Maybe it's not technically a sign up, but the new user flow needs some work. There are boxes for "handshake name" and "signature" but no indication of what you should put there.<p>I tried leaving them blank and got an error message: "You need to include a valid Handshake name and signature generated with the key associated with the name."<p>But it doesn't explain how you do that.
I once created a SAAS application that did not have the "ordinary" workflow that people expect these days - email/password or social login.<p>People hated it and actually took the time to complain.<p>The lesson for me - make your auth process precisely what people expect - if there's feedback, it should be about your product, not about the signup process.<p>Signup process is not a feature - it's plumbing.<p>In the case of this new product / service - I note the headline is almost unrelated to what the product does - it's a headline about how the auth works on this - the technology something is built with shouldn't be the marketing message.
From the name I was expecting something like image boards (think 4chan) where you can add a username to your post by specifying a secret, which will set your username to substring(sha(secret)). Instant authentication with no signup.<p>This isn't that, instead it seems to delegate the registration to some Namecoin-like thing, and I verify my identity but signing the content with my secret key? Did I get that right? I guess the advantage of that approach are human readable user names
This isn't truly no signup right? I only saw the handshake now, but isn't my handshakeName+signature my new username and password for posting? Instead of having a centralized auth provider, the blockchain is used to authenticate the signature?<p>Just looking at Handshake - if I buy HNS and purchase a domain, sure I can use the handshakeName and signature to authenticate to supported websites. But if I want to host a website with the domain, the possible options are using hns.to domain or have my DNS point to a different DNS server. Both are not viable options for my end users to reach my website. Is the expectation that overtime Handshake gains popularity and all existing services would have a mechanism to integrate into this?
I was browsing Handshake repos on github and noticed a pull request that added sign/verify [1] on the Bob Extension [2] on Github. This piqued my interested, and of course, it was time to hack away again.
The result is applause [3] which lets you post and applaud (sign) your and other people's messages. This website does not require a login or signup because it uses the decentralized Handshake [4] blockchain.<p>It's open source on github [5] and mixes Web 2 and Web 3 together causing some interesting benefits.<p>It supports drag and drop among other things!<p>Hope you like it!<p>MIT LICENSED! Do whatever you want with it!<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/kyokan/bob-extension/pull/15" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/kyokan/bob-extension/pull/15</a><p>[2] <a href="https://github.com/kyokan/bob-extension" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/kyokan/bob-extension</a><p>[3] <a href="https://applause.chat" rel="nofollow">https://applause.chat</a><p>[4] <a href="https://handshake.org/" rel="nofollow">https://handshake.org/</a><p>[5] <a href="https://github.com/publiusfederalist" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/publiusfederalist</a>