October 29, 2025 • 23 mins
In this conversation, Peter and Chris discuss the Cardano Foundation's initiative to acquire top-level domain names through ICANN, emphasizing the importance of community support and intellectual property. They explore the integration of Web2 and Web3 technologies, particularly through the Handshake project, and the development of trustless systems using smart contracts. The discussion also highlights the differences between various Web3 domain systems and the significance of community engagement in shaping the future of these initiatives.
Takeaways
Sound bites
"Domains are the original NFT."
"This is pretty big."
"This is an absolute winner."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Cardano's Domain Name Initiative
02:48 Understanding ICANN and Top-Level Domains
06:09 The Importance of Intellectual Property in Domain Names
08:58 Integrating Web2 and Web3: The Handshake Project
11:53 Building Trustless Systems with Smart Contracts
15:06 Comparing Web3 Domains: Handshake vs. Unstoppable Domains
17:58 Community Engagement and Future Prospects
DISCLAIMER: This content is for informational and educational purposes only and is not financial, investment, or legal advice. I am not affiliated with, nor compensated by, the project discussed—no tokens, payments, or incentives received. I do not hold a stake in the project, including private or future allocations. All views are my own, based on public information. Always do your own research and consult a licensed advisor before investing. Crypto investments carry high risk, and past performance is no guarantee of future results. I am not responsible for any decisions you make based on this content.
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Follow on Social:
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Takeaways
- The Cardano Foundation is seeking community support for acquiring top-level domains.
- ICANN's opening for new domains is a rare opportunity.
- Intellectual property in domain names is crucial for brand protection.
- Domains can be seen as the original NFTs, unique and valuable.
- Integrating Web2 and Web3 can enhance user experience and accessibility.
- The Handshake project aims to decentralize domain name management.
- Smart contracts can facilitate trustless interactions in domain ownership.
- Lower friction in accessing domain services is essential for adoption.
- Community engagement is vital for the success of the Cardano domain initiative.
- The proposal is a long-term vision that requires ongoing support.
Sound bites
"Domains are the original NFT."
"This is pretty big."
"This is an absolute winner."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Cardano's Domain Name Initiative
02:48 Understanding ICANN and Top-Level Domains
06:09 The Importance of Intellectual Property in Domain Names
08:58 Integrating Web2 and Web3: The Handshake Project
11:53 Building Trustless Systems with Smart Contracts
15:06 Comparing Web3 Domains: Handshake vs. Unstoppable Domains
17:58 Community Engagement and Future Prospects
DISCLAIMER: This content is for informational and educational purposes only and is not financial, investment, or legal advice. I am not affiliated with, nor compensated by, the project discussed—no tokens, payments, or incentives received. I do not hold a stake in the project, including private or future allocations. All views are my own, based on public information. Always do your own research and consult a licensed advisor before investing. Crypto investments carry high risk, and past performance is no guarantee of future results. I am not responsible for any decisions you make based on this content.
🔗 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq8FhvxET2k
Subscribe to the audio podcast:
🔗 https://bit.ly/learncardano-spotify
🔗 https://apple.co/3jEPM8C
🔗 https://learncardano.io/
Follow on Social:
🔗 https://x.com/learncardano
🔗 https://facebook.com/learncardano
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So you may have seen recently that the Kadana Foundation
put out a post about I can and domain names
such as dot Cardano or dot Aida, and this got
me really excited. I've always wanted a Cardona specific domain name.
And luckily I have an expert here that has been
(00:21):
working in this space and also consulting and advising with
the Kadana Foundation about this particular announcement and what they're
planning here, and I have Chris joined me from blink
Labs to talk all about it. Chris, welcome back to
the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Hey, thanks for having me, Pete.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
So first off, I think we've got to talk about
this particular announcement and what the Kadana Foundation is on about.
Here can explain to us normies what it is, what
it's all about, and what it actually means.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Sure, So on the Internet, all websites, everything has a name,
right and you know, most people are aware of it.
They think of something like you know, a dot com
or something like that, you know like x dot com
for example to go to X or Twitter, and people
know about these things. Well, that comm is actually a
(01:15):
top level domain and what that means is it's managed
as a unit and it's managed by i can and
certain people are able to be the essentially the hosting
companies for that. And so every now and then i
(01:36):
can has opened up to allow new domains. And the
last time that new top level domains came around, we
got some new ones like dot Google or dot blog,
things like that that were more generic or company specific
top level domains. I CAN is now opening up applications
(01:56):
again for this. Now it's been thirteen years since they
did this, so it's a very rare process. And so
one of the things that the Cardina Foundation is attempting
to do is looking to get community support for going
to bid on these top level domains. The way that
(02:20):
it works with i can is there's multiple different reasons
why you might request a top level domain, right like
a big company for example, could do it.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Like Google, or like I said, like dot.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Blog is a much more generic top level domain. One
of the other ways is via community. So that is
what the Cardino Foundation is trying to do, is trying
to drum up community support via an info action on chain,
so using it as a poll, as a vote, you know,
just as it's designed to do to gauge community sentiment
(02:53):
and they're going to use that as evidence with i
CAN to apply as a community and to show that
they have community be backing. So that's a little bit
of the proposal itself. But now I can kind of
explain why these things are important, right, So.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
It's not exactly a treasury withdrawal or going down that path.
This is purely a governance info action to get the
support of the community and the numbers.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
That's what they're correct, correct.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
The Cardino Foundation wants to spend their own money for
this entirely. Now, real quick, before I kind of delve
back into DNS, I just want to real quickly talk
about like intellectual property. And another reason why this is important,
aside from utility, is the Cardino Foundation owns the Cardino
trademarks and name right, so it's extremely important to keep
(03:45):
hold of this kind of IP. And you know, someone
like the Cardino Foundation, you know that works with the
Cardino and with the community, should be someone that holds
this IP. And with that in mind, these top level
domains and this new application that's happening with i CAN
is an opportunity where someone else could potentially get IP
(04:08):
that may you know, maybe should belong to Cardano Cardano
Foundation things like that, and that is the Ada, dot
Leta and dot Cardino namespace right in DNS is those
are things that we want to be associated with Cardano
and the ATA coin. So, you know, from just from
a pure intellectual property standpoint, right like this is some
(04:32):
of the most valuable property on the Internet. You know,
people don't think about domains in that way, but domains
are the original NFT they really are, right, They're their
original thing that people were buying, speculating on, trading on.
They're unique, right, you can only have one of a domain,
you know, and that sort of thing. A top level
(04:53):
domains are even more unique than that because they're so
rare to be able to create. So being able to
not only own that IP but then also being able
to build off of it with second level domains, you know,
is essentially the almost like exponential to just the domain
ownership itself, right, because you have the domains and then
(05:15):
the ability to create subdomains, so all of that additional namespace.
You know, So if Krodano Foundation has the Duck Cardano
top level domain, you could have learn duck Koda.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Does open up a lot of opportunities and all these
branding exercises and all sorts of things that we can
do with it. So I'm pretty interested in what could
come out of this. And I have to look back.
My very first job that I ever got was actually
for a company that purchased domain names and flipped them.
So they got in early in the early nineties, brought
(05:52):
up tens of thousands domain names and were flipping them
on the market. So yeah, I'm very well aware of this.
Very well happen if this happens in the Cadano space
with the dot Cardana and Dot eight as well, So
we'll see what happens there. Well, actually I could tell
what will happen there with the type of community that
we have, I know exactly what's going to happen there.
(06:15):
But so how does this tie into some of the
work that you guys have been doing. I've been watching
ages ago that you've been working with something called Handshake,
and I've been trying to tee up an interview about
it as well, but you know, it wasn't quite ready yet,
but I think it's pretty prime now to talk about
this and some of the lower the next parts of
(06:37):
the tech tree, the tech stack here, and especially what
you guys doing absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
So you know, just real quick kind of aside. One
of the things that typically happens with a lot of
people building Web three projects is they're extremely ambitious. So
this is like the case or Handshake is it's extremely ambitious.
And what I mean by that is they're trying to
completely replace occurrencys, right, so I can as a centralized
authority that is responsible for these names, right, the top
(07:06):
level domain names. Handshake is a decentralized system that is
a proof of work blockchain forked off of Bitcoin. That's
essentially an implementation of Satoshi's name coin vision, and the
idea is is it was to decentralize the root of dns,
so essentially to replace Now they've purposely done a lot
(07:30):
of work to make sure there's not overlap, right, but
there's been very very little work to actually integrate these
two things. So our work that we've been building that
was paid for via Catalyst and voted on by the
Cardano Foundation, so they've been supporting this kind of work
for a long time, was to build essentially a I'm
(07:52):
going to say a trustless bridge, but that's not exactly
what it is. But the ability for Handshake domain owners
to be able to bring those domains and mint on
Cardano and then sell second level domains on Cardon. And
this was all of the smart contracts and infrastructure necessary
to support that is what we've been building. So this links,
(08:12):
you know, essentially a Web three route with a Web
three second level domains. The advantage and the things that
come about here now with the Cardano Foundation going to
i can and purchasing these domains is they're getting it
in the traditional old root of trust. Well, we also
(08:33):
have the Handshake domains and have secured the Handshake domains
for dot Eta and dot Cardon, So now we can
point all of them at the same place, right and
essentially merge the Web two and Web three stacks here
where we can store dot Ata and dot Cardano domains
on Cardano. Cardano is the backing store for these domains,
(08:56):
but they can be sold in the traditional marketplaces like
you might be to buy it go Daddy or anything
like that, right, because that's the advantage of having it
from i can. So we're able to start trying to
merge the old with the new. Right, you know, one
of the problems with using non Ican domains is it's
very hard to get SSL certificates and it's definitely not
(09:18):
built into browsers. So this is essentially something's required in
the modern world. And this is when I talk about
like root and I talk about trust. A lot of
these things are built off of those. So having the
ability to link up the new system with the old
system at these integration points, right at dot ETA and
dot Cardano, will allow us to further you know, like
(09:40):
the Web three side of things. And you know, there's
a lot of things that can happen. And this is
purely speculative here. There's no talks or anything here to
talk about this, but a're just saying, for example, brave
As just recently added Cardano wallets support directly into their browser,
which means that it can resolve Carodano transactions and things
(10:02):
on the Cardano blockchain. Well, it's not a stretch whatsoever
to add the ability to resolve domains directly off of
the native assets that are being built onto the Cardana blockchain.
So there's a possibility for non either non dot Cardano
things to be brought into the forefront essentially and kind
(10:23):
of ride along with this by merging the two of them.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Wow, Okay, this is pretty big, I mean I believe so, yeah,
it's crazy because the like the normal person wouldn't be
going to you know, somewhere on chain to mint domain name.
They just don't understand that. But they've heard of crazy domains.
(10:48):
They've heard of go Daddy, they've heard of all these
major hosting companies, and you know, the local fish and
chip shop down the road will engage wheb agency may
be in. They'll tell them, you know, registered domain name here.
So that front end portal for all these users just
makes sense for them. And to link that through back
(11:09):
on chain and create that kind of ecosystem I think
is brilliant, Absolutely brilliant there. So yeah, I guess you
guys been pretty busy of the last year trying to
integrate that and get that all working. How far along
in the process are you now?
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Well, So, the second level domains on Kodano, we had
a proof of concept running on the pre Pride network
actually at rare Evo last year, so we've had it
operational on chain for quite some time. We had a
catalyst proposal to take that and to update it because
(11:46):
the original version that we had was let's say, fully
trusted we were only going to work on domains that
we already owned, top level domains that we already owned
from Handshake. So now we are adding essentially that trustless
that I was talking about, which is the ability for
us to prove ownership on Handshake using a using smart
(12:06):
contracts written in Achin. So we've been rewriting these contracts
that were originally written in polutust X. We're rewriting them
in Achin with Plutus vi III, which allows us to
prove signatures from Handshake because it uses signature type same
as Bitcoin, So all of the work you know for
Bitcoin interoperability and things like that that have happened on
(12:27):
Cardano apply to Handshake also, so we're able to use
a lot of the same methodologies because it's a fork
of Bitcoin, right, the code is, so it allows us
to do a lot of the same things, it uses
the same signature types, this sort of stuff.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
So we've built all We've built.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
The original version on the cardon on just the Cardano side,
and now what we're basically doing is building all of
the how do we get a handshake.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Token into this system trustlessly?
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Right, you know, where someone can lock it in and
then we're able to prove it without us having to
necessarily do any work other than prove that that happened
right un chain, So they'll be able to lock up
their own token sorry their own domain from the handshake side,
and then be able to mint the token on the
cardanos side without you know, asking our permission, essentially right
by locking it into our contracts. So we're building a
(13:18):
example marketplace for this, And the reason why I say
example marketplace is we're just going to show off a
domain that we're already owned, very similar to the previous system,
because that's kind of what's necessary for us to show
that the thing works end to end. It's always hard
to demonstrate infrastructure, so we decided to make like an
example marketplace for Catalyst to show off the infrastructure. But
(13:40):
the idea is people should just be directly integrating with
our smart contracts for these domains. They don't have to
use any UI or API or anything that we provide
all of the smart contracts, which makes it essentially just infrastructure.
So I would say that's probably maybe like fifty percent
of the way done. The smart contracts side. The name
(14:03):
server that we built specifically for reading the data off chain,
indexing it and serving it. The Cardino side has been
done for quite some time, as I said, and we've
been building the Handshake side. And what that essentially means
is we're writing a light node slash indexer for handshake.
So we're writing code to talk to the handshake protocol
(14:26):
and all of that sort of stuff so that we
won't be able to we won't have to use any
other notes. Our name server will be able to talk
to both Cardono and to Handshake, and actually to I can,
so it'll be able to merge the three of them
into a single server capable of serving the data from
all three of them and blending it and merging it.
And you know, that's kind of like the secret sauce,
so to speak, even though it's not. It's all open source.
(14:48):
We've been building it for some time.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
You can go check it out.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
But the DNA server, with that in mind, I would say,
let's say seventy five percent complete going through the handshake stuff.
But we have a fully working DNS system already using
the Cordona side, and so purely on the Corodona side
it works entirely. We're now adding in all of the
(15:13):
Handshake side because originally we were building it and we
were going to sell domains that we already owned only
and then we decided, you know, it's like, well why
do that? You know, It's like, once we've already built
ninety percent of the work for Handshake, you know, why
not build the rest of it and allow anyone that
has domains on Handshake.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
To bring it.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Just blows my mind all of the possibilities here. But
I'm trying to understand also, like how is this compared
to other web reed domains out there, such as like
unstoppable domains or things like that, because you know, they've
had a big marketing porsche and a lot of people
hold those like dot et domains. How's this compared to that?
Speaker 3 (15:53):
The primary one is interoperability, so e ands, unstoppable domains,
all of these things they were require you to, for
lack of a better way of saying it, like go
all in on web three right, Like you have to
read from smart contracts and all of this sort of
stuff to be able to do to be able to
read that data. So it's not integrated with the classical
DNS system at all. It's a separate system. And this
(16:17):
is kind of what was the original state of handshake, right, Like,
it's a fully separate system, so you have to adopt
it separately. It means that someone has to choose to
adopt this new system and probably go through a few
steps right to be able to start using it. And
that's been the main issue. So one of the first
things that we decided was we're going to write our
own DNS server which will do that work for you.
(16:41):
So and we're going to offer it as a service,
so people can you know, access our DNS servers, or
more importantly, they can easily you know, like run their
own and get the same data out of it. But
the last important part is then it serves it over
classical DNS, so you don't need any soft where that is,
(17:01):
you know, written for Web three. You don't need anything
that needs to know anything about blockchain or anything like that.
Anything that works with DNS that's been made over the
past forty fifty years, right, will be fully compatible and
work out of the box. That's that's the idea. So
by providing that additional piece of software, it allows for
(17:22):
people to be able to easily serve up our data
and all of our stuff without having to writing themselves.
So there's a lot to be said about lower friction.
So if someone you know, wanted to be able to,
for example, integrate unsoppable domains, they need to either talk
to the smart contract directly right, meaning write blockchain software,
(17:43):
or talk to their APIs, or go and build their
own server. In this case, that does one of those
two things. In our case, we want to have it
already available, so all you need to do is just
run the piece of software and it's good to go.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
And again, it's DNS, so it's easy, super easy to
rate into anything else. You just point delegation at.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
It and you're done.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Wow. Okay, other handshake people excited about this? Are they aware?
Like do they know what you guys are doing?
Speaker 3 (18:13):
So we've been talking with them for quite some time now.
There is no handshake people, so to speak, very much
like bitcoin, there is no governance or anything like that.
There's no foundation. There's just the miners, the developers, right
you know, and the people that are using it and
selling on it. So it's really really very community. That
(18:33):
being said, we do participate in the community. We've been
keeping them apprized of like what we're building a lot
of these things. We've been showing them our code because
they have interest in, you know, a lot of the
things that we're writing for other use cases because, as
I mentioned, the indexer and things like that that we're
writing for Handshake requires us to write all the protocol
code and all of this stuff, and Go, which is
(18:55):
the language that blink Clouds uses for all of our software,
and that also other developers now to be able to
take that and write additional Go tools and things like
that off of Handshake, and there has been interest in
that in the Handshake community. In fact, they had for
they still have for a very long time a bounty
for someone to rewrite the Handshake.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Node in either Rust or Go. And we will probably
be about.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Seventy five percent eighty percent there to writing a full
node already just from the work that we're doing. So
the last part is essentially adding the proof of work
consensus on top of it, which it's Bitcoin's protocol. So
it's really easy and well documented. So like for example,
in comparison to writing a Cardano node, it's like one
(19:43):
to twentieth of them, right, so I mean it's very
very easy like comparison.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
So the goal will be is.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
We will probably end up doing that and writing you know,
like a full Handshake, which will you know, be a
service to the community, but also allow us to help
provide some of the things that have been missing because
Handshake also has no treasury or no funding programs like
Catalyst or anything like that. So development is very much businesses,
you know, self funding for the purpose of commercial products.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
That's tough.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
That's that's tough. But it does sound like that bounty
is probably in your hands considering you're doing so much
work on it at the moment. But it sounds like
an interesting community.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Yes, yes, yes, I mean, like I said, I equated
to Bitcoin quite a lot, because it really is very
much like Bitcoin in how it's governed. You know, they
for example, most recently they made some changes to the protocol,
and you know, the way that it works is they
make changes to the protocol. It's essentially a feature flag
(20:50):
that miners vote on by turning it on or off,
and then blocks that they make right signal whether or
not they voted for this, you know, I by put
the flag in the actual blocks right, so it's you know,
you know which percentage what percentage of mining now supports
this and you know, like once it gets over a
(21:10):
certain point, it's built so that it activates right, you know,
at a certain block at a certain block height, right,
so you know, once you reach a certain point of
the minor threshold, it just starts taking effect right at
a at a certain point, which is is nice and
interesting because it's such a simple form of governance.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
You know, you don't have to.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Pull anybody or ask anybody or do anything like that.
It's simply you know, flip one bit in a config
file and start maintaining blocksing.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
If anyone out there hasn't seen the governance action yet,
we've still got time to vote on it and give
it some port. But I'll put links down below. If
you are a de rep yourself, or if you've delegated
to de rep, please reach out to them and get
them to look at this governan's action. Show them this
video so I get a better understanding of what it's
(22:02):
all about as well, and hopefully we can get this
one through because I think this is an absolute winner.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Absolutely absolutely, And one thing to also note is this
is the very beginning.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Of the process, so if this gets voted.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
It will be Q one at the earliest of next
year before i CAN really starts moving. It'll probably be
twenty twenty seven before things actually start to move. So
this is a long term vision kind of a problem
and proposal, right, you know. So again it's really just
(22:39):
trying to get support because CF is willing to put
in the work for this multi year project, you know,
for dot Eta, dot Cardano, including you know, being the
backing entity for contracts, anything like that that might be
necessary with i CAN. So it's definitely good to support
it now. You know, it might be another decade or
(22:59):
more before they open up proposals again. So yeah, it's
definitely a thing where we want to do it now
rather than later.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
All right, you hear that, Ben, Everyone get behind this
one and support it. Chris, thank you so much for
joining me in this podcast and explain everything about the
proposal and everything that you're doing. Absolutely appreciate your time
and all the work that you're doing for the don
at ecosystem.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Oh thanks man, and thank you for having me on
the show.
So you may have seen recently that the Kadana Foundation
put out a post about I can and domain names
such as dot Cardano or dot Aida, and this got
me really excited. I've always wanted a Cardona specific domain name.
And luckily I have an expert here that has been
(00:21):
working in this space and also consulting and advising with
the Kadana Foundation about this particular announcement and what they're
planning here, and I have Chris joined me from blink
Labs to talk all about it. Chris, welcome back to
the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Hey, thanks for having me, Pete.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
So first off, I think we've got to talk about
this particular announcement and what the Kadana Foundation is on about.
Here can explain to us normies what it is, what
it's all about, and what it actually means.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Sure, So on the Internet, all websites, everything has a name,
right and you know, most people are aware of it.
They think of something like you know, a dot com
or something like that, you know like x dot com
for example to go to X or Twitter, and people
know about these things. Well, that comm is actually a
(01:15):
top level domain and what that means is it's managed
as a unit and it's managed by i can and
certain people are able to be the essentially the hosting
companies for that. And so every now and then i
(01:36):
can has opened up to allow new domains. And the
last time that new top level domains came around, we
got some new ones like dot Google or dot blog,
things like that that were more generic or company specific
top level domains. I CAN is now opening up applications
(01:56):
again for this. Now it's been thirteen years since they
did this, so it's a very rare process. And so
one of the things that the Cardina Foundation is attempting
to do is looking to get community support for going
to bid on these top level domains. The way that
(02:20):
it works with i can is there's multiple different reasons
why you might request a top level domain, right like
a big company for example, could do it.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Like Google, or like I said, like dot.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Blog is a much more generic top level domain. One
of the other ways is via community. So that is
what the Cardino Foundation is trying to do, is trying
to drum up community support via an info action on chain,
so using it as a poll, as a vote, you know,
just as it's designed to do to gauge community sentiment
(02:53):
and they're going to use that as evidence with i
CAN to apply as a community and to show that
they have community be backing. So that's a little bit
of the proposal itself. But now I can kind of
explain why these things are important, right, So.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
It's not exactly a treasury withdrawal or going down that path.
This is purely a governance info action to get the
support of the community and the numbers.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
That's what they're correct, correct.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
The Cardino Foundation wants to spend their own money for
this entirely. Now, real quick, before I kind of delve
back into DNS, I just want to real quickly talk
about like intellectual property. And another reason why this is important,
aside from utility, is the Cardino Foundation owns the Cardino
trademarks and name right, so it's extremely important to keep
(03:45):
hold of this kind of IP. And you know, someone
like the Cardino Foundation, you know that works with the
Cardino and with the community, should be someone that holds
this IP. And with that in mind, these top level
domains and this new application that's happening with i CAN
is an opportunity where someone else could potentially get IP
(04:08):
that may you know, maybe should belong to Cardano Cardano
Foundation things like that, and that is the Ada, dot
Leta and dot Cardino namespace right in DNS is those
are things that we want to be associated with Cardano
and the ATA coin. So, you know, from just from
a pure intellectual property standpoint, right like this is some
(04:32):
of the most valuable property on the Internet. You know,
people don't think about domains in that way, but domains
are the original NFT they really are, right, They're their
original thing that people were buying, speculating on, trading on.
They're unique, right, you can only have one of a domain,
you know, and that sort of thing. A top level
(04:53):
domains are even more unique than that because they're so
rare to be able to create. So being able to
not only own that IP but then also being able
to build off of it with second level domains, you know,
is essentially the almost like exponential to just the domain
ownership itself, right, because you have the domains and then
(05:15):
the ability to create subdomains, so all of that additional namespace.
You know, So if Krodano Foundation has the Duck Cardano
top level domain, you could have learn duck Koda.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Does open up a lot of opportunities and all these
branding exercises and all sorts of things that we can
do with it. So I'm pretty interested in what could
come out of this. And I have to look back.
My very first job that I ever got was actually
for a company that purchased domain names and flipped them.
So they got in early in the early nineties, brought
(05:52):
up tens of thousands domain names and were flipping them
on the market. So yeah, I'm very well aware of this.
Very well happen if this happens in the Cadano space
with the dot Cardana and Dot eight as well, So
we'll see what happens there. Well, actually I could tell
what will happen there with the type of community that
we have, I know exactly what's going to happen there.
(06:15):
But so how does this tie into some of the
work that you guys have been doing. I've been watching
ages ago that you've been working with something called Handshake,
and I've been trying to tee up an interview about
it as well, but you know, it wasn't quite ready yet,
but I think it's pretty prime now to talk about
this and some of the lower the next parts of
(06:37):
the tech tree, the tech stack here, and especially what
you guys doing absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
So you know, just real quick kind of aside. One
of the things that typically happens with a lot of
people building Web three projects is they're extremely ambitious. So
this is like the case or Handshake is it's extremely ambitious.
And what I mean by that is they're trying to
completely replace occurrencys, right, so I can as a centralized
authority that is responsible for these names, right, the top
(07:06):
level domain names. Handshake is a decentralized system that is
a proof of work blockchain forked off of Bitcoin. That's
essentially an implementation of Satoshi's name coin vision, and the
idea is is it was to decentralize the root of dns,
so essentially to replace Now they've purposely done a lot
(07:30):
of work to make sure there's not overlap, right, but
there's been very very little work to actually integrate these
two things. So our work that we've been building that
was paid for via Catalyst and voted on by the
Cardano Foundation, so they've been supporting this kind of work
for a long time, was to build essentially a I'm
(07:52):
going to say a trustless bridge, but that's not exactly
what it is. But the ability for Handshake domain owners
to be able to bring those domains and mint on
Cardano and then sell second level domains on Cardon. And
this was all of the smart contracts and infrastructure necessary
to support that is what we've been building. So this links,
(08:12):
you know, essentially a Web three route with a Web
three second level domains. The advantage and the things that
come about here now with the Cardano Foundation going to
i can and purchasing these domains is they're getting it
in the traditional old root of trust. Well, we also
(08:33):
have the Handshake domains and have secured the Handshake domains
for dot Eta and dot Cardon, So now we can
point all of them at the same place, right and
essentially merge the Web two and Web three stacks here
where we can store dot Ata and dot Cardano domains
on Cardano. Cardano is the backing store for these domains,
(08:56):
but they can be sold in the traditional marketplaces like
you might be to buy it go Daddy or anything
like that, right, because that's the advantage of having it
from i can. So we're able to start trying to
merge the old with the new. Right, you know, one
of the problems with using non Ican domains is it's
very hard to get SSL certificates and it's definitely not
(09:18):
built into browsers. So this is essentially something's required in
the modern world. And this is when I talk about
like root and I talk about trust. A lot of
these things are built off of those. So having the
ability to link up the new system with the old
system at these integration points, right at dot ETA and
dot Cardano, will allow us to further you know, like
(09:40):
the Web three side of things. And you know, there's
a lot of things that can happen. And this is
purely speculative here. There's no talks or anything here to
talk about this, but a're just saying, for example, brave
As just recently added Cardano wallets support directly into their browser,
which means that it can resolve Carodano transactions and things
(10:02):
on the Cardano blockchain. Well, it's not a stretch whatsoever
to add the ability to resolve domains directly off of
the native assets that are being built onto the Cardana blockchain.
So there's a possibility for non either non dot Cardano
things to be brought into the forefront essentially and kind
(10:23):
of ride along with this by merging the two of them.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Wow, Okay, this is pretty big, I mean I believe so, yeah,
it's crazy because the like the normal person wouldn't be
going to you know, somewhere on chain to mint domain name.
They just don't understand that. But they've heard of crazy domains.
(10:48):
They've heard of go Daddy, they've heard of all these
major hosting companies, and you know, the local fish and
chip shop down the road will engage wheb agency may
be in. They'll tell them, you know, registered domain name here.
So that front end portal for all these users just
makes sense for them. And to link that through back
(11:09):
on chain and create that kind of ecosystem I think
is brilliant, Absolutely brilliant there. So yeah, I guess you
guys been pretty busy of the last year trying to
integrate that and get that all working. How far along
in the process are you now?
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Well, So, the second level domains on Kodano, we had
a proof of concept running on the pre Pride network
actually at rare Evo last year, so we've had it
operational on chain for quite some time. We had a
catalyst proposal to take that and to update it because
(11:46):
the original version that we had was let's say, fully
trusted we were only going to work on domains that
we already owned, top level domains that we already owned
from Handshake. So now we are adding essentially that trustless
that I was talking about, which is the ability for
us to prove ownership on Handshake using a using smart
(12:06):
contracts written in Achin. So we've been rewriting these contracts
that were originally written in polutust X. We're rewriting them
in Achin with Plutus vi III, which allows us to
prove signatures from Handshake because it uses signature type same
as Bitcoin, So all of the work you know for
Bitcoin interoperability and things like that that have happened on
(12:27):
Cardano apply to Handshake also, so we're able to use
a lot of the same methodologies because it's a fork
of Bitcoin, right, the code is, so it allows us
to do a lot of the same things, it uses
the same signature types, this sort of stuff.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
So we've built all We've built.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
The original version on the cardon on just the Cardano side,
and now what we're basically doing is building all of
the how do we get a handshake.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Token into this system trustlessly?
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Right, you know, where someone can lock it in and
then we're able to prove it without us having to
necessarily do any work other than prove that that happened
right un chain, So they'll be able to lock up
their own token sorry their own domain from the handshake side,
and then be able to mint the token on the
cardanos side without you know, asking our permission, essentially right
by locking it into our contracts. So we're building a
(13:18):
example marketplace for this, And the reason why I say
example marketplace is we're just going to show off a
domain that we're already owned, very similar to the previous system,
because that's kind of what's necessary for us to show
that the thing works end to end. It's always hard
to demonstrate infrastructure, so we decided to make like an
example marketplace for Catalyst to show off the infrastructure. But
(13:40):
the idea is people should just be directly integrating with
our smart contracts for these domains. They don't have to
use any UI or API or anything that we provide
all of the smart contracts, which makes it essentially just infrastructure.
So I would say that's probably maybe like fifty percent
of the way done. The smart contracts side. The name
(14:03):
server that we built specifically for reading the data off chain,
indexing it and serving it. The Cardino side has been
done for quite some time, as I said, and we've
been building the Handshake side. And what that essentially means
is we're writing a light node slash indexer for handshake.
So we're writing code to talk to the handshake protocol
(14:26):
and all of that sort of stuff so that we
won't be able to we won't have to use any
other notes. Our name server will be able to talk
to both Cardono and to Handshake, and actually to I can,
so it'll be able to merge the three of them
into a single server capable of serving the data from
all three of them and blending it and merging it.
And you know, that's kind of like the secret sauce,
so to speak, even though it's not. It's all open source.
(14:48):
We've been building it for some time.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
You can go check it out.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
But the DNA server, with that in mind, I would say,
let's say seventy five percent complete going through the handshake stuff.
But we have a fully working DNS system already using
the Cordona side, and so purely on the Corodona side
it works entirely. We're now adding in all of the
(15:13):
Handshake side because originally we were building it and we
were going to sell domains that we already owned only
and then we decided, you know, it's like, well why
do that? You know, It's like, once we've already built
ninety percent of the work for Handshake, you know, why
not build the rest of it and allow anyone that
has domains on Handshake.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
To bring it.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Just blows my mind all of the possibilities here. But
I'm trying to understand also, like how is this compared
to other web reed domains out there, such as like
unstoppable domains or things like that, because you know, they've
had a big marketing porsche and a lot of people
hold those like dot et domains. How's this compared to that?
Speaker 3 (15:53):
The primary one is interoperability, so e ands, unstoppable domains,
all of these things they were require you to, for
lack of a better way of saying it, like go
all in on web three right, Like you have to
read from smart contracts and all of this sort of
stuff to be able to do to be able to
read that data. So it's not integrated with the classical
DNS system at all. It's a separate system. And this
(16:17):
is kind of what was the original state of handshake, right, Like,
it's a fully separate system, so you have to adopt
it separately. It means that someone has to choose to
adopt this new system and probably go through a few
steps right to be able to start using it. And
that's been the main issue. So one of the first
things that we decided was we're going to write our
own DNS server which will do that work for you.
(16:41):
So and we're going to offer it as a service,
so people can you know, access our DNS servers, or
more importantly, they can easily you know, like run their
own and get the same data out of it. But
the last important part is then it serves it over
classical DNS, so you don't need any soft where that is,
(17:01):
you know, written for Web three. You don't need anything
that needs to know anything about blockchain or anything like that.
Anything that works with DNS that's been made over the
past forty fifty years, right, will be fully compatible and
work out of the box. That's that's the idea. So
by providing that additional piece of software, it allows for
(17:22):
people to be able to easily serve up our data
and all of our stuff without having to writing themselves.
So there's a lot to be said about lower friction.
So if someone you know, wanted to be able to,
for example, integrate unsoppable domains, they need to either talk
to the smart contract directly right, meaning write blockchain software,
(17:43):
or talk to their APIs, or go and build their
own server. In this case, that does one of those
two things. In our case, we want to have it
already available, so all you need to do is just
run the piece of software and it's good to go.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
And again, it's DNS, so it's easy, super easy to
rate into anything else. You just point delegation at.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
It and you're done.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Wow. Okay, other handshake people excited about this? Are they aware?
Like do they know what you guys are doing?
Speaker 3 (18:13):
So we've been talking with them for quite some time now.
There is no handshake people, so to speak, very much
like bitcoin, there is no governance or anything like that.
There's no foundation. There's just the miners, the developers, right
you know, and the people that are using it and
selling on it. So it's really really very community. That
(18:33):
being said, we do participate in the community. We've been
keeping them apprized of like what we're building a lot
of these things. We've been showing them our code because
they have interest in, you know, a lot of the
things that we're writing for other use cases because, as
I mentioned, the indexer and things like that that we're
writing for Handshake requires us to write all the protocol
code and all of this stuff, and Go, which is
(18:55):
the language that blink Clouds uses for all of our software,
and that also other developers now to be able to
take that and write additional Go tools and things like
that off of Handshake, and there has been interest in
that in the Handshake community. In fact, they had for
they still have for a very long time a bounty
for someone to rewrite the Handshake.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Node in either Rust or Go. And we will probably
be about.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Seventy five percent eighty percent there to writing a full
node already just from the work that we're doing. So
the last part is essentially adding the proof of work
consensus on top of it, which it's Bitcoin's protocol. So
it's really easy and well documented. So like for example,
in comparison to writing a Cardano node, it's like one
(19:43):
to twentieth of them, right, so I mean it's very
very easy like comparison.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
So the goal will be is.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
We will probably end up doing that and writing you know,
like a full Handshake, which will you know, be a
service to the community, but also allow us to help
provide some of the things that have been missing because
Handshake also has no treasury or no funding programs like
Catalyst or anything like that. So development is very much businesses,
you know, self funding for the purpose of commercial products.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
That's tough.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
That's that's tough. But it does sound like that bounty
is probably in your hands considering you're doing so much
work on it at the moment. But it sounds like
an interesting community.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Yes, yes, yes, I mean, like I said, I equated
to Bitcoin quite a lot, because it really is very
much like Bitcoin in how it's governed. You know, they
for example, most recently they made some changes to the protocol,
and you know, the way that it works is they
make changes to the protocol. It's essentially a feature flag
(20:50):
that miners vote on by turning it on or off,
and then blocks that they make right signal whether or
not they voted for this, you know, I by put
the flag in the actual blocks right, so it's you know,
you know which percentage what percentage of mining now supports
this and you know, like once it gets over a
(21:10):
certain point, it's built so that it activates right, you know,
at a certain block at a certain block height, right,
so you know, once you reach a certain point of
the minor threshold, it just starts taking effect right at
a at a certain point, which is is nice and
interesting because it's such a simple form of governance.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
You know, you don't have to.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Pull anybody or ask anybody or do anything like that.
It's simply you know, flip one bit in a config
file and start maintaining blocksing.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
If anyone out there hasn't seen the governance action yet,
we've still got time to vote on it and give
it some port. But I'll put links down below. If
you are a de rep yourself, or if you've delegated
to de rep, please reach out to them and get
them to look at this governan's action. Show them this
video so I get a better understanding of what it's
(22:02):
all about as well, and hopefully we can get this
one through because I think this is an absolute winner.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Absolutely absolutely, And one thing to also note is this
is the very beginning.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Of the process, so if this gets voted.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
It will be Q one at the earliest of next
year before i CAN really starts moving. It'll probably be
twenty twenty seven before things actually start to move. So
this is a long term vision kind of a problem
and proposal, right, you know. So again it's really just
(22:39):
trying to get support because CF is willing to put
in the work for this multi year project, you know,
for dot Eta, dot Cardano, including you know, being the
backing entity for contracts, anything like that that might be
necessary with i CAN. So it's definitely good to support
it now. You know, it might be another decade or
(22:59):
more before they open up proposals again. So yeah, it's
definitely a thing where we want to do it now
rather than later.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
All right, you hear that, Ben, Everyone get behind this
one and support it. Chris, thank you so much for
joining me in this podcast and explain everything about the
proposal and everything that you're doing. Absolutely appreciate your time
and all the work that you're doing for the don
at ecosystem.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Oh thanks man, and thank you for having me on
the show.
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