#HNS

#HNS Handshake (HNS) significantly reduces token supply through a soft fork, sending a bullish signal to investors and cryptocurrency miners.
Handshake
August 12, 2025, 11:20 AM Eastern Time
Handshake (HNS) is about to launch a soft fork... The end of airdrop claims will significantly reduce the total supply of HNS coins, providing more certainty for investors and miners.
San Francisco, August 12, 2025 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — The decentralized naming protocol Handshake (HNS) plans to activate a soft fork on August 28. The main scope of the soft fork is to end the on-chain airdrop claims initially delegated to open-source developers. Since the launch of Handshake, there have been a total of 6,548 airdrops. Looking ahead, ending the airdrop claims will significantly reduce the total supply of HNS tokens, providing more certainty for investors and miners.
The start of the soft fork will make Handshake a true Proof of Work (POW) chain, with the new token issuance entirely coming from miners. The main change of the soft fork is that the total supply of HNS has been reduced by approximately 56%, from 2.04 billion to 889 million. With the reduction in token supply, the increase in token prices can bring higher profitability to miners.
Handshake is a decentralized implementation of DNS, protected by miners. Some use cases for HNS coins include bidding on HNS domain names and updating DNS records. When HNS domain names are acquired through on-chain auctions, the winning bid is burned from the token supply, leading to the deflation of HNS coins over time.
HNS domains represent true ownership; no one behind the protocol can censor or reclaim a domain. There are various options for acquiring on-chain domains, including Namebase (custodial) and Bob Wallet (self-custodial). These domains are irrevocable, which is an important attribute for crypto wallets, websites, and digital identities.
Thunderbolt is a revolutionary peer-to-peer (P2P) communication application that utilizes HNS domains for encrypted voice, video, and chat. With Thunderbolt, HNS names can replace phone numbers and become a secure messaging channel for politicians, journalists, dissidents, and privacy enthusiasts. Built by the subdomain registrar Spaceship, this is the first time domains are used in this way. HNS domains can also be registered with popular domain registrars like Namecheap, and the setup process using the Thunderbolt application takes only a few minutes.
About handshake
After Bitcoin, the second use case of blockchain proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto is DNS. Handshake was launched in 2020, and without a centralized company or foundation, it remains the largest attempt at a decentralized network and ensuring online freedom.