Handshake (HNS) Rekenmachine

Handshake is a decentralized, permissionless naming protocol and cryptocurrency that shifts internet naming from institutional decree to cryptographic proof by establishing an alternative root zone beyond the control of any single authority, not to replace DNS outright but to decentralize the root and TLD ownership so that the map of names mirrors mathematics rather than mandate; it stores TLD ownership and records such as NS and DS on-chain, enabling resolvers to verify inclusion with light-client proofs and to bootstrap trust without traditional certificate authorities via DANE-style validation, while still allowing fallbacks to the legacy ICANN root for compatibility. Names are allocated through a sealed-bid, second‑price, commit‑reveal auction that uses HNS for bids, penalizes non‑revealers, and cycles names through opening, bidding, reveal, and locking phases, with expirations and renewals (commonly on multi‑year horizons) to prevent permanent squatting; internationalized labels are supported through Punycode, and a large set of safety reserves exists so ICANN TLDs and widely used domains can be claimed via DNSSEC proofs, minimizing collision risk. The consensus layer relies on proof‑of‑work with a Handshake hashing scheme that combines SHA3 and BLAKE2b and originally sought ASIC resistance to keep mining broad-based across GPUs and ASICs, paired with defenses against block withholding to stabilize incentives; blocks target roughly ten‑minute intervals, supply is capped at 2.04 billion HNS with an initial 2,000‑HNS block reward that halves every 170,000 blocks, and the system transitions to fee-only miner compensation after block 5,270,000, projected around 2119, aligning long‑term security with active network use. In practice, resolvers can be full nodes or lightweight clients that validate Merkle proofs for name states, and domain operators publish on-chain trust anchors that point to their authoritative servers, creating a verifiable chain from user to root without intermediary veto points; in this architecture, censorship requires sustained majority attack rather than a phone call, and the familiar anxiety of gatekeeping is replaced by the quieter discipline of open computation. By relocating TLD ownership, transfer, and resolution into transparent, rule‑bound processes, Handshake reframes internet naming as a neutral, market‑driven commons and an infrastructural upgrade that reduces dependence on centralized registries while preserving interoperability with the existing DNS.