HandyCon 2024 | Day 1 - How To Scale HNS? - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpufvokmfWQ

Transcript:
(00:03) [Music] w are we ready are we live hello hello everyone thank you so much uh for joining and participating in handy conon uh 2024 my name is Vita Ridgeway a proud um handshake Enthusiast a member of the community uh TLD holder and also um holder of the token and we have some very distinguished guest with us here today and um they're all going to take a moment and introduce themselves uh how
(01:06) about we start with Marcus and then go around yeah uh hey hi everybody I'm uh Marcus Andrews AKA when air dro the founder of iHeart domains um I do a web through domain and digital ID education uh Business Development uh been in the space for a few years um of course I got introduced a handshake a couple years ago and it kind of turned on the entrepreneu bug as far as and actually turn on the uh the desire to want to educate so happy to be here thank you Nicholas hey everyone Nick Grant uh so actually my day job I'm I'm a cyber
(01:45) security analyst uh so F kind of uh fill with that you know the whole blockchain and then you uh privacy and all so really got interested in this uh was actually saw like the eth domains that were going on when on openc and I found handshake handshake and I was like this is awesome exactly what I prefer and then I just had fun you know making names that were just like huh what's what's funny and then you know buying stuff so glad you're um Roy hey good evening good morning wherever you guys are all over the world
(02:22) yeah happy to be here um I'm a Community member I work in oil field a geologist I've been in this space for a while so I just talk random I talk about my stuff like whatever I feel right so with handshake yeah I saw a opportunity like where yeah it is like a freedom take so that got we hooked to a handshake and from that day onwards I've been part of the community awesome last but not least Alex hey everyone um I'm Alex um product designer with a passion to bring Concepts to life I guess and I'm working at name base trying to
(03:09) improve the user experience um for handshake so yeah excited to talk with all of you guys awesome well thank you so much gentlemen and here um today in this session um the subject matter is scaling um handshake um and basically how to to bring more people uh to the platform and you know um our Collective thoughts about how to do that and um I think we want to kind of talk a little bit about maybe um some of what we think the problem areas are and then we will also hopefully get to some solutions um I think that we all agree um that uh there
(03:53) needs to be building as well as marketing um we are all um you know very keen on the protocol as opposed to you know some of the options out there I think that for the most part we think that handshake is superior um in that area but how do we share and convey that with the rest of the world in a way that moves uh people to action I think um that is uh kind of like what we want to talk about today um so maybe we can start with Alex around some of your thoughts on that sure so so I think that um we do need more um utility for handshake this
(04:38) means more ways to use the names more uh more applications more day-to-day use cases um I did have a chat with a friend uh at name chep the other day and he was saying like even though he's at name chep he's like uh you know what most people just um go on social media you know and uh they most of the people just uh don't even search uh domains anymore and this is part of the reason why I believe that using your domain as your ID uh will be one of the main use cases for a handshake um like en is ens
(05:22) is doing as well um and uh I believe that uh handshake can help resolve that and we are seeing this little by little through applications um like uh resolving wallet addresses on optimism uh which uh hns ID which was built by by name chape uh by name uh Bas is doing very very well um and applications like load pipe and uh my wife's project us swap which is also resolving handshake domains um one of the things I like to do as well well is try to look at uh what other chains or other projects are doing as inspiration and um do e uh
(06:11) really stands out to me uh just because um they're really strong in terms of um not only the marketing they do with with Partners but but also they do have adoption a lot more than um than we do right now and I think it would be interesting if we could somehow uh as a community or um as a group of individuals try to do do a do a bigger bet on uh on on marketing getting handshake out there more and more um and we do this in two ways we do this by saying hey handshake works on this stab this way you can use
(06:57) it as your ID for I don't know forecaster or blue sky for example is a great example and um and Noster as well um yeah and uh really try to focus on building utility um and uh spread the word out as much as as we can yeah awesome thank you so much for that answer I'd like to ask if anyone wanted to chime in on anything um Alex had to say but in addition to that he mentioned um en domains um and I'd like to if someone could compare and contrast uh ens for some of the people who may be new um to the protocol and do
(07:46) not know the differences between um the important differences between the two um and then my my other question with regard to that um because they do a great job of marketing and they have a big Community I have some thoughts around that I think that you know a lot of that had to do with the whole nft you know boom a couple years ago and you know eth being um you know uh a big part of that and so in terms of adoption um you know it just helped uh but I would also I'm wondering if it is more style over substance as it compares
(08:22) to um H&S and and what do you guys think about the utility between the two um anybody could chime in on that um I guess I'll go ahead and chime in because it's it's there's a lot more to it than just the utility on the surface I think a lot of us look at Pro protocols and we look at the utility ours has and the utility the other has and says ours is better and so everyone should adopt us and not the other ens has a culture um and so that there's two ways to answer your question there is actual technical
(08:50) diff differences and if I don't draw everybody out with the other difference I'll get to that uh but the cultural difference um I just left uh e Denver I think what was it like a week ago or something like that can't even remember um but one of the things that I noticed out there in not only this year but last year is that not only are all the platforms developing with ens but the developer culture in crypto it's I guess it's just super easy to develop with ens so they go there first uh not only that
(09:20) but from a trust perspective like we live in an age where there's Bots where there's uh we're trying to do human verification all that kind of stuff uh there's actually a trust Factor associated with do e believe it or not as opposed to any other TLD people will tell you straight up if you have a do eth I don't think you're a scammer and if you have something else you might be um so that's that's from the culture perspective on the technical side I mean the the first obvious differences was
(09:43) before H&S ID um ins domain names were nfts handshakes weren't right um ens uh nfts work in the evm system and resolve there man Shigs don't I mean that's something that's changed now with the uh with H&S ID and optimism and all that but that's kind of what the technical difference was at that point um so hopefully I answered that question I'm on mute I'm on mute sorry yeah okay Roy and Nicholas do you have any um thoughts or any comments that you'd like to add to any of
(10:16) that now do e has its own Community own community of developers they are pioneers obviously they will have bigger ecosystem so yeah every people have preference over E when it comes to wallet names no joke no doubt about it but yeah we also we also getting there we we just getting started awesome Nicholas you care to chime in yeah I was going to say I feel like you know we are getting there I think you know I I I see a lot more a lot of new faces you know so it's it's exciting um well that's awesome so
(10:58) earlier today when when I was listening to the session with um Andrew uh lee um and his presentation um which was very intriguing and interesting um and you know really kind of open my eyes a little bit more about the whole thought process around um you know handshake and the possibilities and the reason for it and especially and the importance of it and especially in the current climate that we're in um in terms of the political climate and even in terms of the shift um with everything shifting to um digital and digital IDs and um the
(11:37) digital dollar and all of that and you know the importance of it so I although we talk about marketing and we um know that that's an issue and it's something that we will need to scale I'm curious to know if you think that it is better or maybe even prudent to operate in terms of building almost like in a stealth mode because it is kind of a superior um you know product so that we're strong and solid um by the time we really need to Market and therefore um you know maybe able to avoid um you know
(12:18) some of the pitfalls or some of the bigger you know companies coming in like he was talking about and trying to maybe quash some this so just just I was a little just that just popped in my head when he was speaking about that did anybody else catch that session or you know what do you think um I didn't catch the session but just chiming in on what you're mentioning as far as you know what should come first or what should have precedence or priority or priority um you know from the outside look and I'm
(12:49) on the inside and the outside right I'm on the outside of the whole Space because I'm neutral and I take everybody you know for their value but I'm on the inside because I'm obviously a part of the community from the outside looking in I I I think there's a a little bit of maybe Pride that that makes us want to be the exception and not follow the rule so when and what I mean by that is when when you look at the rule for most successful businesses most successful businesses do place an extremely heavy
(13:17) emphasis on marketing some even do so without product development they do so to raise funds and then they develop the product afterwards they do so to build hype and maybe even develop along that lines but that's usually the rule and that's what I'm saying look at most successful projects in any industry now obviously we have exceptions the regular internet it did its own thing right um several other things that are movements they take off with their own momentum they we tried that right so my answer to
(13:45) that question is I think both prior to the platform launching marketing would have been an extremely you know important thing to embark on but especially now since we've you know it's kind of been a few years right and and and the movement needs a push right so now at this point to to still continuously say we need to develop something out before people will come I don't know if that's necessarily true I think we need to send out you know a flashlight a bat signal something to let people know we're here so I I
(14:14) would say marketing does does uh is a priority at the point absolutely thank you um and Mike chimed in the chat that Alex should speak about the ease of hns ID integration um with um us swap um and that he's very excited about that um so maybe you could talk a little bit more about that because we're talking about you know different um ways to get people excited about coming to the community and something that has real utility that would act as an impetus um you know or a catalyst to do that and quite possibly um nft
(14:56) resumés could be something to do um that would help in that effort because it is something that pretty much everyone needs and if this is like you know one of the things that we as a community could all get around in terms of marketing it might actually um you know be the the fuel that we need so yes we can hear you okay my screen F FS for a second uh yeah I just saw Mike's comment uh days of AG integration yeah so actually this first of all H&S is an amazing project uh that I'm I was glad to be and am glad to be a part of
(15:40) um in terms of the ease of integration um big shout out to to to Sam and and Aon because they really did an excellent documentation uh which simply allows you to to to go there and understand how to integrate it uh it's not that complex at all um you just need to point your um your your wallet to the resolver contract and uh it should uh um resolve your hns doid uh names um on optimism mainnet um yeah I I mean uh this um this is all uh online anybody can go see the documentation for the integration um I in case of you swap I
(16:35) just pointed the developers working with my my my wife's project to the documentation they were able to figure out on their on their own so uh if you if you need the help um looking for the right place in the documentation for integration I'm happy to point you to the right direction as well because um we I think it's uh built so well that it's easy to to implement um in in any project that wants to resolve uh handshake uh names um in regards to in regards to to what you saying earlier um Marcus around the trust uh of
(17:21) e excellent point I feel the same I felt the same when and still do kind of with Dooms and um yeah I think that having too many um tlds might seem confusing um but also the reason why I like a handshake as well because we can be super original uh with the names we pick to use right so uh for example superlink I could have alex.
(17:54) Netto or I could I can use the name I already own Alex Netto do alexnet uh and that's my idea it's uh identifiable for for me and um I think that for scaling H&S for Mass adoption and this is one of the reasons why I like to talk of Web 2.0 which in my vision is basically bridging people from Web Two to web 3 um which is not easy by the way um and uh imagine if you could just log in uh with your domain name or um something that pass keys are also trying to do as well for sure in terms of the hns ID uh use resolving hns ID domains uh yeah um send
(18:50) me a DM and I'll point you to the to the documentation it's it's it's right there for everybody okay awesome um well somebody mentioned that um you know random dead chick coins uh have more attention than handshake um and I would ask uh you know why do you think that is it's probably because you know again of the community um that they've built around it and it's again probably more style over over substance um meaning that there's a lot of people um active in terms of creating me and of
(19:29) course it's about you know pumping whatever the coin is and trying to um you know make money but with to um handshake and and and the whole you know concept and Ethos behind it I think that there's more of a long game um and playing more probably serious people people who are interested in in in really building um and the utility of the protocol so in terms of marketing and scaling um I think the question is how do we merge the two how do we bridge the gap what what could be the um Catalyst for creating that sort of
(20:07) activity um and excitement that say like uh a shitcoin has like Pepe or pork right now you know that's all over Twitter and apply that to to to to to handshake um and Marcus looks like you had your hand raised I look like I'm itching to answer the question right um now uh what I was going to say is um hold on I actually lost my TR of thought right now on the answer uh no um now I get it um the the value proposition on a shitcoin for lack of a better term uh is easily communicable to the person it's easy to
(20:43) understand for the person that's entering the ecosystem I invest in something price goes up I cash it I leave the value prop is I make money uh the thing with the mains is it's a lot different because now I got to learn stuff and I don't think we all share the same problem uh e has a little bit of an advantage because there's liquidity so that same value prop is there most people are buying the domains because they see that pot of liquidity that they think they can dump into unfortunately they're finding out that most can't but
(21:09) that's the value prop right there's liquidity so I should invest in these as opposed to these but the same problem that they have and the same problem that everyone else has is well just like you can explain the value of investing in a shitcoin super easy you can't explain the value of a domain name to people who aren't in this ecosystem so we we we have adoption within our bubble everyone uses domains pretty much within the crypto ecosystem they may not be using your platform but they use one platform
(21:34) or another we've achieved adoption in the developer and the nerd Circle that we exist in and that's the fact to get outside of that Circle we have to create a value proposition that means something to somebody who's not a nerd and not a tech techie doesn't want to build a website and it flipping it for money I mean you guys had plenty of uh uh attention in the group when the token was pumping right I mean it's it's it's really easy to see the kind of things to bring people in now I'm not necessarily
(22:00) saying we got to draw people in with a prospect of being able to make a bunch of money but we have to figure out what what's attractive to people like I said what's attractive to the kids what's attractive to people who are using social media what's attract what's easy to communicate to people that they can say okay yeah I want to do that and I I know I need this thing to do that and I'm gonna go get it awesome anybody else have any thoughts on that yeah so I still feel people don't understand
(22:28) what ESS is it's just not wallet names it's just not website so many things so today Chad was saying we four it's not laughable it's right so blockchain companies they have like a web to web to domain name under I can they doing their regular communication but at the same time they can use H&S to spin up their private communication like there's no leak there's no server nobody is listening my communication so that is one use always any day every day but just people are not aware of it
(23:04) we don't need to build more stuff for that thing like big companies like State Farm and those company they spend like million billions on their communication every year if they find out some something like that some some like you're asking something to build some somebody should come up with an service hey you come up we spin up a handset communication for you it this will be like the best thing we can build so I feel people are not educated at the same time we as the Committee Member we are not like not breaking it down into
(23:39) smaller parts so that they we can build a successful happy Bridge because I don't see people why they don't understand Bitcoin people in the beginning they were like hey I'm not I don't want to download wallet I don't want to do whatever but they did eventually right so the same thing is with handshake we are late yeah it's it's been 40 years but story has not changed the story is the same okay awesome well so we all agree that um we need marketing utility and building in tandem um uh all together at
(24:14) the same time um last year um everyone was excited and after handy con we actually got off to a good start in terms of starting to do some marketing meetings I think we started doing it like every um two weeks or whatever and then um it kind of fell off so you know I would like to propose that um in terms of marketing and in the in the um backstage we were talking a little bit you know about the telegram group that we have in terms of marketing and the fact that also that all of that has kind of fallen off and I think that people
(24:48) work in silos um and you know we are aware of some of the things that people are doing but probably not enough um into the uh to the point that we are actually actively using um because we say we want people to build but when people build if we're not using or making use of the things that they build then people are not going to do it anymore um so I would like to propose you know that we find a way to get active um and get organized um with regard to marketing and I know that um you know some of that requires um
(25:26) budgets for some things maybe but we can start off even with thinking about ways to raise money um in terms of marketing and and what we could use to do that as well as just pooling our resources um in the community and maybe coming up with an idea that kind of um again Bridges the gap between us handshake and the rest of the web3 community because even within the web 3 Community um there is not much um awareness uh about handshake as compared to um some of the other platforms and I think that that has you know everything to do with uh you know
(26:10) marketing and yeah so the ner the nerd Circle I think was you know accurate because here you have you know a bunch of people who are more interested in the serious things versus The Superficial things and um we actually have to um do both yeah I was gonna say too like I mean obviously like paid marketing creating teams and all that like that that would help right but even individually I mean if you look at other communities you look at ens there's at least a dozen people and probably another dozen I don't even know that
(26:48) hold weekly spaces just bullish on ens and trying to onboard people in community free name hold spaces Unstoppable hold spaces almost every naming system is holding spaces they're doing Twitter marketing they're doing the free things you know in order to drive adoption to the community in addition to you know whatever paid efforts that they have so even that like all the community members that we have here I don't know if like everybody's just shy or not but if you're not already you know if you don't already
(27:13) have a platform where you're bringing people in start one for free and then also for the people who don't want to get on on on a screen or don't want to get on a Twitter space if you're just a Dev maybe one thing that would help is developing toward or developing for things that are already popular so uh Alex mentioned warcast and I'm I'm probably the most bullish person on the planet right now about warcast uh I've been on that thing all day every day there there's warcast is going to do a
(27:41) lot for the adoption of web 3 uh it's kind of like the the the best blend of UI right it's crypto but it's also the UI of social media right now they've integrated ens of course and of course people are using their ens handles with pride but if someone can develop and maybe contact Dan or something at warcast and get them to integrate hns or if it already works I know hns ID probably works because it resolves but um I'm talking about like the straight up forward slash and whatever it is I
(28:10) mean that's an integration that as they continue to grow people will see that you're an integration will adopt it with it again creating a use case that a normal person would want I'm G to play on the social media app I don't even know I messing with crypto oh I can get a domain name or a username that I own I can use either e or I can use handshake oh with this one I have to use ad dot with this one I could be a DOT me that's what I'm saying some of those type of Integrations might make the path
(28:35) to adoption a little bit easier yeah I agree um you know 100% kind of like spoon feeding people and having them do a thing without even know they're doing a thing and then um once they do the thing then you bring them along slowly to the greater thing or the greater cause or whatever um but aligning ourselves with um projects like that also I do think that if requires um you know more of a concerted effort in terms of marketing and and maybe us as a community um since uh you know the platform was built like that for you
(29:08) know Community governments to identify some folks um identify maybe some projects that we want to align in and then identify folks who will go out and um try to uh broker you know those deals or you know talk to people um about um how to integrate you know handshake an ID for some of those um you know platforms because I I do believe that that is the easiest you know thing for people to understand um especially like you said in terms of gaming and stuff like that like my kids you know forever had their their nameer tags but now what
(29:43) if you have your nameer tag and you own it so you put on top of there that it's it's uh uh interoperable you can move it from this platform to this platform you own your data it's on the blockchain it's immutable it's all that so those are some of the um you know the factors that would make it attractive or or be something new um for these folks who are used to um being able to use their names and who covet you know those names or whatever but now to be able to secure it on a different level um I think would be
(30:19) attractive but again how do we start what do we do um what are the action steps um that we take and who's going to do it I mean on my end me I mean I I'll do a doo until there is a group I was also G to mention too like Tik Tok being banned for some people is going to suck for me it's bullish because a where are they gonna go and B what is their pain point that they now have and we have an opportunity to solve that I'm hoping they all go to warcast and I'm hoping that we could solve the paino with IM
(30:50) mutable ownable ID and and and uh in content awesome well I think I don't know how much time we have left but um maybe we should take some questions I'm not I don't know if I know how to put it on the screen but we have a question oh there you go thank you all right so we have a question um from Alex um some say that only your domain will allow you to Port your network from platform to platform forcing platforms to uh compete with each other on features instead of being Gatekeepers um of users of networks I
(31:29) think that's kind of what we were just talking about um do you think that this is enough to motivate users oh wow so talking about yeah that is cool but right now the thing is users are not ready for this thing they be like what are you talking about it's hard to make them understand so so for folks who for instance um if you play Xbox and you play Playstation but you have your name on Xbox and your name is different on the PlayStation Network or something like that being able to offer something or integrate with these
(32:07) programs um where you could be consistent because you own the name you don't think that that would be something that's um uh easy to understand um for folks who have literally you know grown up on on gaming and um where their names are you know very important um to them and some even monetize them um I actually think that that might be um an easy use case something that people could uh wrap their heads around and not only that but the generation that we need in terms of um you know growing this thing and and and and and scaling
(32:46) it so those are just yeah on your ID that's the right a short we're putting it yeah we that that's one one of the selling proposition of handshake like you own your ID okay so then we agree so next question um is there any news on meeting or calls for marketing team on the telegram um to work on this um I think that's what we're talking about and and maybe that was what we want to organize um I heard something about ring last night and Etc so um maybe after handy con 2024 um uh Mike mentioned that um we
(33:38) kind of got off track with the marketing meetings um because of activity around the hard fork and then of course we just had the happening and everyone was focused on that so maybe um now since uh both of those events are over that we can get back focused on uh some uh marketing and having some marketing meetings and and and coming up with some action plans to do some things so great question and great suggestion yeah M Miguel if you have any like ideas you would like to share um just just get uh into the the networking
(34:16) booths and uh let's discuss it doesn't need to be after handic con why not you know um and just wanted to say Alex uh thank you for your question um it yeah I I've actually been thinking about this and it will be interesting if um platforms that just use your domain for your ID and not just uh or or just just as your ID and not your ID and then minting or having to buy something with that chain it would be interesting to see wallets uh and daps resolve on multichain so we could have an opportunity to be within the the
(35:05) the D web Community right so you would see. hns.com all in the same place and I think that would be interesting to to to see um yeah so resolving multi wallet resolving multi Chains would be something interesting yeah well awesome I think that might be our time are we ending at um 8:30 is that our time four minutes we have four minutes okay so another another question um Chris Neil asks would everyone mind sharing uh what they believe the the agent that's target audience is um and you know age demographic geographic
(35:59) location Etc um well I'll go first um I think it's multi-prong approach I think that um depending on what um it's being used for so for instance with um with Alex and his wife is building I think that's one demo um with regard to what we're talking about um that Marcus mentioned um I think that's another demo you know gaming I think those are two completely different audiences and I think that you need different strategies um to reach those different audiences um so it does not have to be um a
(36:34) universal appeal or one thing um or or or you know one fits all kind of concept I think that uh we have to come up with um different things depending on you know what it is and anybody else want to chime in on that feel free I I think it's you know it's it's as you mentioned it's multi-prong and it's it's everyone right which makes it hard because you know you you want to get everyone in board um you know especially as we start start talking about you know proof of personhood and other things that we can do with us in
(37:06) the future you know I think that that you know it's everyone so it's it's difficult um yeah I I would say that we want to appeal to everyone and and everyone seems like the best answer um however sometimes it's it's good to understand that you are niched and to focus on that niche cuz sometimes you have a lot more success that way I think that handshake personally appeals more towards a developer Community than it probably ever will towards the general masses and I think that that group is
(37:38) still a humongous group there's a lot of opportunity in that group um there's a lot of people you could just have the simple conversation of bro you're smarter than that why are you using that when there's this um so that there there's a full path forward to forge ahead that way instead of trying to force like a round Peg and a square hole I think okay awesome and next question oh did somebody else want to say something no I was going to say I agree it's it's it's great to be able to have the actual
(38:05) Focus point so and then but but devs are are really what what are attracted to to H&S a lot still right now I think okay and the next question can we create a public media um to share projects and expositions I think that there I asked this question on the last Twitter talk it's the shake and so we already that exist right again goes to the point that we need to know what's available and start using it um so again some of the things that we can talk about uh possibly um as we get organized in terms of marketing um
(38:50) because being able to use some of these um you know uh products and then create testimonials um is a way to you know share with the broader Community um just about our experience with the different things and hopefully be able to um entice other people to use these services so I have to do a better job about that uh with that in terms of making sure that I am not just talking to talk but walking walk and actually um making use of some of the things that uh people have uh built and implementing it into you know um every
(39:30) day all righty well do we have any other questions the next question that's it thanks everybody thanks everyone thank you everybody bye okay yes CU we're ending now thank you guys for joining us and be sure to stay around for the rest of the sessions um today and tomorrow um thank you so much for having me and all of us um and until next [Music] time