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Welcome back to the breakdown.

It is Tuesday, February 4th, and we have an interesting one today.

We're going to be speaking with Tieschen Rogier of Namebase, which is building on Handshake,

the just-launch decentralized DNS that is basically trying to make top-level domains,

i.e. website links that are censorship-resistant, that can't be taken down by government

sensors. And today, I think, is a particularly interesting day to have that conversation for

two reasons. The first is that handshake has just gone live on Mainnet yesterday, and this is

one of the more anticipated launches of the year. In fact, my first exposure introduction to Handshake

came when an investor whose opinion I tend to agree with said that it was the second use case

of blockchain after money that

actually got him excited, this idea of uncensurable web domains. So I think that's part one of

why this is interesting is that it's happening now, right? A handshake is here after much anticipation.

Part two is we have this interesting, weird little context of the debacle that was the Iowa

caucuses last night.

So for those of you who aren't in the U.S. or who simply don't pay attention to U.S. politics,

last night the U.S. primary season kicked off with the Iowa caucuses.

Now, a caucus is not a blind vote or a secret hidden ballot like the vast majority of voting in the world. It's this weird,

archaic community process of raising your hand in public and debating and having people come

back and forth to you. It's a very, very strange format that

seems to go against the idea of a secret ballot in so many ways. What's more, people have

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