HandyCon 2025 | Day 1 - Applying for the gTLD .hns in ICANN's next round - YouTube

Transcript:
(00:01) [Music] [Applause] all right we're moving right along get getting smooth each time so Todd Ryan he's going to be hosting the next panel and people are excited for this one so I really appreciate know your support of handshake and also and you know you're you're well known and do a lot in the traditional domain space and your spaces are great everybody appreciates what you do and I'm going to pass it off to you this amazing panel which we're all excited about thank you Todd thanks Mike
(00:38) thanks for everything and everybody it's a it's a pleasure to be here handy con 2025 my name is Todd Ryan I'm a more of a traditional domain investor but I couldn't keep my hands off H&S off handshake when it was first developed but long story short I formed in 96 American Business Capital also ABC Productions and that's how you can contact me I'm glad Mike was talking about networking it is important to connect with each other you can go to my handshake name Tod to. hn. it'll take you to ABC
(01:13) Productions and then you can just send me an email but I wanted to bring that up first more recently I did co-found a company with Chad one of my panelists here one of my co-hosts called pay now we're really excited about that because it's a crypto payment platform and we're hoping to incorporate some things with handshake here in the future but so that's briefly about me I'm an investment adviser handshake Advocate and more a traditional domain investor and I host a Some Like Mike said a
(01:45) domain name law show and today we're going to talk about the next round of I can so very interesting and some sales that one of the co-panelists Paul had last year so I want to throw it to you Chad why don't you introduce yourself and then we'll get rolling introduced Paul too a little monkey over there I'm I'm I'm Chad to go by EAD I've been in the domain space almost going on 30 years 28 years so we have a portfolio of 2000.
(02:13) com trying to turn those into things called EC corpse autonomous electronic corporations got into H&S about two month after the Genesis mint we own about I think 2,000 H&S names uh kind of yeah so I've been kind of just playing around with a lot of digital real estate uh that's our nit so digital real estate so it's good to see the H&S Community is kind of going and again hats off to Mike again for running this and so thank you very much Mike and Paul are you there what's up yeah what's going on can you hear me
(02:44) okay yep fantastic hope you guys are doing good thank you Mike an and everyone else putting on this show it's amazing so far learned a lot so far just about a sovereign identity for tonas agents by Jihan the hard the hard Fork coming up the proposal I kind of new for me as well so this is all good stuff yeah doing good investor in digital assets as well as real estate and the fact that this is an experimental project really excites me that we're here five years later still experimenting and yeah I have about 750
(03:15) names got a few staked and have have some registrations as well so uh yeah that's the Avenue I've taken down at handshake hey we're going to get rolling by talking about that Paul okay so I have a few hundred names Paul has almost a grand Chad has a couple thousand we were we're domain investors decentralized domain investors traditional domain investors but Paul I wanted to start with you talk about so you had a really big sale last year I think probably the biggest sell of a handshake name I wanted you to talk
(03:46) about that and then also talk about a little bit about the staking you've done and what proceeds what money you've made from it and how you feel about staking if you plan on staking some more names in the future absolutely so if if you remember there was the foure anniversary in February of 2024 labeled The Happening um that's when like 78,000 Alexa names that were reserved were were released out to the public well I mean they were able for anybody to go open at that point and they were some of the
(04:16) names that I got at that point were king. queen. login and so forth and the way that one went down the sale that you're referring to I think it was the fourth largest sale but it's it was for a million H&S and I had acquired it so so I put in 23,000 handshake as my lockup and that's it no blind none of that BS it was just 23k handshake and then change somewhere around there um the the next highest one I think was 20K was a lock up oops that was the lockup that I could see and it ended up that
(04:50) only 10,000 of that was was actually towards it 10,000 of it was a blind so I ended up paying 10,000 handshake for it which was I think handshake was at right under 4 cents so about $400 you know I said I'm going to get I like my 100x on this let's put it up for a million handshake and if I can knock out 40K on this that'd be good A little I know by November the price of handshake really fluctuated it went down to under one cent and so at that point I was like all right and just wake up one morning to an
(05:19) email because I didn't reprice my name it was still a million H&S and I wake up to an email saying that it sold 96 it came out to about $9,600 at the time by the time I converted it November I waited it to go up to about three cents so not a bad return from $400 to about 30 grand return on that name yeah that that you're you're you're on mute still Todd by the way but yeah mention the name oh the name is dot king I thought I mentioned that the name was dot king and my idea for that is as soon as I got
(05:52) that I got dot queen as well I said I'm going to launch it so that only people that get a doc King name are going to be able to doc Queen name so you'd have to have a doc king for a doc kind of play gamification on that but you know at the end of it I said let me put it up for a million let's see what happens and next the damn thing sold so there goes that idea doc Queen still available gentlemen ladies and gentlemen Paul that that's great I was going to mention before you just talk about staking and then we're going to
(06:19) talk about the next round and and this possible that hns extension so a friend you guys know him he's a well known in the traditional domain space and also a handshake investor Michael serer he created an academy for domain investors in the traditional space very welln but he recently sold Dev net a handshake name for 10,000 H&S and I know he picked that up four years ago in 2021 for 100 H&S but it is nice to get offers I like the name based system look forward I saying Alex I saw him in the chat I've
(06:55) never met him but I know he's with name base going to give a presentation on Friday really looking forward to that but it's nice to get these offers and you can't help it sometime you're selling 10,000 H&S now is about 90 bucks you hate to get rid of some great names for low prices but it's fun to move them as well so before we get on to the next topic quickly Paul what have you staked and has it been worth it yeah I have a few names staked I think three to be exact so do click Cliq and I have a site
(07:25) that I've developed let me just put it up here and say just a very basic Landing page it's kind of like a take on clubhouse it's click house and for those with a higher IQ of course but and it's a Cliq TLD so that's one of them the other one is Diva that thing's got about 32 names that are registered Gian said a great thing this early on is what are you doing you're surviving at this point what do those registrations do that are staked it basically pays for your renewals for the rest of your names you
(07:53) know you got about 40 names that are registered you're getting your handshake and it's a thing of beauty that sometimes we just take all this for for for granted the fact that we have a beautiful bidding process it's like a poker game the blind element of it staking what we're discussing right now to me staking it's the t-u version of being a registry operator that's what it is you're not a real you're not the names don't resolve which we're going to get to in a second as soon as we start
(08:22) talk about H&S I'm really excited about talking about that but that is the number one issue that you talk to anybody right now what is the issue for the mainstream is that it does not resolve so anyway but the fact that we have the buying selling domains the marketplace is already built in instant payment transfer of domain swapping from handshake into BTC um instantaneous results all these aspects are fantastic but and they're already built into the system so all this stuff really excites me about it staking part of it like I
(08:50) said I have this name that's set up for one of my names it's organic I'm not spending any time on it I'd love to continue to build a community but I want to be able to reward by community members and if before we just get into it if you don't mind this is like my thought process the way I look at it like perfect example of an opportunity right so so you we're building it at a found very Foundation layer with handshake you have a great TLD you stake it which is kind of it is already done
(09:17) the entire process of registering names is already automated name CH already has that built in what we build on our is a login system that only people that have a do click name are able to log into our system so in order to access my community you have to have a DOT click name once they log in now you can reward you know all these meme coins that are going on out here well how about you launch a mem coin that that once they log in they've already paid the handshake they you've already got your reward there you can share some of that
(09:48) reward with them in in the forms of a meme coin I'm just using that as an example there's so many different aspects of this that we can go down but yeah that's what I'm looking at Chad go ahead man I've taken up well hold hold on I wonder to where Chad's not wearing this pay now hat yeah Chad listen Chad there was a mention earlier Jon was mentioning earlier about agents acting with agents and I know you've been working a lot on that we're getting ready to talk about the next round but
(10:12) before we get into that don't mean to throw you off but what where where is it at I mean you've been working on that exactly as well agents interacting with other agents payments I mean in and everything but just uh talk about that just for a second agents working with agents well I mean that was the definition of an agent right so I think it's you got to look at analog versus digital so Fiat is technically analog it is digital you get digital dollars but it's still papered $100 $100 so like
(10:43) with agents you have to be digital native so domains are digital native hns is digital native right it that's where I think I think hns just has to kind of continue the narrative start to keep the grind and these new technologies like agents and are coming into layer on top of other digital networks then for Automation and transaction again you could take a example of ethereum with smart contracts so I think H&S has its Niche I think when we first launch everybody was oh it's competing with a or b or c and really just different
(11:14) philosophies but when you build an autonomous digital entity where you want to call it an agent or whatever you want to call it it needs a digital Network and so H&S is a digital native network of identity locations so again now when you can bring in wallets you can different things you can start playing with a lot with the identity and I think that's where H&S is going to have a a nice positioning in x amount of years being able to do automated transactions between digital identities which is a
(11:43) again a handshake name I know I know Mike loves to hear that because he was talking about people want to do some things through traditional DNS but what you just mentioned Chad handshake is truly decentralized but set up perfect for agent to agent mean meaning there needs to be no centralized hand involved in this anyway I I was I want to get to there was something I wanted to mention oh I hope later on today I know Scott Flor and Tom Barrett are going to be talking about some things and Tom over at and circuit does what CH what Paul
(12:18) was talking about allowing for you to stake names and do that but I'm assuming they're going to touch on that so I really look forward to the rest of the sessions today what we were mainly going to speak on today was in ican's next round would it be beneficial to handshake Community to apply for the hns extension and the traditional system traditional naming system and how could it benefit the community how can it Bridge the community I I think it would be fantastic because it would be sort of a then we could work on sort of a hybrid
(12:51) not necessarily solution but some type of hyb format or platform that would you can it would solve the browser problem obviously we could and the folks with handshake names would be able to register their hns name the issue there's some issues that I see but first Paul I know you've given a lot of thought to this and we're going to talk about how how do we form a Consortium to to do this the expenses involved but with regards to just some pure benefits to it Paul first what do you why do you think it would be attractive to apply
(13:27) for this extension and hopefully obtain it I mean I think it solves some of the main problems that we have in getting to the Main Street adoption at this point name Collision being number well let's start a very basic is resolving with hns we're going to be able to resolve just like a traditional DNS name it it and when we're talking about hns we're talking about just the resolving part excuse me we're not talking about the registration the registration is going to continue the exact same way it is
(14:00) right now the resolving part that's what we are that's what we would be paying for is the resolving part of it you know that's one thing so now name Collision is no longer there because in order to resolve you would have to have your name. hns it's a oneof one it's an nft right there's no other name that that would kind of like solve that thing interoperability that goes along hand hand inand with it but you know just going back to owning that what is it that you're owning you're not what what
(14:29) I'm trying to say is like let's say that we go out there and buy the H first of all the biggest problem is it's not the onetime fee I think we can get people to do that who is going to pay the renewals the annual renewal for the DNS who's going to do the maintenance of that and how are we going to get enough funds for that that's like the bigger concern of it is how do we go about that but if if if the numbers make sense if there's 13 million registrations on H&S if we can get 10,000 names to resolve at 10 bucks
(14:59) that's a you know 100,000 names to resolve it at 10 bucks that's a million right there I don't I don't know if there's a 100,000 names that would want to resolve on there that's the question that needs to be answered is yeah going down that line but what are your thoughts I think I think you would have to get that in with the hard fork and I think that proposal needs to get in now into the hard fork and then at the same knowing that when the hard Fork happens that you're going to be extending it
(15:25) into the root Zone the H&S strategy so wouldn't I would I would definitely like because this it's going to be about timing too right so I don't know if and when the hard Fork would actually occur but I think that's something that that should be proposed in and during the hard Fork can you explain a little bit on that because to me it has nothing to do with the hard Fork you're building this system on your own you're basically resolving you know like very similar to hns.
(15:59) com just resolving it's just it's resolving on hns am I missing something there can you explain I think I'm just saying like like we I remember when they like JJ and them talked about the hard fork zipin and them talked about the hard fork in their condo I was like that's gonna be that's gonna be an upill battle right soft Fork hard Fork I'm just saying like even if you even if a co-op or whatever you want to call it a Syndicate acquires that H&S for let's say quarter million dollars with a $50,000 maintenance fee a
(16:28) year right so it's still you can set up a Gateway like a resolver like a like an automated virtual machine let's put it that way right that can just Syndicate through the through on top of the chain so I I think you need to be in alignment with the hard Fork changes with the new architecture of getting into the root Zone that's all I'm saying is whether they're separate or not separate that's that's where you can get distribution in the root Zone browsers right away if you if you have a better alignment
(16:59) with the chain so I'm just saying that would be something to explore yeah and someone's talking about I'm not sure if this is the questions that they're saying in the chat it's a little too fast for me but you're not proving ownership with this you know it's some of the characteristics if you look at it are very similar to ens anyone can go in and renew an ens name if Todd has his ens name I can go renew his name it should be similar here where anyone can go in and renew that name
(17:27) something now I'm not sure what the guidelines are with iido and so forth so there's but yeah but there's also remember 800 like the developer right they they air dropped whatever the percentage to the the open source developer community and nobody claimed it right so they're proposing those tokens go back into somewhere else and that would be a good case study to you know try and apply for some of those H&S that didn't go to developers to go to like a co-op fund to acquire distribution in the root Zone through.
(17:58) hns in two years whatever the time frame is that that's all that's all I'm saying is I think it would be more L doing it when a hard Fork occurs yeah I like Paul I'm sure you're seeing like me so everybody's touching on great stuff in the chat meaning there's this really needs to be a a deep discussion because there's all sorts of I can come up in my own mind I see Scott and Tom were making some comments right it would be no C so squatters because you could only get the name if you had the handshake name but
(18:32) like Tom mentioned that doesn't mean that everybody with a handshake name is going to want their hns what you're talking about Paul is just letting having it resolved but there's going to you know there would be issues too say you have the the H&S name and then you let it expire but you've you've had now you have the hns name there well there there's just so many issues that need to be addressed but Paul I'm like you it's all about the money first first we got to find out okay who got the money ch is
(18:59) right on it's going to be a quarter million it's going to be more than that but 250,000 to get rolling and then of course who's going to handle the application and we already have that taken care of that's going to be TLD strategies I got a partnership with Jeff Newman who's who was successful got 400 extensions in the last round okay so I mean we we know how to go about professionally applying and working with I can and then getting the right backend providers and then managing and complying and moving forward as a as a
(19:31) registry but still what about the de and what about putting the money together and quickly I'll say well of course we're going to go to the community and handshake Advocates and people that just invest in domains there's a lot of guys in the traditional space well like say J Andrew Rosner who invested in handshake unsto invest in a bunch of stuff and so there's going to be some people who aren't really I say involved in the community that are on this call but interested in ipating in that sense and
(20:00) I was going to mention one one of our first supporters Irwin down at hn. auu is already ready to contribute and I said we're we're just now we've been discussing this Paul and I have for a year it seems like maybe even more well when Chad and Paul and I did another show we we always talked about it well now the shit's about ready to hit the fan meaning it's really not too soon to start getting involved especially to get the money in order what were you going to mention I mean we got another five minutes left but or I
(20:33) guess I want to say follow me on the only thing I think is follow me on Twitter so when I can put together a space of when we can really solely discuss know this issue or idea of securing hns in the next round I'll have lawyers there to to make sure that yeah so if we got the money can we get it and and about really some of the operational and managerial things that are going to have to happen if you did happen to secure.
(21:04) hns but Paul what did you want to mention oh no what you were just mentioning right now let's say the domain doesn't get renewed and so forth well I mean this is working as a just as a resolving solution it's and that means that once you try to log in and basically you wouldn't be able to resolve it you know that's that's all that would happened there you know the second part of it it doesn't have to be initially when you and I started having these conversations I was being really secretive about it at the end of the day
(21:26) it doesn't have to be hns when we're sending no one cares about tcpip they just want to make sure that email gets through the naming on it it actually H&S may be not the best idea it should be maybe something a little more user friendly a little more mainstream you know and it and it could be multiple of them we could have hns you could have another one doing it and you could resolve on on multiple of them there's no reason why it should just be one you're just using this as a base layer
(21:55) as a Paul start interrupt you can do that now zip can created that you know you can do it now you can do it now on a on a on a TLD root zone right now Zipkin created that that browser thing so it's not that the capabilities aren't already there I think it's the identity and getting the distribution and one swath on the centralized root Zone server is there if the economic numbers match you'll get a bunch of Bitcoin Maxis kind of that see that right because it is a kind of a sister Bitcoin been off I
(22:29) would say so so I just it has to be economically there and it has to have opportunity there but the technical capabilities have already been shown that already out there sorry to interrupt S no no no it's not interrupting you're absolutely right is there but but there's friction there Chad no one wants to download the plug-in no one wants to take that extra step it has to be grandmar proof at this point Grandma forget grandma has to be mom proof at this point you know for it to get through like if if your mom
(22:55) doesn't understand this it's tough to get the average mainstream person who's already two busy trying to handle a basic website for them to understand this and one thing needs to happen I think a lot of the as we see more and more things happening in the real world with confiscation of websites and the censorship and so forth I think that will that will automatically create adoption here in on this side of the world yeah proxity is creating their own browser right you never know new browsers that are coming up that are AI
(23:23) native that might take the Etho you might have an actually an automated agent that creates its own that wants a decentralized naming system right I mean we're we're thinking humans have to create this stuff in three to five years you might have agents building their own systems and this might be the system that kind of calls out to a potential future agent that builds itself that that'd be interesting to watch I can see that happening in five years yeah only got a minute left I wanted to say about
(23:52) the adoption the that's the main reason I think to apply and in I want to answer some of the questions in the chat we don't even have time applying for this why do it some people are questioning why would you even want to do it I don't well you would want to do it to speed up the adoption of handshake and then of course it's really a bridge and eventually we can get rid of that bridge once these tools like in the Fantastic session before this once we have more tools to be able to build sites and the traditional system is not
(24:25) needed well yeah we can we want to have an ALT route that's not related that's not controlled by I can we're just talking about in the meantime is it too expensive and I don't think it is I don't think because I think I know there's ways to make money if a registry is operated properly if an extension does have a little bit of adoption Paul was talking about hundreds of thousands of names with 10,000 if if regardless I'm going to finish by saying if it wasn't H&S somebody's applying for
(24:55) you're going to see in this next round there's going to be a lot of applications for different extensions and if an extension is say secured that somebody wins an extension if they have a I mean a nice marketing plan and they get 10 20,000 50,000 registrations that's a successful extension if they're really efficient basically it can be a money maker as well so there's a a lot to talk about with the next round and applying for gtlds specifically handshake and we'll I'll reach out to
(25:27) Mike and let him know here's when we're going to have a session about it and then a lot of us can get together and talk about if you can Sol if you can solve the distribution problem in H&S you'll be a millionaire yeah I just yeah just this is the beauty of it it's optional it's a way to appease the Maxis out there that don't want to have anything to do with I can it's completely optional to resolve your names via dohns on I can you're not forced to if you pay the fee that's the only time it
(25:56) resolve so that's all I want to get in yeah great great chat guys yeah awesome thanks yeah this is definitely inspiring lots of chat lots of conversations here there's seems like a lot of know the hardest thing about a decentralized community is getting everybody to agree right I guess democracy in general right versus authoritarianism maybe or I don't know I know you need to move on Mike but yeah we're not going to get everybody to agree and Paul just said it yeah not everybody has to participate it's like
(26:24) only but I mean certainly you want the community to to want it and you got that's what we're going to do we got to get indications of interest of really and then also do some troubleshooting on potential po but mostly want to protect it so somebody else doesn't get it as well but how do you just spend 300,000 to protect from somebody else yeah next was just making sure everybody saw in his chat he turned down a 15 million offer on Q so he's trying to say there's could have been a bigger one but he
(26:54) didn't even want to accept it just to get that out there his request to state that but this is a great one thanks Todd Paul and Chad EAD for sharing oh there he is oh he's got there he is no more monkey here we go back all right guys have a good one see you guys have a great day thanks so much yep [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] this event wouldn't be possible without our amazing sponsors our bronze sponsors dweb
(27:56) Foundation dox our community sponsors handshake Australia name base de centralizers hnsm Market thank you for your support in building a decentralized future