Handshake is building a pretty stellar community (unofficially)

Tonight I had the chance to join a Handshake Directors meeting, I first heard about it through Mark Smith, who goes by @NamesakeMark on Twitter. Here’s the tweet:

HNS Directors Meeting

The topic for the call was super interesting, here’s a brief summary they provided:

Namer News
We’ll be brainstorming a rough draft for a community Code of Conduct that will cover behavior such as trademark name squatting and personal name sniping. You can help by sharing example Code of Conducts from other communities, highlighting specific behavior you’ve seen from the community that should be addressed, and coming up with a name for Handshake’s “Code of Conduct”.(Source – Namer News)

This is a hot topic when it comes to Handshake and something I think is important to get right. One of my biggest fears with, and for Handshake has been that, without any regulation, it could quickly become known as a place for fringe groups and hate speech to thrive, which IMO isn’t what the world needs more of now.

I know this is a hot topic, and I know that some of you will say, “Morgan – stop trying to regulate things, blockchain and Defi is all about deregulation!” At the end of the day, yes – Handshake will definitely have a lot less regulation, and in a very positive way, much less interference from companies focused on just squeezing out profits for shareholders. That’s a good thing.

If most of what happens on Handshake is wonderful, inventive, and awesome things that thrive in this new environment, I’m all for it. If it goes in the other direction and becomes a new home for the darker side of the Internet, then I think the vision the Handshake team has now will be squelched.

I’ll be honest, I was blown away by the call, which is now becoming a trend for anything I do with the Handshake community. First – the group is smart, okay that’s an understatement, they’re freaking brilliant and it’s inspiring. Kiba Gateaux (@KibaGateuax) shared an awesome idea with the group at a level of detail that I think should qualify him as one of the top minds in Blockchain, IMHO.

This set the tone for the call and from there more people openly shared ideas, had a discussion about new things they’re building to help the community, and did what I all think we wish ICANN did more often, or ever – they talked about what they can do to make Handshake the best experience as possible for the user. And that’s what makes the whole crypto/blockchain/defi would so different, some projects have a team with a vision for creating a better system than exists today, and I think the Handshake team as the magic.

I don’t think I’m supposed to share exactly what was said in the call so I’m not going to comment more about the content except to say that it’s clear they’re really thinking hard about how to do this right. The combination of this attitude with the sheer number of brilliant people they have behind the project makes me even more excited about the future of Handshake.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to balance my own investment in Handshake, figuring out the right balance between the token, domains, and investing in companies in the space. I’m still not sure except to say that every time I interact with the community I feel like shifting more investment focus onto Handshake every time.

But it’s still early, and I’m still learning, let the journey continue. Thanks to Johnny, Mark, Kiba, Michael and all the other amazing people on the call, I’m looking forward to the next one!

Disclosure: I am an investor in Handshake.

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton