Welcome to Handles
Welcome to Handles
Handles Overview
For the vast majority, interacting with any cryptocurrency is as daunting as it is unfriendly. Cryptographic hashes make up the address markers for wallets that we see every day — yet while these hashes are unique and (realistically) never duplicated, they are also intimidating and impractical for everyday use.
To complicate matters further, UTXO-based blockchains like Bitcoin and Cardano, utilize multiple addresses: a user gets a new address (or UTXO address) every time they want to send/receive native assets.
Handles introduces a simple and elegant solution to the Cardano ecosystem, and aims to build tooling infrastructure on par with the largest vendors on the market today.
Handles
Handles is an NFT-powered naming solution for your Cardano wallet address. They are NFT-based assets, minted on the CIP-68 datum via
Handle.me's minting engine, secured entirely on-chain via the
Handle Standard.
Handles are a standardized NFT that owners can use to associate an address, datum, script, or UTxO, with a custom and human-readable name. An Handles address takes the form
$custom_name where the Cardano native address is
addr1qxx00r962ku8dl7wekn67kxxxjpcyfyul4dtgkkwzu3nqs5dsnkrcr6p03zvxn2k4vh5scr0h
f9nc072lwr4fgs4k43qjswugd.
Each Handle you purchase will be delivered to you as an NFT and whatever wallet holds that NFT is where payments will be routed.
SubHandles
SubHandles are an extension of Handles designed to allow individuals, companies, dApps, and everyone else that need more than one Handle associated with a name or brand. Examples of SubHandles, using a fictitious company name: ACME, are:
$john@acme and
$treasury@acme. In this example,
$acme is the root Handle and
$john@acme the SubHandle.
NFT SubHandles
NFT SubHandles are one of the two potential forms of SubHandles. They operate identically to Handles, they are NFT-based assets, minted on the CIP-68 datum, and they resolve to the wallet address they are sent to. Whoever holds the NFT SubHandle is the owner of that asset and the root Handle owner has no power over it.
For additional information on NFT SubHandles, please visit the
NFT SubHandles page.
Virtual SubHandles
Virtual SubHandles are the second form of SubHandles. They are not NFT-based assets, but rather an asset inside a Smart Contract that resolves to an address set by the root Handle. Virtual SubHandles are owned by the root Handle owner and can be created, edited, and revoked by the root Handle owner.
For additional information on Virtual SubHandles, please visit the
Virtual SubHandles page.
Marketplace
Handles have become a staple of transacting with peers on Cardano in a human-friendly way. With nearly 250,000 existing Handles, the reasons to have a Handle are many. Some utilize their Handle for its intended purpose, some purchase them for the allure of trading them with others, and some purchase their Handle to have a connection to their on-chain identity.
Because of this, Handles have become a source of onboarding new users to Cardano, and we believe it important that there is some staying power for these new users. In order to do so, we are going to in-house everything from minting, trading, customizing, and even renting out Handles and SubHandles. This way new users aren’t tasked with finding third-party marketplaces that don’t necessarily prioritize the lookup of Handles.
Handles at its foundation were built to be user-friendly and easy-to-use and extending that to The Handle Marketplace will help in maintaining usership in Cardano.
Coming Soon...
Handle Pay
Cardano is rapidly growing, with over 1,000 projects being built on the platform. Our app is positioned to target a user base of both current blockchain users and the broader public seeking easier access to decentralized finance. The global blockchain market is projected to experience substantial growth in the coming years. According to a report published in December 2021, the market size was expected to expand from $4.9 billion in 2021 to $67.4 billion by 2026 (
GlobeNewswire). At Kora Labs we are acutely aware that this growth is not linear but instead works in cycles, where we observe a large influx of new users every four-or-so years. We recognize the need for a simple, efficient, and easy-to-understand mobile application that will be positioned to capture that influx of new users. HandlePay is that app.
Handle Chat
HandleChat will be a decentralized communications protocol, that will utilize modern point-to-point encryption, with on- and off-chain capabilities, offering low-latency and censorship-resistant messaging, built on the Cardano blockchain. HandleChat will enable the Cardano community, dApps, wallets, and others a full integration to interact with the protocol, via an open-source SDK.