At the time of our previous application in the 10th round of the ENS Small Grants, handle.eth was closer to an idea than a project, this has now changed as it is well in the works. This description will include more technical informations than before as I, maxi.eth, have been working on figuring out how to properly get this project up and running after having meetings with the founders of future handle.eth partners.

WHO’S BEHIND THE PROJECT?

Well, I don’t think that’s a surprise to anyone as I’ve said it before: maxi.eth here! I have been into ENS for the last 2 and a half years, and this protocol pretty much changed my life. I previously founded a small web2 startup a couple years before getting into crypto and always wanted to launch a project in this space as well. I had quite a few ideas over the years but nothing felt quite right until now. With ENS being the epicenter of my professional life, I want to accelerate the protocol’s growth, starting within the current web3 ecosystem, and I sincerely believe handle.eth is the ideal project to achieve that and onboard a lot of new users. Disclaimer: I am the LEAST technical guy in this space and really can’t code or anything like that as I’m marketing/business development guy, so I will focus on those tasks to accomplish the project’s mission. As you will read below, I talked with brilliant devs and will be working with them so the tech-side is in good hands.

WHAT’S HANDLE.ETH?

I acquired handle.eth a couple months ago and will leverage it to build a full-on free, unruggable and decentralized subdomains network to onboard thousands of new users to ENS. The goal is nothing short of being the largest ENS subdomains network to date. To make things clear, .handle.eth subs will be absolutely free with no strings attached, will not have any renewal fees, the handle.eth fuses will be burned thus making the subdomains independant & unruggable, and the cherry on top, handle.eth will be sent to the burn address to decentralize the network. This way, all the "arguments" against ENS we usually see on social media about renewals, good domains being already taken, etc… and pretty much any associated friction is circonvented and users will be able to secure an ENS (sub)domain for free. Also, subdomains minting will be limited to 1 per wallet so that a handful of people do not mint thousands of subs and the network can grow organically.

PARTNERING WITH NAMESPACE & 1W3

Time for the fun stuff. All these objectives will not be achievable simply by enabling subs minting on an existing platform or marketplace. Therefore, handle.eth will have its own custom-made front-end and will use the NameSpace tech in the back-end. After discussing a potential collaboration with thecap.eth, the synergies between NameSpace and handle.eth became pretty clear and we will work together to make our goals a reality. The .handle.eth subdomains will be issued on L1 at launch and will later on be on L2 as the tech is being built. The (much smarter than me) devs at NameSpace will pretty much be our technical advisors as we will use the tech they’ve been building for the past year to run our registry. Since we will be targeting new users, which by definition may not be aware of ENS features, the handle.eth website will walk them through those and get them to easily set the subdomain as their primary name if they wish to do so, set an avatar, edit various records, etc… I had a meeting with hidayath.eth and we will also be partnering with 1W3 to create a decentralized website automatically generated with the sub’s records. NameSpace & 1W3 will be our first launch partners, with more coming soon by the time we launch in Q1 2024.

MARKETING & INTEGRATIONS

All the community members I talked to have been very supportive of this project and I’m grateful for that! The launch will come with waves of support and will quickly reach NFT degens way beyond the current ENS community. I will be reaching out to multiple big accounts which already supported and promoted ENS and am confident they would gladly share such a free subdomains network. I will not name these accounts here but you can easily guess who I’m talking about. Also, the biggest deal for us will be to get the registry integrated in existing dapps, platforms and projects from wallets and messaging to gaming and web3 socials. With handle.eth being burned forever by the time we launch, integrating a decentralized public good like handle.eth will be a no-brainer for them and this is what I will spend most of my time on.

WHY IS FUNDING REQUIRED?

I think this is pretty clear by now, handle.eth is being built as a public good/infrastructure project and will not be monetized. We will solely run on grants to fund the project’s development and marketing activations. Most of the initial funding will be used to develop a quality custom-made front-end. After launch, our main recurring cost will be the NameSpace $1/minted sub fee which we will take on according to our mission to make subdomains free for users (except gas fees but those will be neglible once subs will be issued on L2).