and corruption. In the past, errors have sometimes occurred in the allocation of certificates, resulting in users looking up incorrect domain names, which in turn undermines Internet security. Because there are only a limited number of companies that operate certificates, content filtering and domain redirection can also occur, which can limit the ability of a small number of Internet users and act like censorship. In addition, certificate authorities often provide information about the identities of users who own certain domains, which also creates the possibility of attacks such as DDoS.

Handshake is a decentralized protocol that aims to optimize the way domain names are registered at the DNS root. Practically, Handshake allows users to bid for domain names with HNS tokens: once users apply for a domain, their registration will be valid for a year. At the same time, users will also receive a cryptographic key to support privacy and securely confirm the custom domain name they own.

HNS tokens support the Proof of Work (PoW) mining algorithm, which ensures fair access to domain names and prevents network attacks such as Sybil (to which certificate authorities have been vulnerable in the past).

On February 10, 2020, the Handshake mainnet was launched and about 100,000 top-level domain names were registered on alexa.com. Most of the project leaders are "big names" in the field of decentralization, such as Lightning Network co-founder Joseph Poon and Purse CEO Andrew Lee.

Handshake is a key step towards a decentralized Internet, as domain name ownership is at the core of the Internet architecture and the key for users to access specific websites and identify the content they access; decentralized website access rights may not only promote fairness and security, but also set a precedent for managing and accessing other resources on the Internet.

Centralized Internet

The Internet is one of the most useful and complex inventions in recent history, enabling an explosion of knowledge, products, and relationships around the world.

The backbone of the Internet infrastructure is the Domain Name System (DNS), which is a framework that keeps track of where content on the Internet is located. For example, the DNS ensures that when you type "google.com" you get the Google search engine. Each "domain name" (basically, the name of a website, in layman's terms) is mapped to a server in the IP space that runs the website's functions; "google.com" is mapped to the address of a Google server in the IP space that hosts the server that runs the Google search engine. Currently, all domain names are managed by a single trust root owned by a non-profit organization called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In addition, there are private companies called certificate authorities (CAs) that provide "certificates" (the green lock icon you see in the URL bar when you visit a website) to prove that the corresponding owner owns the domain name. The main job of a certificate authority is to ensure that the domain name is correctly owned by the user registered with the agency and that visitors can be correctly mapped to the expected resources (such as landing pages, e-commerce websites, social networks, search engines, etc.) to maintain the security of the Internet. When you visit "google.com", the certificate authority ensures that you are visiting a trusted search engine run by Google, and not some other privately hosted malware that can access the domain name. It seems that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and certificate authorities are important, but what are the problems with them?
Yes, ICAN and CAs are two very important organizations that solve Internet domain name problems—but they don’t solve them in the best, most secure, and most fair way. Both organizations use an extremely centralized system, with 12 CAs and 1 ICAN, which means that domain privacy and domain ownership on the Internet are completely controlled by a few select users.

Sometimes, they issue bad certificates that allow third parties to conduct espionage or collect user data without authorization. Such incidents undermine the basic security of the Internet, which cannot ensure that users can always get what they expect when they visit a domain, and that their interactions with domains are private and unrestricted.

In fact, centralized management agencies will lead to two major Internet security problems:

1. First, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has huge problems with censorship and access. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers allows content filtering and domain name redirection, which means that large companies and governments can sacrifice the interests of small-scale users to maintain their own existence, and even manage the content that other users can publish on the Internet. In the past, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers sold the .org suffix domain name for $1.1 billion - as a non-profit organization, they did not even explain why they could do this.

2. Secondly, certificate authorities are extremely vulnerable to cyber attacks, or they are exploited by cyber attacks (or even collude). Certificate ownership can be used to map domains to specific users, which can then be used to expose users to direct attacks (for example, a website could be attacked simply because a user didn't like their content) or to cyberattacks such as DDoS (distributed denial of service attacks). Certificate authorities have also allowed governments such as Iran to conduct man-in-the-middle attacks on Gmail, which raises great doubts about their intentions and the fairness of the Internet.

So, what can be done?

That's where Handshake comes in.

Handshake is a decentralized naming protocol where every user on the network can be responsible for managing and validating naming zones of the root DNS (essentially mapping domain names to their owners). The basic idea behind Handshake is simple: domain name registrations shouldn't be controlled by 12 private companies, but by the people who access the Internet every day. Handshake is the first step in providing a decentralized Internet and mapping of Web resources in order to create a decentralized Web and network of the future.

How does Handshake work?

The Handshake protocol is technically quite complex, but the idea behind the workflow is quite simple. Essentially, Handshake provides a token (HNS) that users can use to purchase domain registrations. When a user wants to register a domain on the DNS root, they can pay for the registration using HNS tokens. Afterwards, the user receives a public cryptographic key that is identifiable proof that the domain registration belongs to that user, thus ensuring that all users on the network can verify that the person owns a given resource or domain space.

If you want to transfer a domain, you simply sell HNS tokens for different domains to each other. All HNS token transactions are recorded on the public blockchain, so the entire user group can verify ownership of the domain in question, and the security of the system is maintained through proof-of-work consensus.

HNS tokens can be obtained through proof-of-work mining, which ensures that users can contribute to the security and effectiveness of the network. It is also a primary mechanism for obtaining HNS tokens and using them to bid for domain names. Not only that, the Handshake protocol can effectively prevent Sybil attacks. In addition, since mining requires computing power, it can also prevent users from being confused by virtual instances, thereby maximizing the chance of winning domain name auctions.

How to protect domain names on the platform?

First, users need to check if the domain name they need has already been registered by someone else on the platform. The first user who requests a domain name can create a "public transaction" to start the domain name auction, and subsequent users can submit bids for the domain name, all of which are denominated in HNS tokens. When bidding, no user knows the bid amount of other users, and the entire process is hidden. The domain name bidding auction will end after a period of time, and the user with the highest bid will eventually win the domain name. However, just like traditional auctions, domain name auctions on the Handshake platform will be sold at the "second highest bid", and the domain name after the transaction needs to be registered once a year.

If you want to know the command line interface of Handshake to start bidding, you can click this link to view it.

As part of its mission to decentralize the Internet, Handshake initially supplied 1.36 billion HNS tokens, 67% of which will be provided to developers of free/libre open source software FLOSS, as well as non-profit organizations and universities, who have made great contributions to the development and innovation of the Internet, and the project sponsors provided $10.2 million in funding support.

How to get started?

Before the official launch, Handshake provides a 90-day sunrise period for current rights holders to claim trademark domain names on the Internet to ensure a seamless transition from the current system to a decentralized system. Handshake has also reserved the first 100,000 top-level domains on alexa.com in advance, which will be available to users when the project is officially launched. (Chain News Note: Handshake was launched on February 10, 2020 when this article was written)

Team Members

The leaders of this project are all "big names" in the field of decentralization and blockchain, with unique insights and industry experience, and can fully bring the concept of decentralization to the highly centralized domain name space, including:

Joseph Poon, co-founder of the Lightning Network
Andrew Lee, CEO of Purse and founder of Private Internet Access
Chris Jeffrey, CTO of Purse

Ultimate Goal

With billions of people around the world accessing the internet, the need for a secure and decentralized protocol to manage domain name registrations is more pressing than ever. Centralized domain name authorities have long been plagued by cyberattacks, corruption, and censorship, limiting internet access and sustainability to a select few.

Handshake has found a unique solution to the domain name registration problem by bringing together every user. Using a proof-of-work consensus and mining protocol, Handshake can fairly distribute domain name access through its HNS token, ensure that conflicts are resolved efficiently, and clarify domain name ownership using encryption and blockchain. Handshake completely redesigns the way the root domain is configured. Domain name allocation no longer requires a flawed and vulnerable third party (such as a certificate authority). The root domain industry using HNS tokens can completely eliminate the role of certificate authorities.

The release of the Handshake protocol marks an important step in the development of decentralized networks. Domain names are the basis for our interaction with the Internet. The success of decentralized domain names has also set an example for other computing resource configuration, verification and ownership solutions.

Original source: veradiverdict.substack.com

Related reading: "HandShake airdrop attracts the attention of Internet developers. Currently, a single Github account can receive an airdrop worth $800"

Source link: https://www.chainnews.com/articles/769401448672.htm

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