Handshake: The "Long", and "Short" Game.....
Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2021 5:49 am
Hi everyone - this is my first post.
It's good to be here and be involved in the Handshake community.
I've been thinking a bit lately about Handshake, how it is currently placed and where it needs to be long-term.
Obviously the end game is for Handshake to be a base layer type protocol, a global public good.
Everything built on top of it in the tech stack (wallets, browsers, operating systems, games, dapps, exchanges, social networks and so on..) will be able to leverage and incorporate Handshake TLD's (Handshake will be a composable and integral base layer protocol for the Web3/dWeb.)
That's the end goal and something definitely worth working towards - although it is probably a long and rocky journey to reach that point (if ever).
In the short term, before our end goal is reached, what can we do to make Handshake more appealing to speculators, NFT fanatics and collectors?
The initial TLD releases and auctions have definitely been fun and competitive - but they are coming to a close very soon (auctions will continue of course, just the "premium" type TLD's will all be locked away).
The secondary market is very slow - which is understandable at this stage of our journey (it is picking up a little).
TLD's are the ultimate "utility" type NFT's - we need to plugin to the hype and attention that is currently circling around NFT's (think NBA Top Shot or Nifty Gateway).
Speculation is what is going to keep us going at this point - what can we do to attract more speculators, "gamify" TLD ownership, get people excited about Handshake and get them making some $$$?
I'm no expert and I definitely don't have all the answers, but here are a few things I've been thinking about (these are not my ideas, they are all things that have been discussed or done previously in other web3 type projects).
- Create some TLD "pools" where many premium TLD's are placed in a pool, speculators stake $HNS into the pool and are awarded a TLD for their participation (similar to a lottery). Could work along similar lines to "Pool Together" or other similar projects. TLD owners receive fees/rewards for adding their TLD to the pool. There's a few different "lottery" type scenarios that could work for TLD's - imagine someone "winning" a cool TLD and flipping it for big $$$ on the secondary market. This would bring some real attention to the value of Handshake TLD's.
- Co-investment / fractional ownership of individual premium TLD's or even a basket of premium TLD's. Investors in this pool of TLD's earn money from secondary market sales or SLD sales. There's a few other cool things you could do here as well.....
- How do we create more liquidity for $HNS, become LP's and even use our Handshake TLD's as collateral? Rolling out wHNS would be a good start (it is being worked on already) - this would help us to incorporate $HNS into many different cool projects (Balancer/Ocean/UNI etc.)
- How do we "gamify" the secondary marketplace for Handshake TLD's? We've got to highlight the big wins $$$, create leaderboards, (think Bitmex/Bitfinex) maybe create some tournaments around flipping TLD's and reward the winners with $HNS (there's obvious issues with this idea, but just putting these things out in the open in order to seed some discussion). Also some ref links for Namebase (and other Handshake infrastructure) would appeal to many "crypto" natives.
Sorry - this turned out to be a bit of a rambling first post......
Don't take it too seriously - hopefully it may spark some fresh ideas and some discussion around the next steps for Handshake.
We are "Handshake" so it is up to us to make it happen.
It's good to be here and be involved in the Handshake community.
I've been thinking a bit lately about Handshake, how it is currently placed and where it needs to be long-term.
Obviously the end game is for Handshake to be a base layer type protocol, a global public good.
Everything built on top of it in the tech stack (wallets, browsers, operating systems, games, dapps, exchanges, social networks and so on..) will be able to leverage and incorporate Handshake TLD's (Handshake will be a composable and integral base layer protocol for the Web3/dWeb.)
That's the end goal and something definitely worth working towards - although it is probably a long and rocky journey to reach that point (if ever).
In the short term, before our end goal is reached, what can we do to make Handshake more appealing to speculators, NFT fanatics and collectors?
The initial TLD releases and auctions have definitely been fun and competitive - but they are coming to a close very soon (auctions will continue of course, just the "premium" type TLD's will all be locked away).
The secondary market is very slow - which is understandable at this stage of our journey (it is picking up a little).
TLD's are the ultimate "utility" type NFT's - we need to plugin to the hype and attention that is currently circling around NFT's (think NBA Top Shot or Nifty Gateway).
Speculation is what is going to keep us going at this point - what can we do to attract more speculators, "gamify" TLD ownership, get people excited about Handshake and get them making some $$$?
I'm no expert and I definitely don't have all the answers, but here are a few things I've been thinking about (these are not my ideas, they are all things that have been discussed or done previously in other web3 type projects).
- Create some TLD "pools" where many premium TLD's are placed in a pool, speculators stake $HNS into the pool and are awarded a TLD for their participation (similar to a lottery). Could work along similar lines to "Pool Together" or other similar projects. TLD owners receive fees/rewards for adding their TLD to the pool. There's a few different "lottery" type scenarios that could work for TLD's - imagine someone "winning" a cool TLD and flipping it for big $$$ on the secondary market. This would bring some real attention to the value of Handshake TLD's.
- Co-investment / fractional ownership of individual premium TLD's or even a basket of premium TLD's. Investors in this pool of TLD's earn money from secondary market sales or SLD sales. There's a few other cool things you could do here as well.....
- How do we create more liquidity for $HNS, become LP's and even use our Handshake TLD's as collateral? Rolling out wHNS would be a good start (it is being worked on already) - this would help us to incorporate $HNS into many different cool projects (Balancer/Ocean/UNI etc.)
- How do we "gamify" the secondary marketplace for Handshake TLD's? We've got to highlight the big wins $$$, create leaderboards, (think Bitmex/Bitfinex) maybe create some tournaments around flipping TLD's and reward the winners with $HNS (there's obvious issues with this idea, but just putting these things out in the open in order to seed some discussion). Also some ref links for Namebase (and other Handshake infrastructure) would appeal to many "crypto" natives.
Sorry - this turned out to be a bit of a rambling first post......
Don't take it too seriously - hopefully it may spark some fresh ideas and some discussion around the next steps for Handshake.
We are "Handshake" so it is up to us to make it happen.