Most people never buy a domain name, but everybody uses them. Every address you type, every link you click, every search result you follow is a request that gets answered by somebody. That somebody is a registry, and which registries exist at all is decided in a single root zone file maintained by ICANN. Your browser trusts that chain without asking, and so do you.

Some of you will know all this, so I won't dwell on it. The point is that a website can be made unreachable without being altered or taken down. A court order, a policy decision or a commercial choice at the registry level is enough, and the effect reaches everyone who tries to visit, including search engines.

Handshake is a decentralised naming protocol that replaces the root of that system with a public blockchain. Names are owned outright rather than leased, issued by open auction instead of by committee, and secured by proof of work rather than by trust in an institution. It runs alongside the internet you already use, not instead of it.

No prior knowledge of DNS needed. If you understand why you'd hold your own keys, you'll understand why you'd want the same for the names you rely on every day.