Let's start with a question, not an answer

Pull up a chair. Before we talk about code, root zones, or TLDs, let's talk about power — because that's what naming systems actually are. Whoever controls the map of the internet controls, in a real sense, who gets to exist on it. And it turns out that question cuts across the political spectrum in ways that are more interesting than most crypto explainers give credit for.

Handshake (HNS) doesn't have a party. It's a protocol. But the problem it solves — a small number of institutions deciding which domain names are allowed to exist on the internet — is a problem that both the political right and the political left have independently identified, using very different language, for very different reasons. That's worth slowing down on.

The case from the right: sovereignty, property, and distrust of gatekeepers

A recognizable strand of right-of-center thought is built around a few durable instincts: skepticism of centralized authority, a preference for property rights over permission systems, and discomfort with any single institution — public or private — holding unaccountable power over individual expression.

Applied to domain names, that instinct lands directly on ICANN and the incumbent registry system. A .com domain isn't owned, it's leased, indefinitely, from a non-profit that operates under contract with the U.S. Department of Commerce and can be pressured by governments, courts, or even payment processors to delist a name. From this vantage point, Handshake looks like digital homesteading: a name recorded in a blockchain you actually hold the keys to, resistant to seizure, and not contingent on any renewing authority's goodwill. It reframes a domain from a lease into a form of property.

The anti-censorship angle follows naturally. If a name can't be taken down by a registrar under legal or political pressure, that's a feature to anyone who worries about deplatforming or state overreach — a theme that resonates strongly with sovereignty-minded and libertarian-leaning conservatives.

The case from the left: anti-monopoly, digital commons, and surveillance capitalism

Now walk to the other side of the room. A recognizable strand of left-of-center thought is built around different but equally durable instincts: suspicion of concentrated corporate power, a preference for commons and public goods over privatized infrastructure, and concern about surveillance — especially the kind run by advertising-funded platforms rather than governments.

Applied to the same domain name system, this instinct lands on a different but adjacent target: a handful of registrars, registries, and DNS resolvers that function as unaccountable chokepoints, extracting rent on something as basic as a name, and logging every lookup along the way. From this vantage point, Handshake looks less like property and more like a commons — a namespace nobody owns outright, allocated by open auction rather than corporate discretion, with no single company positioned to monetize your browsing habits by watching where you go. The pitch to this audience isn't "your property, your rules" so much as "no landlord at all."

Privacy-focused resolution — the kind promoted through tools like SkyInclude Browser rather than centralized resolvers — fits this frame too: decentralizing not just who issues names, but who gets to watch you use them.

Where it gets uncomfortable — for the right

A good teacher doesn't just hand you the flattering argument. Handshake also creates friction with parts of the right's own worldview.

  • Populism vs. plutocracy. Governance by token holders and auction winners can concentrate influence in whoever has the most capital — which sits awkwardly next to a more populist strand of right politics that distrusts concentrated financial power just as much as concentrated state power.
  • Rule by code, not by consent. Protocol governance isn't elected. For a tradition that often emphasizes accountable, representative institutions, "nobody's in charge, the algorithm decides" is not obviously more legitimate than "ICANN decides" — just differently unaccountable.
  • Crypto skepticism. A meaningful contingent of traditionalist conservatives are simply wary of crypto assets generally, seeing volatility and speculation rather than sound property.

Where it gets uncomfortable — for the left

Symmetrically, Handshake pokes at soft spots in progressive assumptions too.

  • Early-holder inequality. A namespace "owned by no one" still had an initial distribution, and early miners, airdrop recipients, and capital-rich buyers hold outsized influence over a supposedly egalitarian commons — a pattern critics of crypto broadly associate with reproducing the very inequality it claims to dissolve.
  • Environmental cost of mining. Proof-of-work mining carries an energy footprint that sits uneasily next to environmental commitments common on the left.
  • Deregulation by another name. A namespace with no registrar to compel a takedown also has no registrar to compel a takedown of, say, fraud or harassment domains — cutting against a left-leaning preference for platform accountability and consumer protection.

The synthesis: neutral infrastructure as a third position

Here's the lesson I actually want to leave you with: the most interesting reading of Handshake isn't "which side is right about it" — it's that Handshake is trying to occupy a position neither side's existing institutions currently hold: infrastructure that answers to neither a government ministry nor a shareholder-driven platform. That's a genuinely third option, not a rebrand of either camp's preferred authority.

TCP/IP and the original DNS root were, in their early conception, meant to be exactly this kind of neutral plumbing — nobody's political project, just shared infrastructure. Handshake's pitch, stripped of partisan framing, is an attempt to restore that neutrality at the naming layer, using cryptographic ownership instead of institutional trust as the enforcement mechanism.

Whether that succeeds is an empirical and political question that will play out over years, not a conclusion either side gets to declare in advance. But understanding why both a sovereignty-minded conservative and an anti-monopoly progressive can look at the same protocol and see their own values reflected back — that's the actual education here.

Architecture and original research by NIHON — Handshake Infrastructure & Web3 Identity. For privacy-respecting HNS resolution, see SkyInclude Browser. For more foundational explainers, visit LearnHNS.