Pulse Check in Handshake – Hard Fork Reflections & Censorship On the Rise
Many of you have been reaching out asking the status of the hard fork, and the status of Handshake in general.
I agree, things have taken a “moment of silence” indeed.
I’ve asked some crypto OGs their input and they tell me this is common in a sensitive discussion such as a hard fork.
Also I have asked many their input on the hard fork - and some just say to give it some time to simmer. Is there a big rush - is what many of them tell me. Is it extremely urgent we get consensus on the hard fork or can we continue as is for a bit longer?
I feel many crypto communities are quiet still - the ones I am in - and while I am not saying we should sit back and do nothing - there are ebbs and flows in a community.
Yet if you pop in the HNS Dev chat on telegram you’ll see Nodar, Falci, and others still discussing node sizes, and other development matters around the HNS chain.
What Have I Been Up to?
On my side, very much focused on the launch in October of our decom marketplace - Hamza.market - which has been in the works for a year+ and have mentioned on this channel and at HandyCon.
The goal here is - just like in web2 domains - adding an ecommerce element and function to the internet gave a lot more utility for web2 domains. And I recall an Andrew Rosener Domain Sherpa podcast in the past where he appreciated Shopify - as that brought many business owners to making their own shopping cart and needing their own domain (web2).
I see similar in web3 / decentralized internet. Decentralized domains will be needed as censorship increases, and anyone who spends any time on social media sees the increase in censorship.
But on top of domains, we need applications.
And this is what I am building at Hamza.market and it is the passion, what I have said since getting into Handshake in 2020 - to bridge the ecommerce and web3.
On a Roadshow and Showing off Hamza
In Vietnam as I type this - and am getting feedback and early input on the upcoming public release of Hamza.market (we have hamzamarket/ on HNS of course)
For Handshake integration - The medium term goal is to integrate with HNS.Id on Optimism (as Hamza is also on Optimism) for the naming solution.
For Handshake integration - The long term goal, I am “bullish on censorship”. No matter the winner of the US election, it is clear there is strong forces on top who want to censor us. The news I keep reading is while the focus is on censoring social media, it will flow and is flowing - to web2 domain names. I still see Handshake as the most censorship resistant naming solution and see a world where:
Your handshake name is:
- Your identity
- Your homepage / your merchant homepage
- Yours!
Lets Give Community Time to Ponder on the Hard Fork, Lets Build Applications That Use Handshake
Others say the same - domains by themselves are not worth much. If there are applications that can be used for these domains - that is what will give them utility.
Alex Neto has the resume site uSwap as well, support that one!
And would love to have you support on our Hamza launch - to give feedback - and I am pushing our co-founders to integrate HNS ID as soon as possible but it is a very early stage project and is on the feature list.
HandyCon in March is still on the cards, Anne/ is working hard as always.
We love Handshake, it has made me so many connections and relationships and re-sparked my passion for the blockchain. It is just a quiet time right now but we will persist.
More and More Asking “Is Handshake Dead”
Even our friend Michael Cyger is asking
Mike Michelini’s response:
Yes, I am getting more and more tags / DMs about “is handshake dead”.
It got dramatic in the last 1-2 months (again) about a Hard fork discussion and caused some to quit. Unfortunately this is an issue in a decentralized project - and happens in others.
It is truly quiet - but I am working on a startup - @hamzadecom that will be a “decom” marketplace to buy/sell physical products w/ crypto - and we will integrate Handshake names (HNS ID) to it in the near future.
We had a Handshake.mastermind last week about other updates https://x.com/SkyInclude1/status/1841992816656056348
I did a skyinclude video and blog writeup as well addressing this at https://skyinclude.com/pulse