We often think of the internet as something like a modern day Wild Wild West, where anything goes and people can post and search and do just about whatever they want.
But while that may be true for most people’s daily interactions online, the reality of the internet itself is that it is ending up in the hands of just a few mega corporations. And for many people who believe the internet should remain the ultimate tool of freedom and opportunity, that’s a very bad thing.
The internet didn’t start out in such a centralized manner when it first appeared in the 1980’s as a cooperative endeavor among a few university researchers and educators. Soon, however, personal computing put small computers in people’s homes and they too wanted to try out this new ‘world wide web.’
Ultimately so many people went online that this created what is known as the ‘network effect,’ whereby the more people are using a service, the more value that service can offer. This led to large players entering the realm offering free services like email and search, and then social media, and apps for smartphones. Eventually these companies have come to dominate the internet landscape. But, of course, there was a tradeoff; the introduction of centralized service providers has fueled incredible advancements that have helped build the internet we all enjoy today.
This is not what many developers had in mind when the internet was invented, however. While the internet is still considered the most decentralized communication tool humanity has ever seen, most of its users are now being corralled into an ever-smaller space controlled by a few big companies. Billions of people across the globe have come to rely on just a handful of companies for their information and communication.
These companies are also in control of huge amounts of data, and this fact should have everyone concerned. One large company can shut down entire services, they can choose what you see and read, and can put limits on what you say. Personal information concentrated in a few hands also makes an inviting target for hackers, data breaches and can lead to denials of service and whole industries disrupted.
As the internet continues its march to becoming absolutely indispensable in people’s lives, a growing number of people are striking back. All over the world, a new generation of developers who want to return the internet to the free and open space it started out as are creating new applications that are meant to decentralize the internet.
A good example of this are the peer-to-peer computer networks that employ “blockchain,” which has evolved to be one of the most popular technologies that developers feel will eventually make the internet freer, fairer, and safer.
At its most basic, blockchain is a system for recording information, but it differs from a typical database in the way it stores that information. A typical database is usually stored on a central server and only certain people with permission can access it.
In blockchain, the information is stored on a variety of computers that are owned by totally different entities. In essence no one entity is in charge and the system is run by the people who use it. The information in a blockchain is stored in such a way that makes it difficult or impossible to change, hack, or cheat the system. Any and all transactions can be tracked at any time by anyone on the network.
Most people associate blockchain with the cryptocurrency craze that has swept the world in the last decade. Creating digital currency has been the dream of many for decades. But it was only blockchain technology that allowed people to place trust in digital currency like Bitcoin, Ethereum and others. People can place trust in this kind of money because it can’t be faked, hacked or spent more than once. Blockchain technology ensures it has and keeps its value.
But digital currency is just the tip of the iceberg for the use of blockchain technology as a means to decentralize the internet and open up opportunities to more people. Many companies, including startups and established enterprises, have started using Non-fungible tokens(NFTs) as a way to sell art, collectibles, and even website domain names. NFTs are unique digital tokens that serve as proof of ownership of an asset, and cannot be replicated. NFTs use blockchain technology, which acts as a digital record of all transactions related to the NFT on a vast network of computers. NFT’s not only prove scarcity, which is important to collectors, but the fact they are recorded on a public ledger(the blockchain) gives them more protection and legitimacy to the public.
NFT’s have recently taken off in the art world as a way for artists to make money selling their work. Mike Winkelmann – the digital artist known as Beeple-recently sold one of his digital works for an astounding $69 million through Christie’s auction house.
One of the more exciting uses for NFT’s as a means to open up the internet is in the murky world of website domain names. There are over one billion web addresses in the world today, but many people don’t realize that the entire domain name industry is controlled at the root by a single organization.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that is responsible for overseeing the so-called DNS root, the highest level of the hierarchical global network of DNS servers. ICANN is also responsible for allocating new top-level domain names(TLD), which include .com, .org, .net, and most two-letter country codes.
Various players across the internet have long warned that relying on a single, bureaucratic organization both to oversee the DNS root and to assign top-level domains is dangerous. This wholly centralized approach to the very root of the internet opens up the entire system to a world of bad outcomes, like corporate and government pressure, fraud, hacking, censorship, or the prohibition of certain names.
A project called Handshake aims to eradicate this problem by creating a decentralized internet that relies on a peer-to-peer system to dole out web domains.
Essentially, Handshake is a decentralized domain platform which allows you to own a top level domain name rather than renting it. This means you can actually own .(yourname) and act as your own business. You could actually rent out or sell things like computer.(yourname) or storefront.(yourname.). You could sell as many subdomains as you wish.
A Handshake name is an NFT that exists on blockchain and uses a coin system for name registration. With a Handshake coin (HNS) users can transfer, register, and update internet names. The community can hold auctions and place bids for top-level domains using HNS or trade their HNS as they see fit, and at a price of their choosing.
The project has received over $10 million in funding from excited investors who see the value in a decentralized web. Handshake investors include A16Z, Namecheap, Jehan Chu, founder and managing partner of Kenetic, and Fred Ehrsam, the co-founder of Coinbase. In fact, Namecheap recently acquired a controlling stake in NameBase. Namebase is a domain registrar and onramp for Handshake. You can buy Handshake coins and use it to register and manage Handshake names on NameBase.
Although NFT’s have lately created a buzz due to collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club making record breaking sales, and the fact that various celebrities have joined the party(even the NBA has started issuing NFT trading packs), the space has a lot of room to grow. The market volume of NFT’s is but a mere fraction of what it’s predicted to be in the coming years.
But while the NFT market might currently be displaying some aspects of a bubble, the NFT market will surely grow and gain in popularity as their use in commodifying, protecting and opening up assets, collectibles, and other one-of-a-kind items is undeniable. In the once closed world of the all-important domain name space, that could prove to be a game changer in how the internet is shaped and who, if anyone, gets to control it.
“Handshake is one of the most exciting innovations,” Kenetic’s Chu said recently. “This ability to gain control of the top-level space of the internet, the domain name space of the internet, is a paradigm shift which will affect everything from censorship to decentralized delivery of content. I think it will be the new architecture for the internet to come. Stay tuned for Handshake, I think it’s an incredible opportunity.”
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