Namebase Platform Updates

It has been a while since we posted so we'd like to share some announcements and updates about the Namebase platform and upcoming products.

NB Registry

First, we are happy to announce that we are finally relaunching our TLD staking system, NB Registry. The road has been long as we have migrated to a new registry backend, but it is finally ready for general availability release.

If you would like to stake your name, visit the registry onboarding page. As you go through the process, you'll see more detailed information about staking and if you have questions, please check out our help section on registry staking.

We previously discussed our plans for the new registry, but here is a brief recap:

• Staking your TLD provides a way to gain revenue by selling subdomains.

• Once your TLD is staked, it is syndicated to registrars participating in the NB Registry system so they can sell subdomains to end users.

• At launch, the list of registrars is Porkbun, Encirca, and Namecheap. Another registrar, 101domain, is finalizing integration and will be supporting NB Registry soon.

• When you stake your TLD, you set pricing for new registrations and renewal. These are the fees that a registrar pays when selling subdomains. For every registration, Namebase charges a flat $1 fee. The rest of the fee is converted to HNS and paid to your account.

• The staking fee, a one-time fee to enter your TLD into the registry system is 1500 HNS. We have increased this to reflect the fact that:

  • Staking is a commitment -- you are locking your TLD into the registry to provide protection to subdomain owners.

  • Registrars manually onboard and curate their TLD list -- a higher staking fee helps to improve the quality of TLDs.

Also, to provide transparency on domain registrations, follow NBRegistry on Twitter as new registrations are posted in real-time.

DNSSEC

We are happy to announce that we've added DNSSEC support to our managed DNS. This helps improve the security of your Handshake name by adding cryptographic signatures to DNS records served from the Namebase DNS resolver.

This feature is mostly transparent to you -- if you have a newly won name we will automatically enable DNSSEC without any action from you. If you have an existing name, you can access your domain in the Domain Manager, and click on the toggle for Enable DNSSEC for this domain.

Please note that this feature only applies if you use the Namebase Managed DNS -- if your name is delegated to your own nameservers (or a 3rd party), DNSSEC would be managed by you manually.

Decentralized SLDs

A hot topic in the Handshake (and Namebase) community around selling subdomains has been the concept of Decentralized SLDs (Second Level Domains). This is something we are very passionate about and is the next, natural evolution for Handshake SLDs.

We have recently brought a new member to the Namebase team to help us make this a reality. In a future post we will discuss this initiative in more detail, so stay tuned.