Archive Notice: This documentation was originally published by Namebase and has been preserved by the LearnHNS community.
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Developer Guides
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Overview
Handshake is a decentralized, permissionless naming protocol where every peer is validating and in charge of managing the root DNS naming zone with the goal of creating an alternative to existing Certificate Authorities and naming systems.
Source: Handshake Whitepaper
In essence, Handshake takes a core piece of internet infrastructure, DNS’s root zone file, and puts it on a blockchain. At a high level, Handshake is just decentralized DNS, but solving the CA problem and making it possible to self-custody, use, and transfer names permissionlessly in a publicly-verifiable way opens up exciting applications for developers that weren’t feasible before Handshake. We document four of those applications in this guide:
| Application | Description | Scenario |
|---|---|---|
| Traditional website | Use a Handshake name to resolve traditional websites hosted on servers or hosting providers like GitHub Pages, Heroku, and Vercel |
|
| Decentralized website | Pair Handshake with decentralized storage solutions like Skynet and IPFS to create fully decentralized websites |
|
| Decentralized login | Allow users to securely login to your website using their Handshake names without needing to store emails or passwords |
|
| Decentralized social application | Develop decentralized social applications that minimize centralization while avoiding the the usability issues of federated applications |
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Each application section is standalone and doesn’t require that you are familiar with the previous application sections. Dive into whatever interests you most!