Namebase

Namebase Review

What is Namebase?

Namebase is an exchange based in San Francisco. To be more precise, Namebase is an on-ramp for Handshake and you can use its platform for buying and selling Handshake coins (HNS) as well as bidding on, purchasing, selling, and using Handshake names. The platform also supports Bitcoin.

The comany is registered as an MSB with FinCEN. 

Decentralized and Permissionless Naming Protocol

Handshake is a decentralized, permissionless naming protocol where every peer is validating and in charge of managing the root DNS naming zone with the goal of creating an alternative to existing Certificate Authorities and naming systems. Names on the internet (top level domains, social networking handles, etc.) ultimately rely upon centralized actors with full control over a system which are relied upon to be honest, as they are vulnerable to hacking, censorship, and corruption.

Handshake aims to experiment with new ways the internet can be more secure, resilient, and socially useful with a peer-to-peer system validated by the network’s participants.

How Does The Handshake Protocol Work?

Namebase is an extremely straightforward description of how the whole process with the Handshake protocol works. They use the below picture to illustrate it. You buy, you bid, and you use. It’s as easy as that apparently!

Trading Volume

The trading volume of a relatively new platform is always a challenge in the beginning. On the date of last updating this review (2 December 2021) the 24 hour trading volume was USD 41,580 compared to USD 13,650 on 8 September 2021. The only trading pair is HNS/BTC, according to info from Coinmarketcap. So, there is definitely some progress left to be made for this exchange in terms of the trading volume.

US-investors

According to information received from the platform, US-investors can in fact trade here. However, if you are a US-investor, you should still always analyse whether your home state imposes any obstacles for your foreign crypto trading. Sometimes the exchange has opened its doors in spite of your own state prohibiting you from trading. For instance, New York residents can purchase HNS coins to use to buy Handshake names but they cannot sell their HNS coins.

Namebase Trading View

Different exchanges have different trading views. And there is no “this overview is the best”-view. You should yourself determine which trading view that suits you the best. What the views normally have in common is that they all show the order book or at least part of the order book, a price chart of the chosen crypto and order history. They normally also have buy and sell-boxes. Before you choose an exchange, try to have a look at the trading view so that you can ascertain that it feels right to you. The below is a picture of the purchase interface at Namebase Pro (which is only available to non-US residents):

Namebase Fees

Namebase Trading fees

Every trade occurs between two parties: the maker, whose order exists on the order book prior to the trade. The maker thus “makes” the order being executed. The other party is the taker, who places the order that matches (or “takes”) the maker’s order. The maker-taker model normally encourages market liquidity by rewarding the makers of that liquidity with a fee discount.

Namebase Pro’s trading fees for takers are 0.10%. This fee is below the global industry average. The global industry average is arguably around 0.25%, although we are currently seeing a shift towards lower fees. Many exchanges now charge e.g. 0.10% or 0.15% instead.

But the taker fees are not even this platform’s strongest edge. At the Namebase exchange, makers don’t pay any fees at all (0.00%). Naturally, this is a great deal for the makers in the trades at this exchange.

At Namebase Consumer, no trading fees are charged, but instead the platform aims to price HNS with a spread of 1.00 - 3.00% depending on the market conditions.

Namebase Withdrawal fees

The only fee you need to worry about when withdrawing BTC from this platform is the mining fee. The mining fee is not charged by the exchange per se, so the platform is not enriched by it.

Deposit Methods

At this exchange, you can use BTC and USD. USD deposits and withdrawals (for when you sell HNS) are done through ACH transfers (Automated Clearing House transfers). This means that debit or credit card deposits are no yet available here.