🔬 Research

This information is updated periodically and will change from time to time. The information is offered here to assist collaborators to understand where they may stand with their own contribution with respect to the discovering of the critical path to Handshake achieving success in its design and mission.

We maintain this list so that you may be aware of what we are aware of, and where we think each piece may fit in the puzzle. We also hope that by sharing this information new collaborators with new pieces of the puzzle can step forward and contribute on this project.

Objectives and Topics

To identify the critical path to a sustainable, secure, and durable decentralized fractal asset registry (DFAR) capable of organic Handshake top-level domain management using multisig wallet functionality or any governance scheme, fractionalization with provable immutability of the share issuance policy such that at each subsequent name layer the domain owner can audit the terms of their registration policy as a native smart contract on chain.

To explore and investigate the innovations enabled by the following initiatives, projects and technologies

• the UTxO and eUTxO
  • proof-of-work chains
    • Handshake (opens new window)
    • Ergo (opens new window)
  • Cardano (opens new window) - proof-of-stake chains
    • stake pools, and how they function to coordinate humans into communities joined by a common cause while maintaining free association and fully spendable funds
    • seeking to develop best practices for protocol and community governance
    • Plutus
    • native asset tokens
      • fungible
      • non-fungible
• decentralized web services
  • Sia (opens new window)
  • Akash (opens new window)
  • IPFS (opens new window)
• decentralized sovereign identity, data, and credentials on blockchain
  • like Atala Prism (opens new window)
• NiPoPoWs (Non-Interactive-Proofs-of-Proof-of-Work) (opens new window)
  • already implemented in Ergo
  • possible in all existing Proof-of-Work blockchains that use UTxO, such as Handshake, by use of a retroactive 'velvet fork' (opens new window).
    • large network traffic efficiency boost
  • can lock assets from one chain into another
  • creates the possibility for an omnichain, or a massively interdependent structure of blockchains
    • affords new possibilities in transaction constructions for privacy,
    • provably secure cross-chain atomic swaps -- one native asset spent on one chain that securely results in assets transfered on another PoW blockchain.
• domain-specific languages (DSL) for describing financial smart contracts
  • ex. Marlowe (opens new window)
• open-source DEXs
  • like ErgoDEX (opens new window), decentralized orderbook and AMM, soon to support both Cardano and Ergo
  • like Ergo Auction House (opens new window), an open source decentralized auction house
  • muesliswap (opens new window) milkomeda and cardano support
• p2p agent-centric application layer
  • possibilities
    • Urbit (opens new window)
      • internal namespace concerns
    • Holochain (opens new window)
      • intrinsic data validity
      • peer witnessing
• zero-knowledge proofs
  • like Ergo's Sigma protocols (opens new window); zk-treasury (opens new window)
• Sidechains like Milkomeda (opens new window), that increase liquidity of the distributed skill pool for smart contract development across the Cardano-Ethereum boundaries with the launch of its EVM.
• p2p social technology, research, pedagogical resources and methodology
  • DisCO (opens new window)
  • Sovereign Accountable Commons (opens new window) and other ideas from CEPTR and the Metacurrency project (opens new window), and the Commons Engine (opens new window)
  • Commons Transition Primer (opens new window)