I❤️Domains TECH Talk

Embracing the New Frontier: The Rise of Tokenized Web3 Domain Auctions

April 08, 2024 IHeartDomains
Embracing the New Frontier: The Rise of Tokenized Web3 Domain Auctions
I❤️Domains TECH Talk
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I❤️Domains TECH Talk
Embracing the New Frontier: The Rise of Tokenized Web3 Domain Auctions
Apr 08, 2024
IHeartDomains

The digital landscape is undergoing a momentous transformation, and a recent event has become a beacon spotlighting the potential of Web3 innovations. Our recent TECH Talk delves into the exhilarating success of a tokenized domain auction held on BASE, where six coveted .com domains found new ownership through the power of blockchain technology. This stellar auction not only heralds a shift from traditional Web2 domains to their Web3 counterparts but also exemplifies the rejuvenating potential for .com domains within the blockchain environment. The auction accentuates how blockchain can streamline the transaction process by eliminating typical pain points such as prolonged escrow and cumbersome transfer protocols, paving the way for a more fluid, secure, and user-empowered domain marketplace.

Blockchain domains unlock new levels of security, autonomy, and community for online identities, affording users the kind of control that was previously inconceivable. Representing domain names as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) translates to a paradigm where trades and transfers are as smooth as those of other digital assets, showcasing the domain’s renewed versatility and significance. Our TECH Talk also reveals how these tokenized domains go beyond mere transactions—they are a conduit for fostering a strong sense of community and a shared digital culture. In these burgeoning online spaces, a domain becomes akin to prime digital real estate whose value is intricately tied to the activities and connections it nurtures.

The forward-looking fusion of blockchain and domain names is shaping up to represent a future where our online and offline identities become one, marked by a dynamic and multifaceted narrative. The excitement stemming from this technological synergy is profound, promising to unlock new dimensions for digital identity and interaction. Our TECH Talk underscores an essential truth: the success of this tokenized domain auction is not just a milestone for the domain industry but a clarion call to the boundless potential emerging from the merger of tangible and digital worlds. As we progress into this new era, our digital footprints stand to be as authentic as any real-world possessions we hold dear, marking the beginning of an exhilarating journey into the world of Web3.

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Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

The digital landscape is undergoing a momentous transformation, and a recent event has become a beacon spotlighting the potential of Web3 innovations. Our recent TECH Talk delves into the exhilarating success of a tokenized domain auction held on BASE, where six coveted .com domains found new ownership through the power of blockchain technology. This stellar auction not only heralds a shift from traditional Web2 domains to their Web3 counterparts but also exemplifies the rejuvenating potential for .com domains within the blockchain environment. The auction accentuates how blockchain can streamline the transaction process by eliminating typical pain points such as prolonged escrow and cumbersome transfer protocols, paving the way for a more fluid, secure, and user-empowered domain marketplace.

Blockchain domains unlock new levels of security, autonomy, and community for online identities, affording users the kind of control that was previously inconceivable. Representing domain names as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) translates to a paradigm where trades and transfers are as smooth as those of other digital assets, showcasing the domain’s renewed versatility and significance. Our TECH Talk also reveals how these tokenized domains go beyond mere transactions—they are a conduit for fostering a strong sense of community and a shared digital culture. In these burgeoning online spaces, a domain becomes akin to prime digital real estate whose value is intricately tied to the activities and connections it nurtures.

The forward-looking fusion of blockchain and domain names is shaping up to represent a future where our online and offline identities become one, marked by a dynamic and multifaceted narrative. The excitement stemming from this technological synergy is profound, promising to unlock new dimensions for digital identity and interaction. Our TECH Talk underscores an essential truth: the success of this tokenized domain auction is not just a milestone for the domain industry but a clarion call to the boundless potential emerging from the merger of tangible and digital worlds. As we progress into this new era, our digital footprints stand to be as authentic as any real-world possessions we hold dear, marking the beginning of an exhilarating journey into the world of Web3.

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Speaker 1:

Thank you, thank you so.

Speaker 2:

Hello, hello, we will get started in just a moment. Yeah, if you guys could do me a big favor as you're coming into the space, if you could please like and retweet, show some love, let's get some people in the space. This is going to be a good one, short one. I'm actually feeling a little bit under the weather today, but definitely wanted to do a space, as opposed to. I thought about doing this on Friday, but wanted to do a space today, since it's so close to the auction, to cover, you know, some of the things that we experienced during that auction my bullishness, you know, on the auction itself and you itself and kind of what some trends or some things to look forward to as the market continues to build. So, yeah, get a couple of folks in here. Like I said, pinned everything up at the top that we'll be talking about today. So, yeah, it's starting in just a moment. Also, yeah, anybody wants to come up to speak? Please feel free to request a speaker role and I will add you on up, easy peasy.

Speaker 2:

All right now, without further ado, we are going to go ahead and get started. So, yeah, first and foremost, I would love to welcome everyone to iHeart Domains and our tech talk spaces where we discuss news, innovations, education, alpha and business development in the Web3 domain name and digital identity space. We are your one-stop platform to discover, learn, grow, build and trade Web3 domains and digital identity, with a focus on education and business development. As always, our tech talks are recorded so you can view our content at iHeartDomainscom or in podcast form on every major podcast player, including Apple and Spotify, and it's easy to get to at techtalkhost. Yeah, and once again, if you guys are coming to the space, if you could please like and retweet and hey how you doing today, Mike.

Speaker 3:

Yo, yo, yo. What's good guys? How's everyone? Today? I'm all good man. How's things man?

Speaker 2:

Man, things are good. I know we've been kind of on and off all day today talking about kind of the bolusness and the space itself, so I think you know how my day is going. Yeah, it's been a good day.

Speaker 3:

No, that's good to hear. That's good to hear. I'm struggling with the Wi-Fi, so bear with me.

Speaker 2:

That's all all good and we're about to dig into some of the opening news. Anyway, I know a lot of people are at uh nft nyc it just actually started today. Not entirely sure why I didn't go to nft nyc, I don't know why I haven't gone really any of the years. Uh, it always seems like it's a cool event and the NFT crowd is like I belong to it, right. So I'm not sure why I don't go, but kind of getting a little FOMO from not going and seeing everybody there. But there's always next year and there's always consensus. So hopefully those same people make that trek next month. But yeah, touching on the opening news, a few things that are printed up at the top, the first thing that I'm going to go through is something that I've kind of been saying over and over again but just wanted to remind everybody that the social portion of the platform. Ok, so the platform, as many of you know, has grown kind of from a personal investment endeavor to, you know, education, content, all that good stuff, um, and continuing on with that evolution and optimizing the platform and the brand you know to be the best uh of you, know it can be or that I can, uh, can make it.

Speaker 2:

Um, we pretty much decided to move the majority of the social portion of the platform to Warpcast and I've mentioned it many times in different spaces but wrote it out and kind of put it up at the top so people can see. You know, biggest thing about Warpcast you know that that inspired the move over there is the fact that the engagement there is. It's incentivized. It allows me to incentivize engagement a lot easier than it does on, like I said, on Telegram. Also, on Telegram the conversations are closed. When you're having, you know, discussions about important things inside of the group, no one can see them except for people in the group. At least being able to have the conversations out loud can help people if they see it in passing.

Speaker 2:

So, just a better overall platform. It's growing. So I mean, if you're on there and there's some growing pains and it's not the easiest to use, I get it. It's not easy all the time for me either, but it is worth it and I think, as we continue to build and grow and grind on this platform in the future, there really isn't going to be a substitute for the value that it provides, both personally and professionally. So two ways, or there's kind of two different links that I put here. The first one is my personal profile, so that is iHeartDomains. I have that link there in the post. And also we have a channel called Web Through Domains. So we were one of the first to buy a bunch of channels on Warpcast and lucky enough to secure the Web Throughomains channel. Really really inviting everyone if you own a TLD, sld, whether you're from Handshake, unstoppable Decidueb, freename, ens, whatever it is any avenue for you to share your TLDs, your Web2Domains it all gets exposure.

Speaker 2:

You never know where your next sale may come from, where your next inquiry may come from, um. So created this group that, so that everyone on workcast has a place to post, um, any of their shields, any of their domains, um, and then also, um, you know, with that incentivization thing I'm able to incentivize any of those interactions in the web through domains group. So definitely encouraging anyone who wants to stay connected with our community, uh, to join workcast and then, and then follow these and I'll follow you back and then, as I said, any of the casts or posts in the Web3Domains channel, I will do my best to leave a little DGN or TN100X tip on them. And yeah, you'll get what that means if you don't already know.

Speaker 2:

But once you're in the Warpcast communities, there's a tipping culture there which is good. It kind of helps people self-manage or self-govern spammy content. It doesn't reward people who show up and post spam and try to farm points and reward people with genuine content. I mean, obviously some great content slips through the cracks. It doesn't get rewarded. But for the most part, like I said, these two tokens are used as part of the tipping culture within that ecosystem. Any questions? So far? I know, mike, you already belong to our community. You need to tip more or not tip more, but post more on the Web2Domain channel though, what?

Speaker 3:

our main channel that we were just talking, or what? What'd you mean? I don't know, not the DM channel?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I'm for those of you listening, we're I'm still teaching Mike on how to use Warpcast, but Warcast is a blend of, like I said, the Twitter interface kind of what. The first thing you see cast posts et cetera. It's got the DM function on the backend and the private group function on the backend. So, you know, akin to Twitter, private groups, discord, et cetera, which is what you're referencing. But there's also public groups or subject categories per se. So when you create content, when you create a post within Warpcast, you have the option to choose a destination for where that content is featured or directed to, and those are called channels. So if you're one of the ways that someone described, warpcast is also probably and you're going to see this if you join Warpcast and you follow me, you're going to see the things that I post are all over the place and it's meant to be like that by design.

Speaker 2:

Wordcast is meant to where you don't need a separate personal or business account. Anything you want to post, you can direct it to a relevant group so that you're targeting the audience that you want to talk to and people are only seeing what they want to see, et cetera. So what I'm describing is the public. We have a public group called web through domains that anyone, whether they know me before or not, can just type in a uh, you know, when they're creating a post, if it's relevant to web through domains, they can select that as a channel or cast it in there. So, uh, that's what I'm saying. So, yeah, if you um, does that answer your question?

Speaker 3:

sorry, my man, I thought you were just telling, telling everyone how it's done. So we have our own channel right. Did you want me to post more in that, or are you talking about the channel that we DM in?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm talking about the public channel. I'll guide you towards that. We'll make that pretty easy for you and, again, for anybody who wants to know what that channel is. It is Web3 Domains and I do have the link up in that pinned tweet up at the top. The second piece of news I'm going to touch on unfortunately for those who don't like to hear about Warpcast is also kind of about Warpcast, but this is also some domaining stuff, is also kind of not Warpcast, but this is also some demaining stuff. So another thing that I posted up at the top that you guys may see is that the dgen TLD or Web3 domain extension has actually just officially launched on the dgen blockchain, and dgen is a token that was born within Warpcast Farcaster. It has since grown to be large enough to launch its own L3 blockchain and now there's naming on that blockchain and they just so happen to pick TLBdgen and that is the TLB that, if any of you know me, I own through Freename and proudly have been registering on for the past year and some months.

Speaker 2:

I wanted to talk about that briefly from two different perspectives. So first perspective is to introduce to you the TLB itself If you're interacting on Warpcast and on Forecaster or using the DGN blockchain or base chain in any way, it might be a good idea to go and get your dgn name through this registrar. That's not financial advice, obviously, but anything that's native to a blockchain is obviously going to work best on it. These, I believe you can already send and receive funds on the DGN blockchain and you know you're going to have to do your own research and dig down the rabbit hole of the DGN blockchain. It's got quite a bit of TVL on it now, being relatively new. A lot of tokens are being launched on it now, albeit mostly, you know, poo coins and things of that nature. But besides the DGN token, which is being taken super seriously, there will eventually be more serious tokens NFTs, et cetera on that chain. So, again, as chains continue to pop up or continue to build out their tech stack, they're naturally going to look at, you know, creating identity for the people that are maxis of that chain or very involved in that chain. So, dgen on dgen and I actually went and I found this pretty early, so I was able to register quite a few grails on here, so bullish from that perspective. Now I'm going to come around from the other side. I pretty much just got rugged right.

Speaker 2:

My audience to an extent, and the reason why I want to talk about this is because this is something that may come across, likely will come across the desk of many of you who own TLDs, especially very popular ones, especially ones that could potentially, you know, be adopted by a community elsewhere with their technology. The fear is that one day, someone's going to show up and make my TLV irrelevant and, although I can see this this way, you got to remember, their audience is on the DGN blockchain. Nobody knows how to use the DGN blockchain as of now. Also, dgn is a word that applies to way more people than people that are using the degen blockchain or base. There are people that are on Bitcoin who consider themselves degen, who will never touch this blockchain. I'm saying that to say this is that there can and absolutely will be duplicate TLDs out there.

Speaker 2:

Your audience is your audience, and that's the part to focus on when we start looking at business development. Your audience, and that's the part to focus on when we start looking at business development. It's just because something else exists. You just have to find a way to continue to attract your tribe, because, even though this DGN exists. I'm still getting registrations on the other DGN and still always will, because I'll always do that business development and create that value and find the people who may not necessarily want to adopt this. So wanted to talk about that from two points. Also, I wanted to say hi to Web3IM. How are you doing today, sir?

Speaker 4:

Yo yo, what's going on? Just jumped off call with my co-founder who is working on some stuff for that April 9th event that Flexster is coming out to.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. Hey, can you share to us a little bit about that event?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, definitely so. One of the organizations around Massachusetts is called the Boston Blockchain Association, the BBA. They throw a lot of institutional events around here, like they even have the SEC at one of the recent events with Fidelity NASDAQ everyone on State Street, all that. So what they're doing on April 9th is at the BU Data Sciences Center. It's a big new building that looks like Jenga blocks. My brother-in-law actually helped build it. He's a crane operator in Boston, so that building, the BBA, is holding an event that has professors and students from BU, boston College, suffolk, northeastern, worcester Polytech Institute, harvard, mit.

Speaker 4:

Everyone's coming out to that building. They expect like 100, 200 students and it's a four hour meeting where everyone's going to be networking, meeting about what's going on around the different campuses, how students are getting onto the blockchain, different funds that they have going on right now venture funds, projects that students are working on and highlighting some of the successes. Last year one student got a had a million dollar seed round. So people are. They're using it as like an incubator event for students, but they also have people that aren't students, like myself, attending. You know I'm alumni to some of the colleges around here, um, some that I've taken courses at. So the um, that event is on april 9th flexers coming up from new york taking the amtrak to get up here to go to it, and it's just all about networking, learning what the students are doing on the blockchain and seeing if those are new people to engage and onboard. So he'll be representing WebHash, nick and I are representing Web3IM my co-founder and then on April 13th and the 14th at Harvard they have a Harvard Blockchain Expo and that's going to have Goldman Sachs A16 Crypt crypto. Chris dixon's going to be there.

Speaker 4:

Manta labs, uh, sci labs, uh, what were the other ones? Hedera, hashgraph, polychain capital, pantera capital that invested in unstoppable domains it's going to be there. So, for anyone that's around new york and new england, I said earlier this morning on ron's call on his space if you want to come up, you want to network. I have two couches at my my home and a futon and stuff like that so I can have people couch surf. If they want to come up for events, roll up in the Lotus with me. So yeah, I'm just trying to touch more grass this this year and meet more people in the industry. I know that was long winded, dude, but I appreciate you giving me the floor.

Speaker 2:

No, I seriously appreciate you sharing and also want to give you a shout out because, like I said, there's a very small segment of us that do go out, touch grass, grind in real life and they're really trying to push this thing forward and you're really trying to push this up to, like I said, the top brass getting making a lot of moves, and I really appreciate that. Yes, I might sit back and think about also shout out to Flexster, who's also putting in a lot of groundwork trying to get you know a lot of adoption and get people to understand Web3 domains, and this is what it's, the work that we're putting in now. That's slowly but surely setting, sowing the seeds that will get people to that point where it will become commonplace. So, yeah, definitely want to give you a shout out for that.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, and one quick interjection that I would ask of everyone that's on this call is, as this year goes on, please ask people why they're on the blockchain. If you know that people are using it and they have clubs, they have meetings, they have associations ask them why are you on the blockchain? Because there's a lot of us that want to bring people onto the blockchain. One of my buddies has known me since I was 18. And he's known me talk about the blockchain for the past seven years. Now he still doesn't have a crypto wallet. He's already told me hey, unless I can use it as a gamer tag and start putting microtransactions or NFTs as purchases in there, I don't need one right now. So there's people that we need to not spend our time trying to get onto the blockchain if they've already told us I got no reason to use that, if it's someone that's going to lose their recovery phrase, shit like that. So just take some time to find out why people are using the blockchain or why they would want to use it, instead of trying to force an identity on people or onboarding people that are just going to onboard so you'll leave them alone. I've had friends like that. I've been the annoying ADHD dude that's like, oh, come on, get your wallet, get set up and then after they don't ever use it again. So don't be that person.

Speaker 4:

You want to find out why people are using the blockchain. We got to have a reason why they need to use it. You got to point out pains. Hey, did you just send money from one person to another and Venmo took 2%? Why? Why are you paying Venmo? You could have done that for a penny.

Speaker 4:

So if there's other ways that we can show people save money, we're doing that with students. So we're going to find out what's pains for them, what's pains for professors, but also education. Where are there gaps in education? Every person on this space right now should want to know. Where can I inform people in a better manner? How can I educate people and make them less afraid of crypto as a whole and the blockchain? So keep that in mind. We want to learn from people, but if you guys can do me a favor and, in your subsets or your communities, find out where's the education lacking, bring that info to me. I'm going to try to work with other educators in the space and see if we can come up with materials, and every time someone brings something up and says this is a problem or we need more understanding on it, a group of educators can come together, whip something up and get it pushed out.

Speaker 2:

Well, that was also spot on, I think. Why is probably the least asked question from us to other people when trying to onboard and I've mentioned that before that we assume that people understand what this is and that you know. As soon as we explain to them that you can, even from a flipping perspective, as soon as we explain to them that you could buy something for cheap and sell it for more, we, it will automatically make sense to them and they're going to run and register 15 of them. And and yeah, the fact of the matter is is that before we can create solutions to onboard people, we need to know the whys, and the whys are real different.

Speaker 2:

The whys for why, you know, somebody might want to come, uh, may want a domain or need a domain because they're interacting with blockchain is completely different from the wives. Someone who is never going to touch the blockchain and just wants to hang out with their friends or play basketball or do something else or make music. So, yes, spot on with that one as well, sir. And yeah, once again, do also want to remind everybody if you do want to come up and request a speaker role, please do so. I will add you on up. This actually might go pretty quick. I'm going to get back to getting these back around like the hour mark, so that they are more digestible, as they used to be.

Speaker 2:

Nobody wants to listen to a podcast. It's got like two or three hours on it. I'm noticing that. So yeah.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to try to get these summarized pretty well, but, as everybody sees, on the title of the tech talk, this is what we're about to get into now Web 2.0 Demanding versus Web 3.0 Demanding and I apologize already off top for making that title a little clickbaity. It is definitely not intended to be a conversation of the versus nature, but rather a walkthrough of our recent tokenized domain auction and a discussion of the value that blockchain brings to the traditional domain sales market. So, yeah, that's what we intend to cover today. Again, if anybody wants to come up and give any input or if anybody has anything they want to add, you can also do so in the comments as well. But yeah, for those who aren't already aware, we recently just held our second blockchain-based domain name auction, built by GBM Auctions, who are actually also at NFT NYC. So if anyone on the space is listening and you're out there, feel free to go out there and connect with them. But yeah, we held that auction to celebrate our bullishness on base, going back to the Warcast thing and also to try out one particular new feature, and that new feature came courtesy of NameFi, which is a platform that allows you to tokenize domain names, web2 domain names and that platform I used to tokenize six com domain names onto the base blockchain as NFTs.

Speaker 2:

What this allowed me to do was host what will be eternally recorded as the first ever tokenized Web2 domain name auction on or off the blockchain. As you can see by my excitement, this is an achievement that I don't take lightly, and it was the inspiration behind the auction itself. Yeah, I did it on purpose, for provenance, and, in addition to that, because these first test domains per se happened to be from my own portfolio, it proved another point they also happened to be the first and only Web2 domain that I've ever sold, and at a very small profit, although not much. Facts are still facts and this is something that I can bring to the table for Web2 domainers. So naturally, I wondered if maybe this is the best way, moving forward, to try to sell the rest of my Web2 domains, and then, how much is the ability to tokenize domain going to change the way that they are sold and transferred, kind of across the board? So yeah, as we optimize or as I optimize my own domain sales goals and plans, a few things stood out during this auction process that I think play a big part in the future adoption of this technology, and this is kind of what I wanted to talk about in itemize.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, without further ado, the probably most, I guess you would say that the biggest thing that stood out was how easy it was to import and tokenize these domains. For most, I think, web two domainers that are gonna come into the space, and maybe even if they're dealing with blockchain for the first time, once they kind of get over the learning curve of how to use a wallet, it's really not too difficult to import any of these domains. It doesn't take that much of a learning curve and that's how it is currently. Currently, as future UI improvements come out and different platforms come out that allow tokenization, this is all obviously going to become a lot easier to do and, potentially, you know, easy enough for beginner to do.

Speaker 2:

But the process itself is you just log into the main five to their back end using your wallet.

Speaker 2:

You log into your registrar on your end which is something that any Web2 domain investor already knows how to do and simply you type in the domain that you want to import into the search bar on Namefy.

Speaker 2:

It tells you that it's already taken. It says that if you already own it and you want to import it. What you need to do is you go and you get your your transfer code, so you initiate a transfer on your end with your registrar. It gives you a code, you plug the code in and then you click submit and that's it On the registrar end. Depending on who you register with and I use Pork Bun primarily within five minutes of doing that I'm able to go back into Port Bun and finish the transfer and maybe 30, 45 minutes later you end up with an NFT once the transfer is complete on the registrar end. That's literally as easy as it takes To import the first six. To get that process done before, that little waiting process to go back in and force only took maybe five minutes. So I'm saying this to say that for any of you who think you know, if technology is not your thing, if it's already scary every time you log into your wallet and you think you're going to accidentally send funds to somewhere.

Speaker 2:

This isn't going to make life any harder for you. If you've got web to domains, it really is worth it to check out this process. It's not hard to do at all. What ends up happening once you tokenize or imported the domain is you see that domain again transferred into your account at NameFi. You're able to actually manage that domain now within the NameFi platform. So this is now where, if you wanted to send it to somewhere else, you'd be able to transfer it. If you wanted to connect the domain name, you'd be able to set your DNS records all that good stuff. So, yeah, that was the first thing that I wanted. That stood out is that there isn't really a technological barrier for this being adopted.

Speaker 2:

Not not any more of a technological barrier than getting people to adopt blockchain itself, which is already our fight, our fight. So I'm pretty optimistic and bullish on, you know, if there's enough value being shown in it. More people doing these auctions, more people doing regular sales, one big, humongous sale, you know? That makes everything you know kind of clear for people in traditional domain space. I don't think we're going to have too much of a roadblock with getting adoption on that side.

Speaker 2:

Now the second thing that I noticed is that not only is it easy to import, but because this was on the base chain and there are several other blockchains that I think 3DNS uses, like Optimism or Arbitrum or something like that. So there are other blockchains that are cheap, but this one in particular, being on base chain, the cost to do basically anything is nothing. So the tokenization process itself, you know, on ETH mainnet, depending on the gas, that possibly could be a deterrent because it could be anywhere from 10, 20 bucks to hundreds of dollars, depending on how you know ETH Gui depends on acting 10, 20 bucks to hundreds of dollars, depending on how you know. Each way depends on acting. But being on base chain with these particular domains takes that completely out of the equation. So in the event that these tokenization platforms move forward by using, you know, more cost effective L2s, et cetera, and this becomes like a, like I said, a uniform experience experience the process from tokenizing to uploading, to bidding, to settlement, to anything else, is almost nothing in that gas barrier is removed.

Speaker 2:

The currency that we use for this particular auction and the currency that you would use on base is Ethereum, so it's also a very easy asset for people to use and get used to. Eth is used literally on just about every chain and it's really easy to get it to base. You can bridge it directly there from ETH or send it to Coinbase, send it back, etc. And again, as more wallets, as more platforms, as better UI comes out. I 100% see there being some kind of system that makes this a lot easier to do, where you're not even thinking about any of this part of the process. And yeah, before I kind of go any further, like I said, this one's pretty quick, just kind of going through a checklist of the things that stood out what 3am got anything to add.

Speaker 4:

Kinda was just zoning out for the past 20 minutes going through recent tweets my bad dude was just zoning out for the past 20 minutes going through recent tweets.

Speaker 2:

My bad dude, no problem, that happens all the time. Uh, yeah, just continuing on. Um, so now and all of these, so all again, almost everything that I'm going to to go down on the list. Well, virtually everything that I'm going on the list is these are the things that blockchain adds, or the value that blockchain adds, to the current domain name sales process. So just to kind of describe what that is for everyone Currently, if you go to GoDaddy Pork Bun, any of the registrars and you register a Grail domain name Right, let's say, you registered NFTs, nft, mintingcom, congratulations.

Speaker 2:

You now have a domain name in your wallet or not in your wallet, in your account, that you feel is worth money and you want to sell it to someone else. Typically, you would go to a resale platform such as Dan or After Nick or Cito, and that's where you would list that domain name for sale and you usually list it as Fiat. However, 90% of the time when you put it on there, that domain typically gets no visibility unless you're marketing or promoting it. But then, once it's sold, is where this process kind of improves. Before I go into that, go for it with me.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. So one thing I noticed the other day because I don't generally buy any dot coms on Unstoppable, but I did to test out a few things. I picked up like projectrootcom, based on that NVIDIA thing, and if you look under the DNS management it has the different types of records. It's got TXT, soa and NS. For the text record it has ENS1, dnsnameenseth and then it has my wallet address. So it looks like for Unstoppable domains when you first get yourcom from them it's already minting a record to E and S for you when they do it. Okay.

Speaker 2:

So they're setting up DNS sec for you, kind of the.

Speaker 4:

I if someone else has more information on this like this is the first time that I was looking through it Cause I finally started looking at mycom. So it was like why looking through it? Because I finally started looking at my dot coms and was like why didn't I just put these on Squarespace instead, or like Porkbun. So looking through it I noticed there was an ENS one and I'm like I guess they're putting the wallet records on it and that was one thing that someone mentioned on a previous space, I think.

Speaker 4:

I think the day of the GoDaddy thing was, if you attach your wallet to your GoDaddy account and then to a specific domain, that if somebody ever went into your GoDaddy account and then to a specific domain, that if somebody ever went into your GoDaddy account and transferred that domain out of it, you could use your wallet as a way of like the ultimate retrieval tool, of like pulling it back, get over here because it's attached. That was my understanding of some of the power of actually incorporating your ENS wallet, attaching it to your GoDaddy account. If that's wrong, somebody please correct me, but I thought that was one of the benefits is it gives you a way to revoke the domain back if someone stole it through Web2.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I actually have to look deeper into that one, because the fear is that somebody would abuse it after selling the domain and pull it back maliciously. So yeah, I'll dig deeper into that and perhaps, maybe even hold a space on it to try to figure that out.

Speaker 4:

I think one way you could point it out is ask a lot of the original domainers Like I know, ishmaelian, flexer, and some of them get a lot of those dudes on the calls and Unstoppable does sometimes too to find out what's the pain right now in the process of transferring between people using sites like Athernic or Dancom or GoDaddy.

Speaker 4:

Those are the current pains. I think that need to get addressed and that might pull some people towards this uh, web3 stuff and tokenizing it, because you and I chatted the other day about how, like some, I think right of the dot not to bash on them. They're doing a good service. People's stuff are selling, but they take like I think it was 25 or 30 percent or even 35 percent. So people taking that much and acting as an intermediary goes against what we wanted to use the blockchain for, which was removing intermediaries, using smart contracts to execute the sale between the two people and not paying a 25% or 35% cut of your stuff. So I think that's one area. If we look at the pains of the current industry, ask these people what they're paying in commission every year to after Nick, to Dan dot com to look at all that and go all right, now take that. And what if you were to save half of that back in your pocket? Is that of value to you? Start tokenizing the shit.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, and I am going to talk about a couple of the pain points, at least, that I'm aware of and what I believe that this solves. But absolutely the best idea is to talk to the managers themselves.

Speaker 2:

And although I mean not necessarily guaranteed that if they were on the blockchain right at the dot would change their commission structure, because I mean they may have different reasons for why they charge it. But that pain point, especially from, like I said, from us coming into this ecosystem that haven't been used to the past 25 years of having to do business that way and we know the blockchain exists yeah, it's going to be a turnoff for us and it's definitely a benefit that we might be able to translate, or should be able to translate, to other people who also don't want to pay that exorbitant amount.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it just depends though, just to give money and them a shout out, give them their credit. Sometimes, in a lot of cases, those fees are justified because again, it goes back to the visibility and then introducing you to a market that you may not have previously had access to you took the words right out of my mouth.

Speaker 4:

It's you're paying for the connection to the network of bidders, because right now a lot of us have domains and we could probably sell them if connected to the right people that care. So that's the price of doing business right now. In the future, a shit ton of us are going to make commission off of simple networking. Oh, you got this. I'm connected to that guy. I'll warm intro you for a 10% cut, voila, and then all of us will end up being brokers on our own.

Speaker 2:

Yes, sir, yes sir. And going back to those pain points yes, sir, yes sir, and going back to those pain points of now. Well, actually, let me rewind back to the conversation that I started and stopped about matter what is, when you register a domain name for the first time or after you've transferred it to another registrar, there is a waiting period that must take place before you can then transfer it somewhere else. So, saying that, to say, for, if any of you are registering any any hand registered domains, fresh that you want to import, it may take you, I think, 30 to 60 days to be able to do so, but then, after that point, you'll be free to sell it, transfer it, et cetera, until the next person wants to transfer it. So that's the process there. But once you pass the 60 days and you sell it, depending on how much you sell it for and, I think, any sales, in particular, as I said, the first domain, web2 domains. I've never sold them right now off the blockchain.

Speaker 3:

But as.

Speaker 2:

I understand the traditional Web2 process. There's a waiting period. You do have to go through that transfer period as well from your registrar to theirs, which could take some time, depending on the amount of the domain name sales. Especially when you're getting into six and seven figure sales, then it can be something that takes quite a bit. Also, going back to the auction part, in the auctions itself, you know physical auctions, traditional auctions the money that's being, or the bids, don't always come through or get paid out if the person isn't able to settle the auction per se, to settle the auction per se. So blockchain fixes a couple of different things with this particular process fixes a couple of different things. In regard to that A, as you guys are already familiar with the blockchain auction can't bid on an item If the funds aren't in your wallet. Then the funds are taken from your wallet and placed into the auction until someone outbid you or until you win the item. So at least you know if you've got something in the auction on a blockchain or if you're selling something on a blockchain and someone pays you. It's real money.

Speaker 2:

The second thing is if you have transferred these domain names into and I can only speak about NameFi. But once you've transferred the names and tokenized the domains within NameFi and you've created NFTs, as long as that domain name stays there within NameFi as a registrar, you can literally transfer, move, sell, flip, do anything with it as much as you want to. Even if you sell it to another person, they are able to log in and manage that domain without it leaving NameFi as a registrar until they want to. And that's important because you're only having to wait that 60 day period one time as the original registrar and then, once it's off of there, until that person wants to move it and go through it again. Again, you're able to transfer it, sell it very easily and a lot of people aren't going to have a need to transfer it off of name buyers or registrars. That is a big deal.

Speaker 2:

Then, like I said, also being able to get settled instantly an instant settlement of funds. So no waiting periods, no escrow. Even a $10 million domain sale would go through immediately if that person's got $10 million in their wallet. So I really see this becoming extremely attractive when it gets to these types of sales in the future. When you talk about pain points, it's probably the biggest complaint that I hear from web to debaters Again. I'm around them all the time, even though I haven't shared the same sales successes as them. I certainly hear it and for those that are trying to flip, like I said, big names the time that it takes the logistics, the red tape, a lot of things can go wrong in between right. This kind of eliminates that, as long as it's sitting again in this platform's custody, everyone else doesn't even know that sales are happening.

Speaker 2:

And I'm wondering how that's going to work out too as far as reporting, because technically, if a domain name is sold as an NFT and Web 2 and Web 3, I don't even know if it counts or is recorded as a domain sale in Web 2. So in the future we'll see how that kind of pans out. As bigger dot coms sell, I'm sure they're going to have some way of tracking those. But yeah, the big benefit right now is that, as long as it's in this platform, it's really an asset that you're able to work with without restriction. The next person that's receiving this asset is able to work with it without restriction. Like I said, that's why we love the blockchain, instant settlement and you know what you're getting and the way to tokenize domain names work. For anyone who isn't familiar and I don't think I touched on it yet is that it tokenizes the control of the domain. So the domain itself doesn't live in the nft, but the ability to control, transfer, manage the domain lives in the nft. So, essentially, transferring that into the nft and that's something that you can sell or transfer to a wallet etc. Benefits to that, aside from being able to sell it to another person, is security right so that another person can't come in and transfer it out without your permission or can't make any edits or do anything to the DNS records. So there's benefits kind of on both ends. But specifically from the domain sales perspective, blockchain adds that benefit and that benefit for some people may be priceless. That benefit may be kind of the deal seller, you know, provided we're able to communicate that and there's enough venues to explain that. And again, it's going to take a couple of examples. Thankfully, as you stated, we've got people in our space that may make some of those examples, including people like Ishmilly, et cetera, who's got a pretty solid Web2 domain portfolio and is quite aware of this technology. It's only a matter of time before he eventually sells a com to somebody that's probably going to be a traditional web2 domain or via the blockchain, and then it'll open up the door for more conversations. But yeah, I think, from the pain point perspective, like I said, at least from what I'm exposed to, those are some legitimate pains that I think have value and have enough legs to at least get some adoption and yeah, so, with all that being said, that kind of wraps up most of what you know, this experience, again, some of the benefits of this experience that I thought stood out, that I wanted to discuss and talk about and kind of put out there Again.

Speaker 2:

This is a space that we're continuing to develop and build and optimize as we go. Many of these technologies and features, they weren't even being talked about two years ago. Some of them weren't even being talked about a year ago and now they're here. And now that they're here, they'll develop quicker and quicker and quicker. And again, it's about UI. The name of the game now is UI. Tech is here and now we've got people building UI to make this easier for investors and normies alike to participate. And the timing couldn't possibly be better, as the entire space right now is going into what we perceive to be the bull. So yeah, with that being said, if you are a demander, whether in the traditional space or the Web3 space, tokenizing your Web2 domains might be something that you want to look at soon, and we, as Web3 domainers, if you do hold Web2 domains, you should probably do that anyway, so that we start making this the norm. Um, I said technically I'm still a web3 domain because the web2 domains that, uh, you know that we auction happen to be on web3 and and you know, if we're pushing in, you know, emerging technology, uh, uh forward, then we need to get as much adoption, spread as much education and get as many people uh to be bullish about that technology as possible. So I'm certainly bullish in it.

Speaker 2:

I see, uh, we've got chit chat in the audience congr. Congrats to him for winning a few of those domains. We actually had another one won by another individual as well I don't know if he's in the space Actually outbid for two of them because I wanted two of my domains back again. Purpose of doing this was really for provenance and to seal. You know, our name in the history books is getting this done again. I'm very bullish on this becoming something that continues to grow, even the work that Main5 themselves are doing. I know that they have a few things that they're continuing to develop on that'll make this process easier. I actually know some other, you know potential developers that are developing. You know some easier ways to tokenize the veins on different blockchains. So this won't be just restricted to.

Speaker 2:

I said uh, eth main net, or optimism or base. You know, eventually you're gonna see, you know, dot coms on solana. You're eventually gonna see dot coms on bnb, um and everywhere else, everywhere else. So, uh, while you have the opportunity to get in, uh, you know, before it comes to norm, uh, that technology is out there for you. So, um, anyone who's interested in connecting with name five that may want to bridge some domains on, uh, reach out to me. Like, right now, I don't, I don't even think they're. They're giving away tokens, so, um, you know, as long as you tweet about it, share it, spread it, I'm sure I can get you an allocation of tokens to play with your domains. Um, but, yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and wrap up if we don't have anything else to talk about.

Speaker 2:

Again, like I said, kind of feeling a little weird today Got a lot of I don't know if it's reflux or something in my throat that's been making me feel weird, but wanted to make this one a little quick. Like I said, talk about the auction, some of the takeaways from it. Yeah, and again, we're going to be. One last thing I want to talk about is how the auction will work, moving forward and this is again something that, in particular, was just for the provenance, so I put the dot coms up, et cetera, et cetera Going to be going back to receiving domain names from the, from our community itself.

Speaker 2:

That's going to expand to be able to accept all types of assets so it won't just be restricted to polygon based NFTs, as it was the last time. So we're going to be taking like a set of stoppables, as we did last time. So we're going to be taking like a seven stoppables, as we did last time. Also, ens, handshake sats, any of those things. We'll be creating a duplicate asset of that. That's going to be built right into the auction platform. So instead of me going and creating clone NFTs which is why I didn't do this, because I didn't want to do that Instead of going out and creating clone NFTs myself and trying to get everybody to trust that process, gbm is building that in directly. So we'll be able to custom the assets, create the clone that'll be auctioned on base and then, once that sells, whatever it's attached to in the custody or that's custody will be sent with it. So that's that technology that's coming for that auction. So stay tuned for that Tentative date I set was for April 15th.

Speaker 2:

I do need to start getting out a submission form so I might push that back a little bit just to give people time to submit their domains and go through that whole process. But yeah, that is the next thing to look forward to on the auction and definitely if you have some Web2 domains that you want to include and tokenize, let me know so I can help walk you through getting that done and getting those submitted. But, yeah, I'm going to give you a chance to say anything if you've got something you'd like to leave us with Web3AM before I close up.

Speaker 4:

Yep, just had to bounce back to that.

Speaker 4:

They're going to keep releasing fucking extensions. So I might as well say it Unstoppable came out with pog today. They're bringing back all the fucking pogs and slammers. I made a post two weeks ago talking about that shit and now there's an extension for it. So I think we're going to make some fucking slammers out of our logo. So if you guys meet us at upcoming events and stuff, we'll have some actual physical pogs for you guys.

Speaker 4:

I got a 3d printer as well, so I might inlay some washers and other stuff in there. But the Unstoppable came out with pog. So those are going to be around, and if I put an NFC chip inside of each pog I give you and it leads to your profile on the blockchain, you can go fucking slam your slammer on other people and beat them up with your name. So I'm going to start adding some physical things to this stuff. So, yeah, as I do that people that are comfortable for it if you've got a PO box or something or a UPS center for me to ship something to, you're comfortable with something like that, we'll get something lined up. But I don't want to overspeak or make any promises or anything like that. But yeah, pog just came out on Web3. I am Slammerspog. Thank you for always giving me a little bit of time to go on my tangents.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I always love to hear from you as well. You drop a lot of albums you really do, and I saw the pog earlier. I don't know if I live under a rock, but I think I've lived my entire life without really coming across pogs too much, but I do know that that is a very big ecosystem um despite how some people may feel about you know, unstoppable, launching a new extension every other day still is big news.

Speaker 2:

Right again, one step towards adopting a community that may not know anything about web through domains and after this relationship and after getting a couple names, you never know they may turn into max. Come on here and build something important.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, if your blockchain naming service, like your ecosystem or your blockchain network in general, has something of value for people to be using it, they'll go and get their name so they can represent themselves on your blockchain. That's all it is.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, identity, right, that's what we call this. This is identity, and so identity always has a use. If you're bullish on something, somebody, somewhere, will always want to rock it as a badge of honor. So the people who can cater to that, that can be accurate snipers and find out the appropriate communities. And, again, like we said, the people that can communicate the why, because that's the second part, right. Like, like we said, the people that can communicate the why, because that's the second part, right. Like we created pub. It's Unstoppable's job now to create the why. You know the millions of pub customers out there should want a pub, but if they're successful in that, then hey, use that, regurgitate it, create a new why and go get the next community.

Speaker 4:

So, again what if they end up? They're doing plug digital now that's up. They're doing plug digital now that's like the new name of what they're working on. So I'm really wondering and you know me with all this nfc stuff and then popes, I think it would be dope if they started putting um, if they started putting nfts or downloadable shit, or like there's an nfc inside your physical pog you have which takes you to a thing that shows it's a collectible that you own on the blockchain.

Speaker 4:

I don't know, why pudgy penguins didn't do that when they debuted their merch in stores and they could also do a redeemable pudgy Like. There's so many cool things that these companies could be doing to onboard people to these communities. Add a digital aspect of it, which is physical and digital real world aspect Like. These are the ideas that I want to throw at these companies and say if you want to take them, run with them. Like we need more people.

Speaker 2:

Let's get more people involved. Yeah, and to that, I think it's just a matter of they haven't done it yet, because it's the obvious progression of the benefit of doing any of this. One day we will have NFCs and it's got to happen. So just a matter of of it getting done. And so, just a matter of it getting done. And it's a matter of people, like I said, introducing that to them so that they know that they can do it and, again, kind of explaining that. Why Very good conversation today.

Speaker 2:

I see Ishmael just hopped up. I'm about to close the space. I don't know if you wanna say hi or anything like that, but in the event that you don't, I'm gonna go ahead and wrap up and finish the rest of my day. Um, but, yeah, uh, thank you again. Great conversation. Um, if you guys want to continue the conversation again, I invite you to join our web three domains group on vorkast.

Speaker 2:

Not the easiest platform to use, not the uh, the most user-friendly or engaging platform to use at first, but trust me, if you take your time to learn it, you take your time to build it, it, it really can be something that provides a lot of value to you. Uh, we hope that this group provides a lot of value to you and if you cast in our group, we'll incentivize it, so it's not all for nothing, um, and yeah, that being said, I thank you guys for attending another tech talk. Like to thank anyone who participated in the auction. Look forward to hosting more Love, talking about the benefits of it. Hopefully we can get Web2 on board using this a lot more. And, hey, you never know, soon, we're going to see some multi-million dollar sales being made on the blockchain and some dot coms. And yeah, with that being said, enjoy the rest of your week, y'all enjoy.

Tech Talk on Web3 Domains
Blockchain Networking and Education Initiatives
Tokenizing Web2 Domain Names for Auction
Blockchain Benefits in Domain Sales
Innovation and Excitement in Web3
Blockchain Technology and Its Potential