Learning Handshake (HNS) for Internet Marketers
To explain it, in a more “normal, web designer, internet marketing” terms – HNS is “DNS on the blockchain” – the settings for a domain on Handshake (DNS) is decentralized on the blockchain. That is a bit technical – but what that means is the “IP address” you assign to a domain is stored on the blockchain (across multiple computers) instead of stored on a “centralized” (or a single company’s database).
What is the difference?
Hard/impossible to “hack” the DNS
There are situations where those storing the DNS get hacked and then the domain’s IP/DNS settings are pointed to a different site.
More internet freedom
Because it is on the blockchain, and not in control and maintained by 1 party (ICANN) – these domains are not able to have some company contact ICANN / a domain registrar and take it away from the current owner.
Cheaper
Because one centralized party doesn’t control it, the costs of maintaining it is mainly the cost of mining it on the blockchain (by miners). I know this is a bit more technical, so will leave it at that for this marketing overview.
In 2020 – It is the Auction Phase / First Phase
Right now, we are in the first phase – and the domain extensions (TLDs – top level domains) are being auction off until Feb 14, Valentine’s day, 2021.
Those who take part in the auctions and win, will own the TLD in that auction.
Example – we have .bartender. So we can use my.bartender as a domain, and we can sell / issue other domains on the .bartender for ourselves or others – either as a simple customer relationship (a yearly fee), or as a community / membership model (which is more interesting to us).
It is an Internet Marketer’s Dream!
Imagine, you own a domain extension in your niche. You can sell or issue domains to people in the community and they can build sites on this.
For us, we are positioning this more as a way to engage with our audiences and communities in these markets we are active in. Back to the .bartender example, we can issue .bartender domains to our VIP customers on Amazon, to influencers in the marketplace, to businesses in the space, and simply show our authority in the niche.
There are even more benefits that will come soon – such as the ability for people to receive crypto currency to that domain name (so a bartender’s customer can send a bitcoin tip to shawn.bartender at a bar).
We want more people using these!
Main issue right now – not “resolving” in Chrome and major browsers (without an extension)
As of the end of 2020 – it is still early and the major internet browsers still do not let you type in, for example, shawn.bartender – it will say cannot resolve this site.
You can see it by using an extension (we personally are using NextDNS.io on Chrome settings) – but of course this limits the mainstream usage.
The idea is – more of us who are using it – more “pressure” will be placed on Chrome, Firefox, and other internet browsers to update their software to support this.
How to use it now?
So to get started – first you need a domain name (you can start bidding on auctions using HNS coins with Namebase.io for example for the entire TLD) and they have epic guides on that.
Once you have that, you need to update the DNS on that domain extension to a server that has content (just like any site)
We have a few guides – and our favorite is to use Amazon AWS s3 buckets with static html files.
Let’s get more to embrace this and make the internet the way it was meant to be.
We think this is a timely thing to happen. With more and more internet censorship – we see Handshake (or domains on the blockchain) as a great way to do what the internet was meant to do