Introducing Wrapped HNS
WHNS brings greater liquidity and DeFi to Handshake.
Introduction
The Handshake community is growing. In the past few months, we’ve seen adoption from the second largest domain registrar in the world and integration progress from Brave as well. Meanwhile, community members are making hundreds of thousands of dollars selling their names and subdomains, and the number of active Handshake names has grown 10x to over 100,000 names.
But even as names have become easier to acquire and use, $HNS itself has only been available to purchase on Namebase and other relatively small exchanges. Because Handshake is its own blockchain with custom full nodes, listing it directly requires custom implementations on the part of exchanges. This makes it difficult for newcomers to enter the space.
Today that is no longer the case. We’re happy to announce that wrapped Handshake is now live!
Wrapped HNS (WHNS) is an ERC20 token backed 1:1 with HNS. It brings greater liquidity and access to Handshake. There is already a pool for WHNS on Uniswap — expect more DEX listings soon. Even centralized exchanges can more easily give their customers exposure to Handshake by listing WHNS because listing ERC20 tokens is considerably easier than listing custom tokens.
This also means that HNS holders can now interact with the rest of the DeFi ecosystem on Ethereum. WHNS makes it possible for token holders to loan out their HNS, and generate yield on their loaned tokens via decentralized lending platforms like Aave and Compound (note that WHNS isn't currently live on Aave or Compound).
WHNS blind loans
One new capability we're especially excited about is using WHNS loans for blinds to fend off snipers. Through a loaning protocol, a user could:
- Borrow WHNS with ETH to use as a blind
- Unwrap their WHNS on Namebase
- Bid with a blind made much larger via their WHNS loan
- Win their auction
- Re-wrap their HNS blind
- Return their WHNS to receive the collateral back
How it works
You can add WHNS to your Ethereum wallet (Metamask, Coinbase Wallet, etc) just like you'd add any other ERC20 token. Here is the contract address: 0xa771b49064da011df051052848477f18dba1d2ac
You can also buy WHNS on Uniswap.
If you’re holding HNS, and would like to convert it to WHNS, email whns@namebase.io. There are no wrapping fees at this time.
If you hold WHNS, you can convert it to HNS by emailing whns@namebase.io. We will fulfill your unwrap request within 7-14 business days. There are no unwrapping fees.
Happy naming!