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0 pointsdonmcronald4y ago0 comments

I’m not a fan of Handshake. The auction system is pretty much the worst system you could build for normal (ie: not rich) businesses that want to register their own names. Seriously, who wants to compete against people who have a gazillion HNS that they got for free?

Then add in the fact that it’s a judgement proof blockchain and you’ve got a system that’s awesome for squatters, flippers, and rent seekers while being terrible for real businesses that want to build real value. How do I stop someone from typo squatting or violating my trademarks?

I’m always surprised by the number of people that want lawlessness.

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zozbot2344y ago

Zooko's triangle implies that human-meaningful names will always be contended (to a varying extent) in a decentralized system. But you don't need human-meaningful names to host your services under, only to optionally direct users to them. So an auction system seems like it should be the most appropriate for such user-facing links. Individual users can always opt for some alternative means of indexing, e.g. "petnames" chosen locally or provided by some source that they trust.

mprime14y ago

> Zooko’s Triangle

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooko's_triangle

withinboredom4y ago

I’ve lost auctions I’ve started by forgetting about it. I usually just hop on name base and send them an offer for the amount they bought it for. Usually they will sell it or be a dick and counter-offer a ridiculous sum.

I haven’t had any issue with it.

k__4y ago

Yes.

Saw that on Solana and it sucks hard.

I know a bunch of people who lost their auctions to some grifters.

rvz4y ago

Interesting. However:

> Seriously, who wants to compete against people who have a gazillion HNS that they got for free?

Or you can buy it off of them, just like you do anywhere else if you were too late to buy say, pets.com, nba.eth or .ftx/ which were all 'squatted and flipped' today. No different here and neither system aimed to totally prevent squatters, flippers and rent seekers. Because you cannot and you know that.

> Then add in the fact that it’s a judgement proof blockchain and you’ve got a system that’s awesome for squatters, flippers, and rent seekers while being terrible for real businesses that want to build real value.

Are you going to say all of that to the Russian users on Namecheap who are getting their domains de-platformed? [0] Perhaps we loved .org getting into the hands of a private-equity firm didn't we? [1] or even the .io [2] and other TLDs price increases. [3]. All thanks to ICANN, right?

At least to some extent with either ENS or Handshake a registrar can't 'de-platform' the whole TLD nor can it be seized by anyone; nor can a government request to de-root an entire TLD. [4]

> How do I stop someone from typo squatting or violating my trademarks?

As I said before, nobody can stop that and anyone who has a popular online business knows that.

Even when you take them down, more typo squatters take its place. It happens everywhere. There will always be typo squatters even after trademark violations, unless you buy the domains off of them.

> I’m always surprised by the number of people that want lawlessness.

Lawlessness? I wonder how those 'criminals' can really cover their tracks by owning several domains on a public blockchain. /s

If you want true lawlessness, use Tor and scrambled .onion links followed by messaging apps like Signal with E2EE and sending private untraceable cryptocurrencies on encrypted blockchains like MobileCoin. It's what all the extremists and criminals use to fund their activities and lawlessness without a trace and no transparency.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30504812

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611677

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29403773

[3] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/04/ethos-capital-grabbing...

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30509567

donmcronaldOP4y ago

> As I said before, nobody can stop that and anyone who has a popular online business knows that.

> Even when you take them down, more typo squatters take its place. It happens everywhere. There will always be typo squatters even after trademark violations, unless you buy the domains off of them.

I disagree with almost everything you wrote, but especially this part. There's absolutely recourse in the current system. It roughly goes webhost > registrar > registry > ICANN. If someone is violating your trademark you can use ICANN's UDRP to file a complaint and ICANN has a process for resolving the dispute.

You can even see the market impact of the UDRP if you pay attention. $5k is often quoted as the rough cost to expect when making a UDRP complaint, so it's not a coincidence that most domainers (aka squatters) sell non-premium domains for $2k-4k.

At the very least the bad actor is going to have to reveal their identity to accept your money or to participate in the UDRP. That alone is enough to deter some of the most egregious behavior.

dmitriid4y ago

> Or you can buy it off of them, just like you do anywhere else

Domain squatting is a thing, is a problem, and it surprises me not at all that web3/crypto shills pretend it isn't.

thebean114y ago

There's a difference between pretending it doesn't exist, and acknowledging that it's inevitable (especially in a system where there's nobody who can unilaterally reassign other parties' domain names). What would your solution here be?

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