2023 Year in Review

There is never a quiet year in the Web3 space as there is always so much change which ushers in fresh, new opportunities. HNS took advantage of those opportunities in a big way.

This blog will run down the biggest highlights from 2023 and share the bright outlook for 2024.

Early September: HNS (formerly Hashgraph Name) became powered by BCW Group

The HNS revamp began in early September after the team announced that the platform would now be powered by BCW Group, the Web3 venture studio behind other key utilities in the Hedera ecosystem including Arkhia and Hashport.

HNS introduced a special Domain Dash with tiered pricing across renewal duration and characters to cater to the wide audience.

Mid-September: HNS Went Open Source

HNS underwent the first of many technical upgrades. Chief among those upgrades was the leap to open source. HNS’s GitHub page was updated with the codebase for the HNS SDK and resolver — a move that makes it easier than ever for HNS to integrate with other platforms across Hedera. Consider this the beginning of the period of partnership expansion within Hedera.

HashPack, Hedera’s biggest wallet app, was the first to integrate the HNS SDK and made it much easier for users to verify the HNS names they held in their wallets at a time when many things were still in flux on the platform.

Were you one of the lucky winners of the campaign HNS ran with The HBAR Bull? Through that campaign, HNS awarded some lucky contestants with a reimbursed HNS name purchases!

During this mid-late September period, HNS ran a short campaign to demonstrate the basic utility of on-graph names. This campaign highlighted that using names as opposed to wallet strings can reduce the risk of errors when sending assets between wallets.

September ended on a very high note as HNS announced its first partnership with Carbonbase, Asia’s first digital carbon registry built on Hedera! BCW hosted the Carbonbase team for an event at their Hong Kong offices.

The October Grind

HNS announced a batch of new partnerships in October and issued a lot of technical upgrades to the platform. The HNS social media presence also gained traction within the ecosystem as the X account began engaging more frequently with the community.

October kicked off with an extension of the promotional pricing period, which the community responded to quite warmly!

It was in October when the broader public-facing vision for HNS started to take shape. There were hints that much bigger things were coming, and indeed, they are!

The ecosystem gained a lot of recognition from the internet after big jumps in daily NFT volume, often sparked by activity on .hbar name trades.

Emoji name searches and purchases were unlocked in October. This was a big request from the community that was shipped in record time. Other upgrades such as improved search speed from about 60 seconds down to 2 seconds or less were achieved. The team also began using Arkhia as a backstop service in case outages that may occur on public servers.

Bring on the partnerships! HNS announced official partnerships with Dovu, Kabila Wallet HashPack, and SentX, all of whom will integrate or have already integrated the HNS SDK and roll out other functionality with HNS!

To close out the month, HNS ran a Halloween-themed name campaign to get the community in a spooky mood followed by a not-so-spooky facelift, when HNS got a new logo and an upgraded landing page. We have A LOT more coming with HNS V2!

November — A Month to be Thankful For

Why was November so good? To start, another partnership with the fiat-crypto onramp C14 was announced. Yet another company is integrating the HNS SDK so .hbar names are functional on the C14 platform. Buy some $HBAR on C14 and send tokens to your name once it’s done.

Karate Combat, the fighting game on Hedera partnered up with HNS to issue a new TLD as well.

HNS got a huge mention from DappRadar, the dApp data tracking site. They published an article about blockchain domain name services which included a mention of HNS and BCW Group. There is also now an HNS page on DappRadar. Check it out.

HNS’s engagement with the amazing projects and contributors in the Hedera community continued. Dead Pixels, the project for whom HNS has .boo TLD’s, Hedera’s outstanding TPS, HashPack, and so many others got shoutouts from the HNS X account for the tremendous things they’re doing in the space.

You could have also found the team roaming around Singapore Fintech Festival with the Hedera team. All right before HNS launched a campaign to entice artists to help upgrade the stock NFT art on .hbar NFTs. What did we offer? 10 free .hbar names for the effort put forth. So far, several artists have submitted art that is being considered now!

Cozy up with HNS in December!

We rang in December with a new X handle — @HNS_app. It suited the new logo, frontend, branding, and team much better. Just wait for what else we’ve got in the works for 2024! HNS V2, anyone???

HNS attended its very first Twitter Spaces in December. The team joined with Genfinity, HashPack, Galaxy, and other heavy hitters in the Hedera space. It was a great experience in which several attendees received name giveaways. All attendees received the 6+ character name of their choice for a year on the house!

Conclusion

As you can see, the HNS team has accomplished many things this year. In light of all the upgrades to the platform for name holders, what was achieved in 2023 was just the beginning.

Expect a better interface of the HNS platform in 2024, starting with our V2,. Beyond that, the team has a stack of features and integrations to work through, all of which will vaunt HNS into the highest echelon of naming services that calls the Hedera network its home.

The HNS team wants to extend heartfelt appreciation to the community of supporters and nameholders who have provided valuable feedback and stuck with us through thick and thin. Thank you. We plan on being here for you for the long haul. Let’s get through it together!

About HNS
HNS is the pioneering domain name service on the Hedera Public Network; allowing users to own their desired custom Hedera account handles. Our core mission is to expand what is possible for custom domains on Hedera, allowing individual account holders and organizations alike to interact with the broader Web3 ecosystem via their chosen names instead of an error-prone account id numerical string. Over time, a new era of simplicity and familiarity will become the standard for users to interact with the Hedera Public Network and beyond.

HNS is powered by BCW Group, and is part of its core Hedera infrastructural service offerings which include Hashport & Arkhia, among others.