Domain auction concludes with bid valued at $750,000.
This afternoon, I’ve received a couple of emails from people attending the Handycon 2022 live domain auction. A bidder named “whale” just won an auction for the .s Handshake domain for 4.7 million HNS tokens. At the current price of just under $.16, that’s about $750,000.
It’s the highest known price ever paid for a Handshake domain, assuming the transaction goes through.
The top level domain was originally purchased for about 63,000 HNS in an auction in November 2020.
Handshake domains don’t work like regular domains. They are based on blockchain technology, and, for anyone to visit a site built on one, people have to use a special browser or plugin. Blockchain-based domains are becoming somewhat popular for crypto wallet addresses, but I’m not aware of any websites built on one that have gone mainstream. They face uphill challenges.
Unique to Handshake is that you can buy the top level domain — in this case .s — and then sell second level domains below those.
A couple of domain name registrars offer second level Handshake domains, most notably Namecheap.
I’m always cautious when an outsized transaction like this happens. We’ll see what happens in the coming weeks.
