A president changes a lake’s name in a government database. Across the border, the old name stays put. The map on your phone now depends on which authority its maker follows.
The dispute over Lake Ontario and “Lake America,” described in Lindsey Galloway’s BBC article, shows how much power sits inside the supposedly routine business of naming things. Someone changes a database, and their version of the world becomes the default on someone else’s screen. BBC Travel
The people building communities online face a similar question: who gets to hold that power? Handshake gives more of them a way to hold it themselves.
An open internet can make it possible to become a naming authority.
A quick DNS refresher: a top-level domain, or TLD, is an extension such as .org. Its operator administers the names directly beneath it. The DNS root records which nameservers are authoritative for each TLD, and IANA manages those root delegations through an ICANN affiliate. That hierarchy divides responsibility among organisations so they can run their own parts of a shared naming system. IANA’s root-zone explanation
Control a TLD and you control a branch of that system. You have decisions to make.
Within the rules governing the registry, you can decide who gets a name and what they pay. You set registration conditions and choose how to delegate the technical work. A namespace can be run for profit, maintained as a shared resource or built around membership of a particular institution.
Who should be able to make those decisions at the top level?
ICANN admits new generic TLD operators through an application process that leads, for successful applicants, to a registry agreement. Its multistakeholder system provides representation and accountability. But having a voice in that process doesn't give you a TLD of your own. ICANN’s 2026 programme, ICANN bylaws
For the 2026 round, the base evaluation fee is US$227,000 per application. Some applications incur further costs. Qualifying applicants can receive support discounts, and ICANN sets the fee to recover the programme’s costs. ICANN’s fee schedule
Whatever the justification for the fee, the result is a system that expects you to arrive with substantial resources and the ability to get through an institutional approval process.
Plenty of worthwhile institutions start before their founders have either.
With Handshake, they can start smaller.
Handshake maintains an alternative root through a peer-to-peer network. Available names enter auctions using HNS, the network’s currency. The protocol sets the rules for registration and updates; cryptographic keys let the holder authorise changes. Registering a Handshake TLD requires no ICANN application or registry agreement. Handshake, Handshake’s explanation of name control
People can acquire top-level naming authority by participating in the protocol, without first qualifying as an ICANN registry operator.
An ordinary domain already gives its holder considerable freedom. If you control example.org, you can create subdomains and delegate them to others, or run independent services under that name. DNS was built to allow this. You still don't control .org itself. Its registration policies and root delegation belong to a level above yours. DNS delegation, RFC 1034
A Handshake TLD puts your branch directly beneath the Handshake root. The network recognises control according to its rules and the transactions your keys authorise. You depend on the protocol and its security, while your TLD sits outside the ICANN registry-contract hierarchy.
You can govern your own extension, including the names issued directly beneath it.
Consider a community preserving a language whose speakers live across several countries.
Its members acquire an available Handshake TLD and set up a registry for their schools, archives, publishers and cultural projects. They decide who gets a name, how to pay for the registry and what happens when an organisation closes. Someone has to look after the keys. The community also needs a way to replace those people when their time is up.
A school could run its own part of the namespace, with a publisher taking responsibility for another. Years later, a new generation could take over the registry and keep the community’s name.
As the institutions use it, the extension starts to mean something to the people who encounter it. They recognise the community through the work done under its name.
Those services could also run beneath an ordinary domain. TLD control adds responsibility for the branch immediately below the root, including its second-level allocations and delegation records. The community governs its own extension as well as the names below it.
Handshake provides records that delegate to nameservers and establish DNSSEC authentication for the zone. The members still have to run the registry and earn their community’s trust. Handshake’s resource-record documentation
That's one possible use. A profession might have different reasons for running a namespace. So might a cooperative, a scientific community or a group working on something that doesn't fit any familiar category yet.
They shouldn't have to prove the value of every experiment before they can begin.
An open internet gives people room to build new software and form their own associations. It should give them room to decide who governs the names those projects depend on.
The lake dispute shows why official naming authority and a community’s sense of belonging can pull in different directions.
For certain geographic-name applications, ICANN requires government support or non-objection. Those rules can protect legitimate interests, but they also make official recognition part of the route to a namespace. ICANN’s geographic-name requirements
Handshake offers a different way to register the name. It doesn't decide who speaks for a people, and winning an auction gives nobody ownership of their history. The protocol has a narrower job: establish which keys control which names.
People can agree on that record and make their own judgements about whoever operates beneath it. Technical agreement leaves room for human disagreement.
A shared naming system does need consistent answers. The Internet Architecture Board warned that conflicting public roots can send people using the same domain to different destinations. Agreement within Handshake doesn't remove that problem between namespaces. RFC 2826
But needing agreement doesn't mean we have settled, for all time, who must administer it.
Handshake is running software that lets participants validate a common record, with entry governed by protocol rules. We can test that approach and work on the weaknesses we find. The distribution of naming authority is something we can work on.
There is practical work ahead. Handshake names need compatible resolution and careful handling of conflicts. They don't enter the ICANN root when registered. The hnsd resolver translates Handshake records into DNS responses and includes an ICANN fallback. Holders must protect their keys and renew their names, and anyone running a registry needs to take responsibility for the people relying on it. Resolver documentation, Registration and renewal guide
Taking those responsibilities seriously is part of making the alternative worth using.
People with a reason to build a namespace should have a way to establish one.
We don't know which communities will form when more people can exercise that authority. Perhaps a registry becomes a cooperative utility, or a scattered culture gathers its institutions beneath a name it governs. Someone may build an organisation that the people writing today’s application rules would never have thought to include.
Hosting and storage give those communities places to keep their work; applications let people use it. Control of a TLD gives them authority over the naming branch through which they can organise and find that work.
Handshake asks us to reconsider a belief we've grown used to: that the institutions governing today’s root must set the limits of tomorrow’s internet.
Why should they?
We can build a common naming system that gives more of its participants the power to establish and govern their own place within it.
Handshake puts that choice within reach. What grows beneath those names should be ours to discover.