ICANN and Handshake, Collisions, & the future (discussion)

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skyinclude
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ICANN and Handshake, Collisions, & the future (discussion)

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ICANN & Handshake, DNS, HNS collisions, airdrop claim & more

This Telegram chat in HandshakeTallk on Feb 8-9, 2021 is something that has to be shared!
(Join HandshakeTalk and other Telegram groups by checking the list here on this post viewtopic.php?f=11&t=21 )

Background - before I share the amazing conversation, ICANN is the current body that governs DNS (I hope I am saying this correctly…) and Handshake is a new decentralized blockchain based solution. Handshake raised investment money to GIVE IT AWAY - into the ecosystem.

One big chunk of that community giveaway (I believe THE top of one of the top) is ICANN itself - as per dns live:
https://dns.live/top.html
ICANN has not yet claimed their 24 million HNS token:

Order Top Level Domain Name Legacy Domain Coin Allocation USD value (Feb 8, 2021)

1 icann icann.org 24,480,503 HNS  $4,377,016.11

The other issue/discussion is called “collisions” - meaning if Handshake has a TLD in the HNS ecosystem and then ICANN issues an overlapping TLD into the DNS ecosystem.

Jothan is our amazing bridge in the Handshake ecosystem to some of the insights of ICANN and had a great sharing on the second Handshake mastermind in Clubhouse - (for recordings and more check this thread on the Handshake Mercenary forum - viewtopic.php?p=362#p362 )

So without further ado, here’s this amazing conversation in the Handshake Talk Telegram group

Image


(time stampss are Asia, GMT+8 timezone)


Rooster, [Feb 8, 2021 at 10:13:57 PM]:
@jothanfoap The other day, on the Clubhouse call you mentioned the dilemma of someone applying/appealing (to ICANN) for a name that is already used/sold on Handshake. Let’s say, for sake of argument, that it’s .NFT... In this case, assuming we litigate, how do you see it playing out?

@jothanfoap Also, you mentioned ICANN having issues/expenses in claiming and embracing their HNS allotment. Other than an institution like coinbase providing custody services, how do you think we can help them with this?


Jothan Frakes, [Feb 9, 2021 at 3:41:03 AM]:
I have spoken with folks there ... basically there is a distinction between "ICANN" (The community of stakeholders) and "ICANN Org" which is the staff at ICANN.

The way this would need to work itself out would be for the community ICANN to formally raise the topic of the $HNS purse allocation being available for claim, and that it needs to be claimed by action of the staff at ICANN Org. The process takes a while, it would most likely need to come from the At-Large, and then be proposed upwards through the ICANN process until it hits the board as a resolution for them to direct the staff to take the appropriate steps.

This, by my reckoning, represents at least 18 months (I suspect longer because this is likely to have a lot of for and against) of work and constant support in documentation and answering questions - lots of friction and headwinds - for a shot at the board voting to have it happen (or not).

While it represents a fairly substantial purse, there would then be the matter of how to collect or secure it, and what to do with it.

There will likely be some review of other aspects of this, such as what the longer term ramifications of recognizing an alt-root might represent. There will no doubt be weigh in from groups representing security and stability with an interest in , as well as intellectual property interests, and perhaps others, including affected registries with TLDs that the handshake bootstrap missed, such as .music, .kids, .spa or .hotel etc.

The over/under on this from my POV is 1% chance, and I have always viewed that allocation purse as a strong talking point, but mostly a goat that the villagers threw into the volcano to keep the internet deities from an eruption.

Mike Carson, [Feb 9, 2021 at 3:47:36 AM]:
ha a peace offering, and at the same time a strike at the deities who control things.. their days are now numbered

Brandon Dees, [Feb 9, 2021 at 3:54:17 AM]:
my whole interpretation of the way this was designed (assuming hns authors understood what they were doing) was that as hns independently gains traction over the first few years, it would organically pique the interest of those stakeholders and the 4-year claim expiration cliff would incentivize them to fast track that decision process to figure out if they're going to claim names defensively or not. i think 4 years was a ludicrously short timeline but I was told by someone at some point that the idea was it could naturally become a community fork decision to extend it or not based on how things are going by then, but if there was never going to be such buy-in that there would be no real point arbitrarily locking down the namespace in that way anymore.

i had interpreted the large claim rewards to not be used as a financial incentive but more as a bit of ammunition to use for migrating into the hns ecosystem while retaining some of the established dominance in the space


basically, if they can't beat us, they can at least join us and still control most of the established web, and look, we already laid out some red carpet for them so they can do this graciously rather than taking things in a hostile direction



Scott, [Feb 9, 2021 at 5:29:09 AM]:
The problem if ICANN plays the delay game (even unintentionally) is that as months pass, more TLDs clash on the two roots. Jothan mentioned 4 of them. If next year, ICANN created 20 new TLDs in their root, you now have 24 domains in conflict. The following year there will be 50, and the year after that 100. So for ICANN to claim their HNS, they would saying "screw you" to the customers they just took $185K from (or whatever the figure is), because it would be viewed as validating Handshake by their new customers and target audience. I've heard people in this community say "Handshake is not a competitor to ICANN" and "the two can play side by side in the sandbox". That's only true if you omit the 4 TLDs that have two separate roots and if ICANN never created another TLD. Otherwise, the two are in competition. You are either a client of a domain using ICANN's root servers or a client of a domain using Handshake's blockchain. I've also been told that people say they are not in competition because we don't want to ruffle any feathers. I'm of the belief that this is a passive scared-person tactic. We should not "tiptoe through the tulips" to try to passify a competitor. Now if you want to define "playing together" as ICANN agreeing to transition to Handshake and giving up hope of creating any new TLDs of their own, while agreeing to just manage existing TLDs they manage at this point in time, then yeah - they can play together. But I'm positive that is not the vision ICANN talks about in their monthly management meetings. ICANN is never going to claim that HNS, because with each passing year, it's harder for them to do that from a business sense. And I get to get on the anti-ICANN soapbox yet again, but I will remind everyone that ICANN is a monopoly. If you want a top level domain on the internet (or even a second-level domain), 99.9999% of your traffic and customers will go through ICANN. Being a monopoly is not illegal, but using your monopolistic influence in business, in order to crush competition, is. (at least in most western countries) Does ICANN do this now? That's questionable. Even if they don't do it directly, they do it inherently through the way their business model is set up. ICANN could punish google, for example, if google ever adopted Handshake. Could ICANN de-certify a registrar if that registrar agreed to host Handshake infrastructure? Absolutely. I wish some in the Handshake community would stop treating ICANN with kid gloves. They're not a partner and are never going to be (imo). And when a customer offers to pay them $185K to create a new TLD, they aren't going to give two shits if that TLD is "in use" on Handshake, nor would they probably even mention it to the customer. They will tell the customer that it's covered in the 100 pages of legalese that they signed, while ICANN's lawyers give advice on whether that $185K will cover any potential legal expenses that might come up from litigation. Sorry for the long rant. I'm not a fan of ICANN and I wouldn't even try to play ball with them. However, I do see the value in marketing outreach. The fact that Handshake reserved HNS for them gives the impression that Handshake is the good guy, and there is marketing and perception value in extending an olive branch. Accepting that HNS would be the end of them. What would they tell facebook? "No Mr. Zuckerberg, don't manage and control your own 'facebook' TLD, when we can manage facebook.COM for you." Like Rooster, I look forward to this playing out. Game on.



Mike Carson, [Feb 9, 2021 at 5:34:56 AM]:
yes I think ICANN will grow less and less relevant

I don't care about collisions because ICANN is centralized and making the root zone decentralized is invaluable and will lead to freedom and innovation

Steven McKie, [Feb 9, 2021 at 5:37:33 AM]:
^^^

Exactly

That’s the ethos Mike

Scott, [Feb 9, 2021 at 5:39:38 AM]:
I agree with that too.

Brandon Dees, [Feb 9, 2021 at 5:41:11 AM]:
icann having a lot of hns to sling around would give them the means to buy up hns tlds from the secondary market more or less freely. sure the owner would have to be willing to sell, but i think that's true of the vast majority of auctioned names so far. i'm not trying to argue we're not in competition, but i think that there was a deliberately designed option for a peaceful transition of control to the decentralized root, without damaging the existing web in the process. the planned timing of new gtld releases was a consideration from the start. FYI big companies like facebook already have their own TLDs issued, they aren't stuck under .com except for traffic/seo reasons. google's already moving their stuff into .google and other tlds more under their own control.

Scott, [Feb 9, 2021 at 5:44:10 AM]:
Agree with that too. There is a good write-up on the ICANN wiki about google. It also mentions that google had adjusted algorithms to favor some of their own owned TLDs.

Brandon Dees, [Feb 9, 2021 at 5:45:22 AM]:
as slim as the odds are, i think the ultimate fantasy outcome we can aspire to achieve would be that regular web users like my parents would one day just automatically be browsing the HNS namespace without needing to know about any transition happening. if we have to ask them to update dns settings or install a plugin or anything else, than this is never going fully mainstream

i just don't want to see the hns community close off that possibility before even giving it a chance to play out that way


Steven McKie, [Feb 9, 2021 at 6:35:51 AM]:

No luck needed. But it is on our side so far. We should push to be the new paradigm. Not just a bolted on soft fork of the old system. We’ve the incentives and the chain will take care of us. We’ll be fine.
Just trying to document this amazing knowledge and insights that is quickly lost in Telegram threads.
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- SkyInclude/

https://skyinclude.com/ or HNS http://setup.skyinclude :mrgreen:

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cjj
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Re: ICANN and Handshake, Collisions, & the future (discussion)

Post by cjj »

Nice discussion !
Thanks for taking out your time and posting here...
Gave some beautiful insights about ICANN

I think I need to join the telegram group asap !
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skyinclude
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Re: ICANN and Handshake, Collisions, & the future (discussion)

Post by skyinclude »

Sure - just trying to bridge this amazing knowledge and insights with the rest of the internet. Same w/ the recorded Clubhouse calls.
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https://skyinclude.com/ or HNS http://setup.skyinclude :mrgreen:

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cjj
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Re: ICANN and Handshake, Collisions, & the future (discussion)

Post by cjj »

❤️ Thank you for doing it !!!!

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