HNSNameClaim launches to help people snag their Handshake domain name

In the past I’ve written about some pretty cool things the Handshake community has been doing when it comes to gifting Handshake names. I ended up with morganlinton/ thanks to HandshakeJesus and on a recent Handshake Directors call I heard Mark and Graham talking about building a platform focused specifically on gifting.

Well, fast-forward to today, or more like ten days ago (not sure how I missed this!) and the site is now live at HNSNameClaim.com. The goal of the site is pretty simple – get names to their rightful owners.

I’ve talked about the community that Handshake is building and this concept is one that I think will continue to foster a great community. There’s nothing more frustrating for people than finding out someone bought their name and want a small fortune for it. I can’t tell you how many friends I’ve had who go out and raise a big VC round and later find out someone registered their name and are trying to sell it to them. Yes this pisses people off, and it honestly makes the domain industry look scammy every time this happens.

Handshake is trying to get ahead of this and I think this site is a step in the right direction. The Gift Registry, as it stands today is being organized in AirTable which has a pretty slick web integration that allows you to view it on the site or export as a CSV file. Here’s what it looks like:

HNS Name Claim Gift Registry

And for those wondering, Mark and the rest of the people working on this gift registry aren’t making a dime, they’re just doing this because they care about building a great community, which I think is awesome.

One question that came up during the Directors meeting that I thought was interesting is – “what happens when you have two people with the same name that both want their Handshake name?” This is a tricky situation and the reality is, from time to time someone will miss out on getting their name, but not because sometime tried to scoop it up to resell to them but instead because someone else with the same name got to it first.

This will happen from time to time but I think most of the time people that are interested in Handshake will find HNSNameClaim.com as a handy resource that helped them get their name and exposed them to the Handshake ecosystem.

While these are still the early days and nobody knows where Handshake is going, I think it’s pretty clear people are really thinking long and hard about how to build a great foundation, and this is a good example of things moving in the right direction. Congrats to Mark and Graham on the launch and thanks for doing what you’re doing! 🙏

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton