Great write up, super insightful. I think is also good to try to find NFT project bf they launch. So I use sealaunch.xyz or nftscoring.com to check project's site & roadmap, who's behind the project and how committed they are, how big a project's community and how committed to the long term they are. Source: over 2 years ago

Would you consider https://handshake.org to be one? - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago

It's based on the handshake blockchain https://handshake.org/ and yes, it's outside of DNS from what I have read. I originally assumed that had bought 1,000,000 TLD at $240k each :) which is crazy as its sounds. - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago

The Handshake [0] project used (uses?) Vickrey auction to auction off the initial supply of names. It had some other cool ideas, such as replacing certificate authorities with self-signed certificates verified by the blockchain. I know everyone hates blockchain, I kind of do too, but Handshake I found genuinely interesting. Disclaimer, I own some Handshake names so you could say I'm shilling for it but mostly the... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago

Our stack is built on Handshake. You can know more at handshake.org. Source: about 1 year ago

In the future things might change, there's discussions around decentralization of trust that now has accumulated with a select few (donut domains? Verisign?) Handshake is one such protocol that allows you to have decentralized trust and hence gives you freedom to have your own TLD, porkbun will even sell you one if you'd like but it's very much experimental today. Source: over 1 year ago