Building Opportunities in the Web3 Domain Space - Web3 TLDs or ENS Subdomains?

Ready to unlock the potential of Web3 domains? Join me, WenAirdrop, as we explore the thrilling world of digital identity in our latest Tech Talk podcast episode. Discover the innovative "Pay With Domains" feature from Freename, poised to revolutionize the Web3 domain ecosystem by integrating seamlessly with various wallets. We'll also get a sneak peek at our upcoming Vrbs Hangout IRL meetup in San Antonio, Texas, an exciting event crafted to welcome newcomers to the blockchain community with interactive experiences and free Web3 domain names.

We'll delve into the latest trends in Web3 domains, particularly the growing interest in ENS domains driven by influential players like 0xb1. Witness the strategic shift as Web3 companies gravitate towards top-level domains like .xyz, with significant transactions such as the moar.xyz purchase for $22,000 setting new benchmarks for domain value. Comparing established systems like ENS with emerging platforms such as Freename, we unpack the complexities and opportunities in the naming landscape, offering insights into branding and community building within the digital realm.

Managing Web3 domains has its challenges, from ownership and renewals to domain squatting. This episode explores the importance of ethical practices in fostering growth and innovation in Web3. We discuss the intricacies of domain management, emphasizing flexibility, security, and the balance between ownership and non-ownership. From the technical advantages of ENS subnames over new protocols to the impact of domain squatting on infrastructure development, my conversation underscores the need for collaboration and ethical strategies to encourage mass adoption and drive demand for premium assets in the Web3 space. Don’t miss out on this comprehensive guide to navig

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Chapters

• 2:02 Web3 Domain Onboarding and Innovation
• 8:34 Emerging Trends in Web3 Domains
• 16:12 Scalability and Value of Web3 TLDs
• 29:41 Ownership and Renewals in Web3
• 34:16 Comparison of Web3 Naming Systems
• 40:52 Future of Ape Chain Naming
• 55:04 Interoperability vs. Branding in Naming
• 1:05:07 Web3 TLD Ownership and Interoperability
• 1:10:57 Web3 Naming Challenges and Solutions
• 1:21:57 The Impact of Domain Squatting

Transcript

Speaker 1: 2:02

Thank you. Thank you, hello, hello. So we'll get started in just a moment, giving it a few moments for a couple people to come into the space. Yeah, it's going to be a fun topic today. Going to go through a couple ideas briefly, as you can see by the subject topic at the top of the top of the spaces. So, yeah, we will get started here in just a moment, like I said, just waiting for a couple more people to come into the space. Thank you, all right, I'm going to go ahead and get started. I actually pinned a couple things at the top of the space I'm going to be referencing, pinned a couple things at the top of the space that I'm going to be referencing.

Speaker 1: 3:30

As always, we do record this space live here on X and then the space gets turned into our podcast, where you can find it at Apple, spotify, youtube, all that good stuff. But, yeah, I would like to welcome you to our Tech Talk podcast. Again, it is a live discussion where we discuss news, innovation, education and alpha in the Web3 domains and digital identity space. I am your host, wynne Airdrop. I am the founder of iHeartDomains and we are your number one resource for unbiased Web3 and blockchain domain educational content, with over 100 Tech Talk episodes and YouTube videos produced and archived over the past two years episodes and YouTube videos produced and archived over the past two years. You can search the entire podcast archive for prior recordings and an easy-to-read blog overview of each episode at iHeartDomainscom, and then also, like I said, prior recordings and this recording at some point will be available in every major podcast player, including Apple, spotify and iHeartRadio, and you can reach all of those episodes easily at techtalkhost. Again, thank everybody who does come and attend these live and, yeah, if anyone wants to add to the conversation, feel free to request a speaker role or you can leave a question in the comments.

Speaker 1: 4:40

I typically like to start our Tech Talks off with some opening news for the week to kind of go over some of the latest events that have been happening. One of the things that you will see that is pinned up at the top of the space is going to be our Verbs Hangout. So we are in the planning stages for our third Verbs Hangout IRL meetup. That's our coffee and crypto meetup that we do uh, or have been doing uh, every single month, and this is our third month doing it. This is sponsored by the verbs dao and also co-sponsored by us, iheart domains, um. Another one of our partners is also sponsoring which is free name, um and uh we've talked about it already but the verbs meet up and hang out, um.

Speaker 1: 5:23

The purpose of that is to create an onboarding experience for basically normies to enter into Web3, whether that be through, you know, the culture of verbs, slash nouns, which is public goods, or through digital identity. We do this meetup where we buy coffee for everybody. You know we host it at a pretty fun venue in San Antonio, texas, on Saturdays from 10 to 2.30 or 10 to 12.30. And we create a fun environment that's meant to learn and give everybody who attends, like I said, some freebies to help onboard them. One of those freebies does happen to be a verbs or VRBS Web3 domain name, so anyone who attends those IRL events does get to get their own first Web3 digital identity. So, yeah, that's going to be on October 19th here in San Antonio, texas, at Hops and Hounds, aka Crayons and Hounds, and that's going to be from 10 o'clock in the morning until 1230. And again, if you've been there before or if you're familiar with the establishment, a very fun place to bring family, you know, start or the beginning of a bigger day. It's right next to the Pearl, it's also right on the Riverwalk, so there's tons to do. You don't have to feel like you're obligated to stay at the meetup all day. Stop by, learn some things, get some freebies and keep it pushing.

Speaker 1: 6:42

All right, and moving on to the next thing, freename, who is our partner. As I mentioned before, they had just announced their new Pay With Domains feature. So we've talked about Freename's resolver a few times, one of the unique value propositions that they've built. But for those of you who aren't familiar, freename has built basically a resolver that resolves not only their domain names, but it also resolves unstoppable domains and ENS. An example of how that resolver works can be used or can be found by using their Freename Whois. So if you go to Freenameio, they have a Whois tool that allows you to look at the owner of basically any domain name, whether it's from ENS, unstoppable or them. So, taking that technology to the next level, they created a plugin that now allows you to pay or send money to any of these individual addresses, whether it be an Unstoppable, whether it be an ENS or whether it be a free name, in the wallets that they work on. So we obviously know that all Web3 domains don't work in the same wallets, but with their extension you're able to not only type in the name from this platform but you're actually able to choose from a dropdown of appropriate wallets that they can use, like Wallet Connect or something like that. So it gives you the option of Trust Wallet, metamask, all that good stuff. And then, of course, each one will work with its you know, its partnered naming service. So super cool technology. You know, again, it's the beginning of development that is to come. I'd like to see them experimenting and continue to build and you're really showing how interoperability can work right and I'm sure that this will continue to evolve in time, will continue to be more automated. You know, more integrations, all that good stuff. But yeah, I encourage you guys all to check out freenameio and their paid domains feature.

Speaker 1: 8:34

And then, kind of, the next part of what I wanted to talk about is what I know has been extremely obvious to anybody in the space, which is, you know, we've seen to enter what looks like an ENS bull run, and I'm not necessarily going to associate the entirety of it to one person. I've been looking at the ENS sales bot. Sales are coming from multiple people and I think you know shout outs to OXB1, you know the whale that's entered the space, that has stirred things up. We all know who he is. Shout out to him. He's doing some big things but I think he's woken up a lot of other investors who may have been dormant and looking to get some assets in the space. And, like I said, looking at the ENS sales box, the sales are going a lot of different places or coming from a lot of different places and some big premium names. So, you know, for those of you who are in the NSC Pro system, who have bags there, it's starting to become a very good time for you and I know quite a few of you have already, you know, had some transactions and some interactions, even directly with OXB1, and he's blessed quite a few people in that community. We talked about it a little bit yesterday on, well, actually a lot of it yesterday on the GBM domain or space. You know kind of some of the names that are being purchased and what we speculate people will build on them and all that good stuff. So, yeah, looking forward to seeing that continue to expand and hopefully it's not a false bull. It's some real liquidity making the space run, and hopefully it's not a false bull, it's real liquidity making the space run.

Speaker 1: 10:13

And speaking of OXB1, one of the last things that I wanted to touch on for just a sec, so again, despite my criticism of the price that he paid for it, still congratulations to him and his team. Whoever's advising him for acquiring morexyz, and that's more spelled M-O-A-R. I think it's a play of, it's a slang term, I think a game slang term, I don't know. In any event, m-o-a-rxyz. He acquired it for $22,000. So, yeah, congrats to both Suiza, who I believe is the one who, um, uh, held that domain and who he acquired it from, and, you know, congrats to him for what he's planning on building on it, um, it does bring up the question, though, and just like you know big sales in the ENS space, or dot, eth, kind of set, um, what do you call it? Like comps or or, or kind of create a market or set, you know a little bit of a bar for what some premium name should go for. You know big names that are sold on. Any TLD, in essence, do exactly the same thing. We talk about com quite often. We talk about, of course, our three TLDs, and then it seems like we talk about every single other TLD in the space that people use for name hacks.

Speaker 1: 11:24

But xyz is that one that's just sitting there. It's been there for a while. Again, to me it's visually appealing and it passes the radio test with the XYZ, but the general domain industry, I think, doesn't value it as much. Super cheap to register. I don't know what a for character goes for. I may even have a for character xyz. I don't know what a four character goes for. I may even have a four character xyz. I don't know. But moarxyz going for 22k is definitely bullish for the xyz market. I do hold some xyz domains that I can name, such as like crypto debit card xyz. Also rwa loans, xyz Some of the different places that I think that this market will end up. That crypto debit card, I think, is already a grill right now.

Speaker 1: 12:08

But my point being is that continued sales like this, especially and this is something I was going to touch on in the spaces with gbm last night. Um, you know, different tlds will have relevance depending on you know the market that they exist in or depending on you know the industry that comes up and begins to adopt them. Like AI, for instance, ai has extreme relevance. People are building on it, people are using it and it gives value to that TLD where prior to now people could not see that value right and the go-to the fallback is always com is king, place all the value of the money there, and I get that. I try to change that.

Speaker 1: 12:47

I have noticed a trend, though, with Web3. Specific companies and we're talking about real companies, you know quite a few of them are leaning towards the dot X, y, z and they're they're not doing so, I think, as a coat, but they're doing so to truly build. Morecom is for sale and I think we all could probably agree that OXB1 could have afforded Morecom. If anything, it may have been even for sale for the same price as this one. I mean, fourlettercoms do have a pretty high premium.

Speaker 1: 13:19

But my point being is that he purposely chose this TLD, as do many others. I know this TLD has a little bit of superpower per se in the Web3 space. You know you could use it kind of as a cheat code to look at what's inside ENS wallets and stuff like that. So, with that being said, you know, as our space continues to grow, you know Web3 as a business. As more corporations and startups and entities start entering the Web3 space, how many of them might look towards a xyz and start pushing that premium up a little bit? So again, super congrats to OSB1. Again I did what I do, which is, you know, said my feelings about it. 22k is super strong for that domain. So again, congrats to Swetha. But he's got plans to build on it and, like I said, I fundamentally agree with the concept of anything's worth it if you're planning to turn it into a billion dollar company. And yeah, before I go any further and get into the kind of the main discussion, what's up with it, gary? How are you doing?

Speaker 2: 14:25

I was glad to see you in the space. Hey, gm, gm, man, that's how the space is open. And uh, yeah, I saw the word ens too and I was like, oh, cool new room. And uh, yeah, happy to be here. Love, uh, love your talks. Really appreciate the work that you do, the education you put out there, the people you bring together. You do, you do it well you.

Speaker 1: 14:43

I really appreciate it and definitely share the same feelings Always value, you know, not only the water cooler but the Goats and Dragons, which I haven't seen it all this week. I was really kind of missing those and anticipating hopping on one. But, yeah, if any of you guys are already aware and I know everybody in this space, so so far, but if anybody's listening back in the future, if you're not already connected with gary palmer jr or for some reason you just don't like gary palmer jr, uh, change that feeling and go tap into his spaces. A lot of knowledge we're here to build, um, and and certain people I think are are basically foundations into what we're building in this space. So, yeah, yeah, definitely glad for you coming up and yeah, without further ado, we can jump into the main topic and I'm actually going to keep this space pretty brief. I typically like to. We used to go for like an hour hour and a half. That's really long for people to digest. This does end up on a podcast and I am trying to appeal to a larger listening base, especially those who maybe, for the first time, are hearing about Web3 technology and digital ideas. So try to run through these pretty quick. But if anybody else does want to come up on stage, feel free to request a speaker role.

Speaker 1: 15:56

As you can see up at the top, the topic is Web3 TLDs first in subdomains, namedgen greater than namedgeneth. And of course, this is all just a what do you call it? A clickbait or whatever you call it. But yeah, the subject matter of the space is really to look at kind of what these two assets you know, what the purpose of these two assets are, how people are utilizing them in the space, and to see what the opportunity lies there. I know a lot of people have kind of already picked their team, but I really think it's way too early to pick teams and we're still seeing so many different implementations of naming and different naming services that you know. Obviously diversity, I think, would be what ages best.

Speaker 1: 16:41

But with that being said, I anticipate and we just talked about the ENS bull run looking at some of those names that are being grabbed. I mean, obviously there's been a lot of like brand names and things like that and hopefully people are planning to do the right things with those or connected somehow to those entities. But some of the other things, like I anticipate many who are scooping these grails, especially at the premiums, might be doing so to capitalize on the opportunity that has recently been highlighted by recent successful domain registries, such as dgeneth, which I use in the title above, and most recently and famously, baseeth, which was a super success with over 400 subdomains minted. A super success with over 400 subdomains minted. For a lot of people, primarily people in the ENS and ETH ecosystem, having the eth prominently displayed in their name, even if it is as a third level, is still a big stamp anda signal that adds value and trust in the ecosystem.

Speaker 1: 17:41

For others you know, who may be outside the ecosystem it might be a dilution necessary and only tolerated because of the utility that comes with it. So, yeah, the question is, if you could, would you still prefer it the way it is, or is a cleaner solution something you'd entertain if the utility was the same or if the difference in utility had substantial value, right? So today I just wanted to briefly discuss my thoughts on the scalability and value of Web3 TLDs from platforms such as Freename. Again, I'm super bullish on Freename and Full Transparency. I am a consultant for them. But, yeah, I wanted to discuss my thoughts on the scalability and value of those TLDs from them for branding and community building, in comparison with what is happening in the ENS subdomain culture. And I'm going to use an example, like I said, that is very familiar to me, which is dgin and, to be super clear, both dgin in any ecosystem whether it be free name, handshake, central web, wherever you have it, I own it, like I said, in the free name ecosystem, so I'm speaking from that perspective.

Speaker 1: 18:49

And then, obviously, dgeneth are grails that have enough lore and community spirit to give each use and relevance in the right builder's hands. I don't think anybody who has eth in any ecosystem if you can figure out a way to add some utility to it is going to go wrong. However, of course, ens aka the ETH1, by far has more market share in mainstream utility, which makes its benefits pretty obvious. One of the things that is a drawback for people, though, is what they may see as a lack of true ownership. The need for renewals is still a turnoff and a deal killer for many people, and that's one of the things I wanted to talk about.

Speaker 1: 19:32

um, so we've talked many times, so just so people kind of understand the difference in assets, um you know, uh, in, in this particular case, uh, dot eth would be the tld, which cannot be owned by anyone. It is owned by everyone, right, it is owned by the DAO, it exists, it is an ecosystem, an entity, right, the things that you can quote, unquote, own in the ENS ecosystem would be the subdomains, so you can register your personal name or your personal business name or nickname or whatever eth, and then they have a pretty good, pretty solid integration network. They're integrated basically everywhere they work. The other asset that I'm talking about is akin to eth. It has different utility, exists on different blockchains, et cetera. It has different utility, exists on different blockchains, et cetera. But the level of ownership that the platform like Freename allows you to have is to purchase these names at that level, so you're able to own what is right at the dot and then allow others to register their personal name, as you would do on a eth, from your name. So that's the difference in the two I guess you would say assets. So we're talking about two completely different things that exist in the same ecosystem or, you know, same environment. Ok, so I just wanted to tell you that, with that being said, many people plan to use both of these assets in the same way way and we're coming to the point where people again are starting to capitalize on the opportunity of adding or creating communities and generating revenues from people who may be attracted to their name because of the way it looks or because of what somebody may have built with it and the two different ways you could do that is using one of those two assets.

Speaker 1: 21:21

I want to talk about kind of the differences as far as how these two assets are meant to be used and starting with free name, as I've mentioned before, and Spaces with them. You know, freename is a turnkey platform, despite not having the same mainstream utility as ENS. It will grow, obviously, but being a turnkey platform, it is meant for people to invest at that level, meant for people to invest at that level, and there are many tools and things that they provide for people to kind of scale that business if they're able to build a community or achieve adoption with their name. You know that are extremely convenient. You know, one of those things is, like I said, by being a registry in a box.

Speaker 1: 21:59

I think what might be extremely important to anyone who is investing in a business of naming or creating a registry. You know, one of the first things I think people think about when they enter a business is how they're going to exit it right, at least in the case of Freename, because it is a turnkey solution and I think it might be the same. I know it works the same way with Decentralweb, but not sure how many people have created large registries on H&S and have sold the parent names or parent TLD.

Speaker 1: 22:33

But at least in these ecosystems, if you sell the parent TLD, that turnkey platform goes with it and that next person is now inheriting a business that they can now continue to capitalize and manage and run Like they're buying a registry and there's not too much red tape or technicality that you have to go through to do that, as opposed to and this is more of a question than a statement, because I don't think it's been done yet but I don't know what happens when someone sells sells in the case of a subdomain registry like, for instance, dgeneth. So, even though you're able to essentially build the business using, think like namespaceeth and I know some others have built their own you know subdomain registry technology on their own, but even though you're able to essentially use and build this technology to create a registry, because it's not turnkey or because you're choosing third party or whatever it is, I don't know. I guess my question, my wonder and my theory is that maybe that doesn't go with it. If you sold dgeneth, I don't know how the fuses work. If you sell the dgeneth, I'm not sure how that works, but in any event, it's a really big thing to take in consideration.

Speaker 1: 23:50

If you're purchasing these names for the purpose of naming, you know, coming in from a naming perspective, that's one of the things that I think you know could be a key difference in. You know how you're able to exit. You know any of these opportunities should you use. You know either a esub or a TLD from one of these platforms to start a registry. Before I go and I'm actually I see that Paige is in the crowd. Shout out to you, I'm actually going to invite you up. Don't have to come up if you don't want to, but wanted to know your thoughts on that. Maybe you have a little bit more knowledge on how that works technically, locked down, more than somebody who's just spinning something off using namespace. But in any event, does that transfer with it, or how would that work?

Speaker 2: 24:57

Yeah, it's a great question and it's obviously a very, very important question and you did get the high-level points, the breadcrumbs that lead you to the answer. You did get that right. The ENS names. They have what we call fuses, and we call them fuses because fuses get burnt and when a fuse gets burnt you can't unburn the fuse, right, um, you can't, you can't unburn the fuse. So, uh, with the fuses, there's, um, what is there like six, maybe seven fuses?

Speaker 2: 25:40

And uh, let's see here, if, if none of the birds, if none of the fuses are burnt, then all the subnames are ruggable, is kind of how I would phrase it, and I'm not going to remember the exact name of all the fuses, all the fuses. But if the fuses, if the right fuses, are burnt I believe it's like two of them it prevents any of the subnames to be ruggable. So, you know, I can look that up and get more technical. I don't think we need to get too technical on this call. But if there's uh, if it's like basically the, the parent name cannot, um, you know, basically, uh, rug, uh, any of the subnames.

Speaker 2: 26:31

And so there was a project called emaileth and they took their uh, emaileth and they gave it to a smart contract and technically someone can buy that name and it's like it's really expensive, so I don't think anyone's going to buy it.

Speaker 2: 26:45

But if someone did buy that name from the contract, they would be able to rug all of the subnames for that project. And if you, you know, wanted to, uh, instill confidence into people with your subname registry project and you issued the sub-names and everything and you show it's all in the blockchain, that the right fuses are burnt, then people would feel people that understand the technology or people that rely on other people that understand the technology would feel very confident that if you owned a sub-name of that project, that it would be impossible for anybody to rug that name from you. The one sort of minor exception to that would be if the ENS name ever expired and then passed the grace period. But because the eth names are publicly viewable, anybody can see that and anybody can extend that name out to prevent the name from going into expiry or going past the three-month grace period.

Speaker 1: 28:06

Yeah, and for some, I don't know if Paige is talking right now.

Speaker 2: 28:16

Not that I heard. Oh, my bad.

Speaker 3: 28:20

No, I'll wait until you're done, and then I'll jump in.

Speaker 1: 28:22

No, I was going to say first of all, thank you for clarifying that and then also, again, that's a big thing to take into consideration for those who are technically savvy and hopefully I'm hoping some of the turnkey solutions you know, I'm sure Namespace is going to continue to optimize their platform and other solutions might pop up that enable people to create subdomain registries, you know, more easily off their eth. But as that happens, I mean, hopefully it makes those who are not that technically savvy, makes the process easier for them to understand not only that part but understand how to do it and communicate it to people. Because you know, again, you know there are some people who are aware and feel that, because of that technicality, that there's never a true sense of ownership in that name. And again, that's the argument for other people who are bullish on other ecosystems, despite the lack of utility of their own naming platform. They'd rather own something that doesn't work than not own something that does, if that makes sense. But yeah, that was what I was going to say about that.

Speaker 1: 29:34

Paige, did you have any comments?

Speaker 3: 29:38

Just that. Hey, gary, it feels like 2022. We're back here on a Friday afternoon talking web three domains. Gary and I used to do a clubhouse space and what he just shared was the same thing he shared. Gary, I feel like you know it's the same thing.

Speaker 3: 29:56

When you guys brought out the third levels, you said everything you just said now, which was, I think there was a sense of protection for the third level registrant, that you wanted to provide some permanence for them. And now I even know more that there's some switches that need to be clicked, and I just think that that's good because it sets up transparency. You know what I mean. If I have a name kidswalleteth, so say, I built a platform on kidswalleteth for kids to get their third levels or something like that I would have the option to either transparently say this is an experimental project, these addresses may go away, or I could say I've made the decision to lock this name up for 10 years. I've clicked the switches to make sure that everyone's name is kind of permanent. That's kind of what I heard, gary, is that you can go either way, depending if you want to protect the registrants or if you're concerned that you want flexibility to maybe sell the name later, as long as you disclose it? Did I get how you shared that third level right?

Speaker 2: 31:11

Yep, that's exactly right. If the two fuses are burnt, then the subnames are unruggable, and if none of the fuses are burnt, then the subnames are ruggable.

Speaker 3: 31:25

Fantastic, and as long as it's not a premium renewal, like you say, someone could pay the five bucks plus gas and keep alive. This is an in the weeds question. But, Gary, you go head to toe, top level all the way to the weeds In that grace period. You know, after it expires, after I lose my chance to renew it, it's put out to the public at $11.8 million. If it gets to that reverse auction, is that kind of a reset that if someone buys it then they don't reconnect the old stuff. That's only if you renew it during that grace period. And then did I hear you say that anyone can renew a name, Meaning if I forget what wallet I own a name in, can I just go into any other wallet and renew?

Speaker 2: 32:17

that name? Yep, the answer is yes to both of those. The first answer if a name does not just expire but it also passes a three-month grace period. And a side note when programmers are programming this stuff, names should not work after it expires, right, when it expires and it goes into a three-month grace period, the programmers are supposed to program it, so the name doesn't work. So people have three months to realize whoa, what's going on? Why is my name not work? Oh, my goodness, the parent name is expired. Someone needs to renew this.

Speaker 2: 32:56

But if it does go past the three-month grace period, then the name sort of like dies and then when it gets re-minted, it gets reincarnated, if you don't mind this analogy. And when it gets re-minted, it gets reincarnated. If, if you don't mind this analogy, and when it gets reincarnated, um, because it gets re-minted by somebody you know new, then all the fuses, uh, are back in place. Right, that was like the little caveat there. And then the new owner does have the option to to not rug everybody. They, they could buy the name and re-burn the fuses and make everybody feel good again, or they could rug everybody. They have that option. And then the second answer is also a yes, you can go to ensdomains or you can go to visionio, and anybody can renew any name for any amount of time at any time. Yeah, and I've actually.

Speaker 1: 33:58

I mean, that's actually a very convenient feature because I have a lot of my names and um wallets that I don't have access to and I just renew them from my burner wallet. Uh, with that being said, that kind kind of takes me instilling this ownership versus perceptual non-ownership in a way right with renewals. And we're talking about, like again, for scalability and mass adoption In the case of baseeaf, we have over 400,000 subdomains out there, a good majority of which were, you know, free claims because you had like a bunch of credits at the time or had achieved certain things, or were super cheap or were, like I said, purchased by a lot of people, just because you know they were degenning out whatever. But I'm curious to see you know they were degenning out whatever. But I'm curious to see, in a year from now, when we roll over to renewal time, how many of those domains are still registered or how many go into what do you call it renewal or whatever stage where they expire. And, with that being said, when it comes to mass adoption, that might be something that's too much for normal people. Even when it comes to gifting them something that they have to now keep track of every year, it may not necessarily have like the skill or even have, you know, be tapped into the space that much to pay attention to whether or not this name expires or not, you know, and so that's just an extra level of education that you have to give people when onboarding them into the ecosystem using this.

Speaker 1: 35:38

Now, obviously, like I said, for people who are already in blockchain and who already, you know, are on the blockchain and dealing with their wallet in a consistent enough basis, this is probably not an issue.

Speaker 1: 35:51

And for Grails or for big names that are maybe managed by communities and things like that, that's probably also not an issue, because people will go in and do the renewal for you.

Speaker 1: 36:01

But, like I said, in terms of just normie mass adoption, like when I'm out here at these Web3 meetups trying to bring people onto the space and I'm trying to decide, you know, which name I should lead with in order for them to get how digital identity works, you know, obviously it's super easy to go through the process physically on site with them with a eth, because a eth actually resolves on the things that I'm sitting there using, so I can go through the motions but, at the same time, when it comes to gifting them something to give them a sense of ownership and to give them something they don't have to worry about, so that they can start learning and hold something while they're learning that doesn't need a renewal.

Speaker 1: 36:42

I have no choice but to deflect. Not even deflect, but it gives me the perfect opportunity to share the value and benefit and use case of owning the domain outright, forever on a platform such as Freename. And again, I do so with full transparency, and I even say it now with full transparency. You can't take away the utility that E&S provides, but you also cannot negate you know the power of evolution and development and the fact that builders are building and you never know what these may turn into would choose, or some of the things that are taken into consideration when building a registry off a sub-domain that has renewals. In this case and in this ecosystem, and ENSs versus sub-domains or second levels or whatever it is in an ecosystem where true ownership is offered.

Speaker 3: 37:45

Well, when I just think that there's a range of opportunities if I knew some of the stuff. Gary knows, you know I'm looking at your ape project here, your ape chain name service, you know you've. Really it seems to me like you're going for the best of both worlds, which is I'm going to build my own naming service on top of the most robust infrastructure and then, because that's just not my cup of tea, you know what I mean to be that technically involved. I like the self-service. You know I can resell. You know free name and sell people. You know summer homepages and stuff like that, and I just like the fact that there's lots of options.

Speaker 3: 38:31

I do think having a eth name allows you to get more access. You know to like I'm anxious to get my eth mail set up. So if someone does a whois check on my free name domain names and they see the wallet address with the eth and I have my eth mail, I think they'll be able to contact me about it and at the same point I can show somebody how to send something from PayPal to a eth to then open up the world. That might happen down the world with all Web3 TLDs. So I think having a eth makes sense and then exploring the other options makes sense. So I may have to bounce off here. I'm in traffic and I'm not hands-free right now, but I always appreciate everything you guys bring and good luck with the 8chain name service, gary.

Speaker 2: 39:26

Thank you very much. Yeah, I definitely encourage people to check it out. And yeah, if I could just talk about that for a second iHeartDomains, it might be related to what we're talking about Web3 TLDs versus ENS subnames, and there's currently a proposal. It's a passive proposal, it's an approved proposal, so it's more than just a proposal with ApeChain, where there's a team and they got funding and approval to create yet another new name service called ApeNames for the ApeChain to be the official name service and naming system for ApeChain.

Speaker 2: 40:10

And I've been telling people for a long time that I think that's going to be a weakness of ApeChain and that you know, in my opinion, technically, from what I understand, a better way of doing it would be to use ENS subnames, and there's just been so many developments in ENS. There's enough for me to present this to folks to say A look at what BaseChain did. Basechain is a whole new blockchain. They could have made their own naming service, but instead they used ENS subnames and by using ENS subnames, the base names work everywhere that ENS names work right so.

Speaker 2: 40:52

I'm garybaseeth. It works in OpenSea, it works in Uniswap, it works in basically all the wallets. The only place it doesn't work is in the MetaMask mobile, and the only reason why it doesn't work in MetaMask mobile is because MetaMask Mobile is not coded correctly. So it's not because it's an ENS sub or, yeah, baseeth, it's not because it's an ENS subname, it's because the MetaMask Mobile wallet is broken. It's not coded correctly. But once they fix that and that's on their end, and so, and then the other development is how ENS has this new partnership with PayPal and Venmo, so on. On PayPal and Venmo, you can send crypto to Gary dot base dot ETH, and so you know understanding the, you know what a base did and how they made, you know understanding what Base did and how they made. You know $500,000 in a couple weeks and how Base names work. On PayPal and Venmo, I have this proposal in the Ape chain and the Ape DAO to say, hey, we should spend a couple hundred thousand dollars, we should purchase Apeeth, spend a couple hundred thousand dollars, we should purchase apeeth, and then we should basically copy and paste the code that base chain did for apeeth. But instead of doing it on base chain, we should do it on ape chain. And then, you know, give and sell apeeth names to all the apes, all the mutants, everyone in the ecosystem. Anyone that just wants an ape name, let them come to ape chain, let them buy their nameapeeth so they can be part of the ape chain ecosystem. It's a big enough place where you know you can get a club membership, a unique name. And if, if you get an ape, if you know, if I become garyapeeth and you become marcusapeeth, that Web3 name, that Web3 subname, is going to work everywhere. That ENS already works Across thousands and thousands of wallets apps, web3-enabled services, web2-enabled sites, including even PayPal and Venmo. And if this proposal gets denied and then the only solution is the existing ApeNames project that they're working on and they do a brand-new protocol doesn't matter if it's a fork or if they write new code, it's a brand-new protocol. They're going to start with zero network effect from ENS, zero integrations from ENS, zero anything, and the ape names are going to work basically nowhere. And you know people are saying, well, it looks prettier because instead of being, you know, garyapeeth, I could just be garyape. Sure, it looks prettier, but you're going to get zero integration, zero the network effects, zero the business development. If ENS signs up, you know a new company. Or if Chainlink, you know, signs up Swift or Chainlink signs up Visa, ens names work on Chainlink and so when Chainlink signs somebody up new, your name is going to work there without even ENS doing anything. It doesn't matter if the business dev comes from ENS protocol or if it comes from Chainlink protocol. Your ENS name is going to work anywhere where that network effect is taking hold.

Speaker 2: 44:19

Versus ape names. It's like ape names and stopwatch. It's not going to work in Chainlink, it's not going to work in ENS, it's not going to work in Metamask, it's not going to work in chain link, it's not going to work in ens, it's not going to work in metamask, it's not going to work in paypal. And so they're just setting themselves up for a huge disadvantage because it's an entirely new protocol, it doesn't have the network effect.

Speaker 2: 44:39

And you know, in the past some people say well, you know, ens is like the dot com and um, you know, unstoppable is like dot net, but that's a is like the dot com, and you know. And Stopable is like dot net. But that's an incorrect analogy because dot com and dot net, both of those use the same protocol. Both of those use DNS. It's not like dot com comes from DNS and dot net comes from something else. It's all DNS versus ENS protocol. And you know this new ape names or ENS protocol, and stop. They're completely different protocols, completely different contracts and they just don't have the same integrations and the same network effect. So that's the advantage of using an ENS sub name for a new registry or a new community versus using an entirely new protocol. You know it's like, yeah, being Gary Miami would be really, really cool, but if you're GaryMiamieth, that's going to work in Uniswap and PayPal and everywhere. And you know, and it has that advantage.

Speaker 1: 45:45

Yeah, great points, um, and it actually kind of takes me to the last, you know, I guess, thing to consider, um, and I guess in this case I've got to play devil's advocate with my question, um, and and in any event, I, I, you know with, I support it. F the vapes, they need to do 8.8, don't do .8. But just to ask this question, in this particular instance and in the context of what they're trying to do, I know that they're being spearheaded by what? Is it? Not 3DNS, but D3? D3, yeah, d3? D3, yeah,

Speaker 1: 46:26

okay. So I know that their plans are to eventually bring the .8 to ICANN and apply for it and at some point it become a true DNS TLD, in which case I'm not saying that this would be their plan, but again, for some who just don't want to identify as a eth and I get it completely brands wanting to brand themselves in a cleaner and purer way, in this particular case, if they do succeed at that, they could then become a completely on-chain TLD, in the same way that box did by integrating ENS in that way, in the same way that box did, and essentially accomplish the exact same thing, right uh, yes and no, uh, the the.

Speaker 2: 47:17

The yes is the, the. It's really like a sort of yes and and no. Uh, the sort of yes is that, um, when they, you know, uh, first of all, yes. The yes is that it's in their plan to secure the ICANN Web 2.8 generic top-level domain, which is going to take years and years to do. Right, throw some hundreds if you agree. It's going to take years for them to secure that. It's not an easy process and if my proposal goes through you know, spoiler alert I'm going to do the same thing and we're going to try to get. Also, we're going to try to get the ape ICANN WebTLD. So that's like the yes, yes part.

Speaker 2: 48:06

The yes sort of is that they haven't stated that they're going to do that and so it's not guaranteed that they're going to integrate the ICANNAPE with the ENS protocol to then make that bridge. They might. I mean, it definitely makes sense because they're going to want to have that network effect if the protocol is even alive by then, because, again, that's going to be years and years away. So they have years and years of an uphill battle before they would even have the option of securing the ICANN version to then do that technical integration and then the no part is just if they create an entirely new D3, creates an entirely new protocol for eap, they essentially fork the ENS protocol, they write their own code, make a new protocol and then years and years later they get the ICANN version of the eap. They then have to do all these custom integrations, add all these additional resources, which adds technical complexity, to say, oh, we have a eth and then we have this thing that's not a eth and we're going to connect it to, and it does create a lot of complexity and creates risk with having their technical stack working.

Speaker 2: 49:36

But it's a lot of risk to move in that direction with a lot of years in between now and then, versus just doing it the right way, doing it the clean way and having everything be like a hot knife through butter, just like and again, I'm not inventing the wheel over here. It's like baseeth Is a very large Layer 2. Apechaineth Wants to be a very large layer 2. Baseeth has already done this With the baseeth subnames and they did some work and they put it all together. They were the trailblazers and on day one everyone's base name works everywhere and down the line, if they secure base from ICANN. They can just plug that in as a resolver. It doesn't even need to be like they don't even need to use it.

Speaker 1: 50:37

It could just be like a limo, right Like we have ethlimo and ethlink People are selling those Question, though do you and your heart of hearts think, if they did secure base, that that's what they would do, that they would shelve it, and still continue the naming protocol of baseeth.

Speaker 2: 51:00

My heart of hearts, I think that they would just use it as a resolver, like the limo. I think they would still sell the baseeth names and then whenever you buy a baseeth name, let it be you already own the baseeth name or you bought a new baseeth name um, it would be like a, like a one for one, so you would updatei. I think the way that would work. Honestly, my heart of hearts is that you know, say you have a website on baseeth, garybaseeth or you know gary'scookiesbaseeth. I would build my website on there, I would build my profile on there. That'd be a decentralized website and then if someone goes to the Chrome browser or the you know whatever browser and they they just type in you know Gary's cookiesbase. Gary's cookiesbase is an ICANN web to domain. It's just going to resolve the decentralized website. I think that's a direction that it's going to go. And you know, again, I'm not like it's not even like a hard thing for me to think out to, because when you look at you know projects out there right now, like webhash. Something that blew my mind about webhash that I almost don't understand still is how webhash is doing. Uh, ipfs hosting for dot-com sites. So if you can go to like ipfs and a smart contract and I can put up a website for you know a dot com thing and I can put up a website for a dot e thing, and then you know, at the dot e thing it can resolve with like the dot limo, I mean it's sort of like all mixes in together, right, it's, it's. You can sort of see how this works and then, and then the interesting thing is that it allows governments to do censorship without the user losing their decentralized assets. So if the government's like we're going to shut down gary, we don't like his political speech and so we don't want Gary's cookies to resolve anymore, and they send Coinbase a letter and it says, hey, we don't want. Or they send Google Chrome or the browser as a letter and they say, hey, we don't want Gary's cookiesbase resolving, it's no longer going to resolve in the browser, but they're still not going to be able to take away my website. So my website will still be out there and people will still be able to send me payments. My profile, my identity, all of that is still going to be out there.

Speaker 2: 53:42

Uh, but the the web, two people are going to have cover and the web two people are going to be able to take it out of, like you know, the. The web two people are going to have cover and the web two people are going to be able to take it out of, like you know, the the mainstream network. And it's going to suck for you to be taken out of the mainstream network. But if you compare that with web two, or they can completely debank you and it could take away your PayPal, and they take away your domain name and and you're like hey, send me Bitcoin. And someone goes where do I send a Bitcoin to? And you're like hey, send me Bitcoin. And someone goes where do I send a Bitcoin to? And you're like I can't remember my own address and I lost my Twitter account so I can't even tell you what my address is, if I remembered it Right. Like, none of that can be taken away with Web3. But they'll still be able to have some sense of law and order and they're part of the world.

Speaker 1: 54:27

Yeah, no, I totally get it and you're right, there is. And again, as more of this continues to happen, I mean it happens, but it doesn't happen to the point where it affects like everyday people. But I think it will start more and more. You know where your Web 2.0 assets get disconnected and you really do need to have a safeguarded Web 3.0. Yeah, definitely, get you know, being able to use your ENS as that tool to store all that info, especially with web hashes. See, we got Hedayat here on stage. What's going on, bro? Glad to have you in here. A lot of new updates with the Nerdles and things like that. Go ahead and share. I don't know if you have any input on the conversation itself. I just want to say hi, but how you doing? Thanks, sir, are you there, hedayat?

Speaker 2: 55:22

You're on mute Hedayat.

Speaker 1: 55:30

Well, yeah, while we're waiting for him to connect or for the mic to turn on, yeah, and so you made an important point there. Well, a bunch of different important points. Obviously, you know, in the case of some brands who feel like there's a lot of strength in the brand itself and, you know, feel like they would rather go down that road, I think we're going to see a lot more examples of people doing that. Again, not everybody wants to identify as a eth.

Speaker 1: 56:04

In the case of bass, I think it makes sense, mean, that connection is kind of obvious.

Speaker 1: 56:10

I mean, they're, uh, an evm, uh, you know, l2 they still utilize dot eth as a token, and I don't know that they're necessarily trying to create a brand that separates themselves from the blockchain.

Speaker 1: 56:23

But in a case like, like ape and I'm not a part of the dot ape ecosystem or the ape ecosystem or whatever not anymore, at least, I solved my other deeds and stuff but even in the case of other big ecosystems where I think, like, long-term branding is going to become a thing, it, and even, maybe, perchance or perhaps, you know, uh, interoperability on multiple chains, um, some may feel like they're kind of identifying themselves too much or locking themselves in too much to a blockchain or to a community by attaching that to their name. If that makes sense, hopefully that does make sense to everybody. Despite people agreeing with ENS technology and even utilizing ENS technology to power their names, the power of them branding and separating themselves from eth in itself may have enough value that they're willing to go down the same road as APE is doing at the moment as Ape is doing at the moment.

Speaker 2: 57:32

Yeah, so the first thing to know is that if you want to be part of the Ape chain or the Ape DAO ecosystem, all you need to do is own one single Ape token.

Speaker 2: 57:42

It's kind of like the ENS DAO. If you own one ENS token, then you can vote Really with the ENS DAO. You need zero tokens. You just got to participate. But if you want to vote tokens, you just got to participate.

Speaker 2: 57:54

Uh, but if you want to vote, you know, you just got to have one token with the ape chain. If you want to speak on the forum, you got to have one token, and if you want to vote, you got to have one token, which costs like a dollar or two. It's, it's, it's very cheap. It's like it's less than two dollars, I'm pretty sure, for one ape coin and then you can go comment to my proposal. So if you want to comment on the proposal, go get one ape coin and join the ecosystem again. You don't got to spend thousands of dollars.

Speaker 2: 58:21

Uh, to the branding point I, I hear you. This is this is like the only selling point that these projects have is that they just want to be dotape and that looks better for the brand because it doesn't have the eth and they don't want to be attached to the eth. But, as I think you just pointed out, with that you're going to lose all the interoperability. And so if, if ape, uh, ape chain adopts ape names, they're going to have the ego. They're going to have the ego and they're going to have the brand of being ape. But then what good is that if it doesn't work in PayPal, if it doesn't work in Metamask, if it doesn't work across the base chain and the Ethereum chain and other arbitrum chains and other optimism chains?

Speaker 2: 59:11

Because ApeChain is an EVM layer two or layer three, right? Last I checked they're going to use either the optimism technology or the arbitrum technology or the ZK zero knowledge proof technology to do a roll up to be an L3 using one of those L2s connected to the Ethereum L1. And so they are an EVM chain. And so base chain yeah, they use the ETH token. They didn't create a new token. That's great for the ecosystem. It also prevents the regulatory risk of them getting yelled at because they're a US-based company. Apechain isn't obviously worried about that because it's kind of like more decentralized and I don't know who you would yell at in the case of ApeChain. With BaseChain you could yell at Coinbase maybe I don't know, and I don't know who the key holders are. It kind of gets technical down that road a chain.

Speaker 2: 1:00:12

It's yellow jesse. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So those executives might be, might be at risk from a regulatory perspective. With uh ape chain or more apes, they're more decentralized and more dgen, so they have the ape coin. Uh ape coin is out there. It's probably going to be the coin of the Ape chain, but with the naming part.

Speaker 2: 1:00:36

First of all, back to the blockchain. The blockchain is going to be interoperable with other blockchains and the Ape token is going to be interoperable with other blockchains. It's kind of like PayPal and PYUSD. Like PYUSD works on Solana, it works on Ethereum, it works wherever they want it to work, wherever they put liquidity to it. And when you go to PayPal or Venmo, if they have Solana, you can send Solana to the eth name. You can send Ethereum to the eth name. You know you can send P, send Solana to the eth name. You can send Ethereum to the eth name. You can send PYUSD to the eth name, and so it's interoperable.

Speaker 2: 1:01:21

And it just sort of behooves me, and it's going to behoove other people, that the interoperability is going to break with the naming system.

Speaker 2: 1:01:31

So when I go to ApeChain, my name is going to be and I mean I probably won't get one, you know, just because you know I don't want to get into it but I probably won't get one. But why would I be Ape or Gary Ape on ApeChain inside a closed ecosystem when the future is multi-chain? And you know, like, if you're, you know Marcusape and you go, yeah, send me the PayPal, me the crypto, or if you go to Uniswap or if you go, you know, to OpenSea, I mean the only place you're going to be Marcusape is going to be some apps inside ApeChain and it's just like a closed system. It's basically like a Twitter name. The only place your Twitter name is good is on Twitter. And so, yeah, I think people placing ego over interoperability is a huge risk. It's going to set them back. It's going to set back the ape chain. It's going to set back builders on the ape chain versus using technology that already works interoperably. Yes, and that's another big thing to consider already works interoperable.

Speaker 1: 1:02:51

Interoperably, yes, and that's another big thing to consider, also something that I mentioned on GBM spaces last night too, and kind of regards to that, because it's a big thing to consider. Like you said, the interoperability goes away, the utility goes away, but again, it's not to negate the utility that does come with even a closed ecosystem and naming protocol, which a lot of platforms are still going to build on their own and still work well within their own ecosystem. I was on a podcast yesterday with a gentleman that was with Sandbox DAO and their internal naming protocol is completely different than ENS, even though it does still utilize ENS domains for their propositions and voting and all that kind of stuff. So they have somewhat of a hybrid system, but the internal system has benefits and it's interoperable within their own network of gaming DAOs, and so there's going to be use for, in my opinion, you know use cases for different naming systems, whether they're closed loop or whether they're interoperable, which is why you know, as always, my general advice and kind of to begin to conclude the space, and we can, you know. First of all, thank you for coming on, gary. This is a conversation that we could have like for hours in your perspective and your input is always extremely valued. Again, for anybody who's wanting to learn about the ENS ecosystem inside and out there, there probably isn't a better resource of knowledge than Gary.

Speaker 1: 1:04:30

But yeah, going back to what I was going to say in conclusion, my best advice, especially if you're an opportunist and a builder and a visionary right, because you kind of got to be all three you know to gamble in this space. But if you're in this space and you know, truly, you're intrigued by how it's going to develop and want to be a part of how it develops no matter how it develops, going to develop and want to be a part of how it develops, no matter how it develops your best course of action is probably going to be to be diverse and at least right now, you know we're all extremely early and we all have a pretty reasonable opportunity to be involved in almost every part of this space. From owning, you know, ease. You may not be able to get you know the shorter grails, but you can still get some awesome eash out there for a very good price as well.

Speaker 1: 1:05:16

As you know, entering this ecosystem of Web3 TLDs while they lack utility, while they're still new and extremely speculative and obviously wow. That makes them extremely affordable compared to what their value might be if everybody's plans come to fruition. And again, multiple ways to add value and different utility to these Shouts out to everybody. That's building in their own way. We may not agree with how each namespace is coming into the space, but bullish on naming in general. And again, most people are planning on probably utilizing ENS technology in some way or another to make their names work, you know, interoperably or mainstream anyway. So ENS still wins at the end of the day. But yeah, with that being said, if you have anything that you want to close us with here or any closing thoughts that you want to mention before I close up the space. I don't know if, hedayat, if your mic is working yet or if you have anything you want to add, but yeah, about to get ready to wrap this up.

Speaker 2: 1:06:26

Hedayat. You there? Where's Hedayat? We got no Hedayats. I see him, I don't hear him.

Speaker 2: 1:06:40

Yeah, so just to close it up, if anyone feels what I'm saying, if anyone understands where I'm coming from in terms of placing interoperability of ape names as a priority, instead of just having the, the, the ego of of having a like what what they'll call a cleaner brand of just dot ape, I encourage you to, you know, get one ape coin, check out the forum post, get one ApeCoin checkout to forum post that we have posted here for the ApeCoin forum, and to leave a comment, you know, stating what you think. Maybe you know vote up the proposal and helping to educate more people. I know there's a lot of people that are sort of uh, believe in several different naming services, but naming services are not like money, right, with money you can have dollars and you can have, uh, you can have euros and you can have pesos and and all of it, and you know, and then you can exchange the coins one coin for another With the naming system. Technologically there can be only one, because it's very difficult to program several different naming services, especially when there's an infinite number of them, and so ENS is out of the gate and sure, I'll say that ENS is not guaranteed, but Ethereum is not guaranteed, but the network effect is there. The network effect is only growing.

Speaker 2: 1:08:25

Chainlink is using ENS. Anybody that Chainlink partners with is using ENS. Chainlink is doing business development for Chainlink, which is business development for ENS, and Chainlink owns dataeth. Then ENS Labs is doing business development for ENS. Some Web2 companies are reaching out to ENS labs, like GoDaddy reached out to ENS labs, the CEO of PayPal and people that work at PayPal. They own their ENS names and you know I don't know who reached out to who, but you know they've integrated ENS.

Speaker 2: 1:09:16

Ens that's likely to continue moving in this direction, because if someone else integrates a competing name service, then they're not going to be interoperable with the other EVM chains. Right, if someone integrates not ENS, then it's going to be at conflict with Ethereum, it's going to be at a conflict with Base. It's going to be at a conflict with the thousands and thousands of apps that are already using ENS names. And so the interoperability of blockchains is critical and that's why we say the future of the world is multi-blockchain, because there will be multiple blockchains. That's literally the roadmap for Ethereum. It's the scaling roadmap for Ethereum to be multiple blockchains, but with the naming services, it really has to be one protocol. You know it really has to be one protocol, right? And you know?

Speaker 2: 1:10:30

Even in the case of Solana you know I don't know if you guys know what the guy who invented Solana even that guy was like you know. Even he said you know, when someone asked him, hey, like why don't we endorse Solana name service? Even that guy said no, we don't need to create another name service, we already have ENS names for that. And so a lot of people understand this. A lot of people get it.

Speaker 2: 1:10:46

I'm trying to find that tweet. Let me put it up top here Now. I'm putting it up top that tweet. Yeah, let me pin it up top here. I'm pinning it up top. Tali said that ENS domains can already support Solana addresses, and Tali said that in his humble opinion, there's no point to reinvent the wheel. It would be awesome to host a Solana route on ENS and to support on-chain translation of the records on Solana, and then I'll pin it up as well. The official ENS domains account replied and the official ENS domains account said happy to support the Solana name system, to support the Solana name system. So even the person that invented Solana recognizes that there's no reason to have a Solana name service Now. He's not going to FUD like builders on his own chain. But he also recognizes that, in the terms of naming, there's only one naming service to name them all.

Speaker 1: 1:11:54

I can understand, though, why they did it anyway, and even staring at the face of, like I said, better utility, working out the box, interoperability, all the mighty and beautiful things, that ENS is One of the things that I think we fail to take in consideration oftentimes when looking at things, black and white is emotions and ownership.

Speaker 1: 1:12:22

Right, and this is something that you know me and Paige have had conversations about a long time and him being in the domain space for 30 years, he's actually concluded that a lot of people make decisions based on that, and I kind of agree. In the case of specific blockchains wanting to spin up their own naming service, it may just come down to a sense of them wanting their own thing, because, at the end of the day, this is identity You're identifying as something that someone else made. I mean, that's the prospect. If you're just accepting ENS, all in that, it's the greatest of all time and for all chains, those chains are building their identity upon something that someone else built, and, even though that might be the best thing to do, practically from a sense of ownership, from a feeling perspective, from a maximalism perspective, that don't work, which would draw and is drawing every blockchain to pretty much do exactly what Solana did, which is make their own name service. So I could see why they still did it anyway, despite the founder of Solana saying that it was unnecessary to do. Go for it, web3.

Speaker 1: 1:13:34

I am.

Speaker 4: 1:13:35

Yeah, and I just want to throw on there too. It's we're trying to get all these companies onto their ENS names, but what happens when those companies look for their names and see that they're all squatted on or at an exorbitant price? It's unavoidable. We know what's happening, we've seen it happen, but I think that's one of the things we have to work on is making it more welcoming, because these companies might want to come in and use an ecosystem, but they might be deterred because someone's squatting.

Speaker 4: 1:13:59

A company I spoke to a few days ago take this with a grain of salt. They're still prototyping stuff, so it's not any sort of big company. Their eth is taken by a squatter, but they have their bitcoin and their wallet and they're using their bitcoin as their primary. That's a bummer. They should be able to get their eth and use it, and they didn't have their sol either, so I got it to gift it to them. But it's one of the places where this is.

Speaker 4: 1:14:23

A company that is working on the blockchain wants to put out something to help other companies on the blockchain and they're bummed because they can't get access to their dot eth. So that's it's just one of the things we have to deal with, but I'm hoping that more companies that'll pan out better, especially if they have an earnest interest in growing things in the ecosystem. If we're talking about other traditional finance companies and stuff like that, whatever in my mind but when it comes to the companies that are blockchain, they're building on the blockchain and want to do things that benefit all of us. We got to help these people get onto their names.

Speaker 1: 1:15:01

Yeah, no, I totally agree with that and you're actually one of those people that's out there connecting people with their names and I commend you for that. But yeah, we've said it many a times that adoption can't come if you're pissing the people off, that you want to drive adoption in the space.

Speaker 4: 1:15:18

Bob someone I heart. Someone mentioned on the last call on the Vine. Gary, I'm sorry for interrupting you. I'll be quick. Someone on the last on Flex Refine was talking about Flex was talking about Kevin O'Leary and how they asked him. Flex was talking about Kevin O'Leary and how they asked him. Hey, did you know that Matt Higgins, other Shark on Shark Tank, bought these ENS names like 713 and Irish Ease? And he knew I don't know when that time was, because I had tried to pitch to Paul Polangian, the CEO of O'Leary Ventures, and he was like Kevin doesn't know what you're talking about. And I asked him and he I'll spare you the thing, but we're not interested. So I don't know if I pitched it to them before they knew what Matt Higgins did. But that's another area where it's some of these companies. Yeah, I don't know where that one went, but I'm kind of afraid to circle back on that one because they told me not to bother them again.

Speaker 2: 1:16:19

Yeah, go go for it here. What were you gonna say? Yeah, so you know, um, in in the very beginning, like I, I, when I first got involved with uh ens names and and then, like a couple years later, uh, unstoppable came out and I was definitely recommending to people that they secure their brand names on Unstoppable, back when it was pretty much just crypto, and I didn't realize we're going to do like an infinite number of these things. But I told people I was like, yeah, you might want to secure your brand name on crypto just to prevent the squatters and the scammers from trying to represent you. And now it's like, in hindsight, it kind of seems, kind of silly because there's just like an infinite number of these things.

Speaker 2: 1:17:01

And I work at enterprise Web2 companies like Fortune 100, fortune 500 companies, and these Fortune 500 companies, um, they typically have a relationship with someone like godaddy, uh, the enterprise division of godaddy, and when there's new names that come out, you know you, you can sort of imagine, right, like, imagine like, um, you know who's a big, who's a big company like nike, uh, you know, there's like nikecom, nikenet, but then there's like nikews, nike, you know, yeah, there's 1600. And at some point, like some of these companies are like do we really need all these? And there's misspellings and they're like do we really need all these? And then there's like f? Nike, and there's nike sucks.

Speaker 4: 1:17:48

So they use bolsterai and other DNS monitoring companies to do automatic takedowns. And all that because why own all of them? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:17:57

So and so, um, so companies are sort of familiar with that and they they realize it's a never ending game of just like giving people money, um, and so, you know, when these companies now they get, uh, you know, they get like whatever Nike dot crypto or Nike dot Solana or someone's like, oh, I can't get Nike dot ETH, so I'm going to get Nike dot Solana. It's like, well, yeah, cool, you got Nike dot Solana and you could basically use that just about nowhere, right, because any reputable company is going to be using Ethereum. We're not going to be using Solana using Ethereum, we're not going to be using Solana. And and the beautiful thing, and listen, I like I just spent like two weeks trying to broker a name, trying to buy a name from somebody you know being the being the buyer broker and trying to buy a name from someone for, like, a very large project coming into Web3. And I'm talking with this person and you know, at first they're like one aetherium, two aetherium, and then, and then we settle on three aetherium and they they, you know, and and I'm about to like buy the name, you know, and basically you know before, but you know they give me 24 hours and like less than 12 hours. So I I didn't have a chance to buy the name. They like we, we did a over the twitter, we did a handshake deal and, um, less than 12 hours later you know, I didn't get to it, obviously, but less than 12 hours they cancel the and they go.

Speaker 2: 1:19:29

You know what? I don't want three Ethereum, I want a hundred Ethereum. And I'm like, bro, first of all, we agreed, second of all, you're, you're about to make money and like zero off right, like, like like step zero. It's like there's no way they're going to do this. Like, just because you think they're like millionaires or whatever, or because they're a big brand, they're not going to pay you a hundred Ethereum. And they were just like well, you know, I don't care, I'm going to hold on to this. I'm like, bro, good, good luck with that.

Speaker 2: 1:20:07

And I just go back to the company and I just say listen, I mean, you guys got the dot com, you guys got the dot net, you guys got these other great dot coms. Your dot coms are ENS names and so you just tokenize your dot com either with GoDaddy or 3DNS or NameFi, and you guys are a big, reputable brand. Everybody is going to know who you are and your dot com is going to work in OpenSea. It's going to work in Uniswap. It's going to work in Coinbase. It's going to work in PayPal. You're going to be able to send and receive crypto. They're going to be able to look up your smart contracts on Etherscan. You can do subnames, you can do mintyourbrandnamecom it. It's going to work on ether scan and everywhere, and there's no reason paying this guy a quarter million dollars for something that's not worth a quarter million dollars.

Speaker 4: 1:20:57

And Gary for free, I would be willing, on Web3IM and my public database, to mark that ENS as squatted on, so that way, when everyone goes to look up that company name to see if they're their eth on the blockchain, it shows to them no, this is definitely not owned by the company, be aware.

Speaker 2: 1:21:16

Yeah, so they've ruined their. I don't know if I directly said it to him this way or if I just alluded to it, but this dude's basically ruined his reputation of being a good actor because he'd rather try to make a quarter million dollars instead of, you know, get like what's three ethereum, like 10 grand uh, was it three or 3.5? To get like 10 grand in his pocket. You know he likes paid, like you know 0.2. You know for for this name or something, but, um, yeah, and and and. Then what kills me? You're right, the thing that kills me. Guys know, like I'm in, I'm in ens and you guys know I mean what kills me, the thing that kills me. You guys know I'm in ENS and you guys know I'm here. What kills me is that this hurts the network effect.

Speaker 2: 1:21:57

If this brand would have got the ENS and it would have been huge news, it would have been used everywhere the eth, it would have been great for them. I could have got them shoutouts on twitter. Um, in addition to like getting paid, they could have looked like a hero. Uh, this could have been good for ens. That would have been good for the web 3. This would have been good for the market. This would have been good for all the holders, this would have been good for all the builders.

Speaker 2: 1:22:25

But instead, like everyone's sad and everyone else's bags, like you know, you like, you, like everyone else, the dot ETH loses a little bit of network effect because, yeah, some, someone got greedy, someone was going to get, like you know, I don't know, like you know what was it like a thousand X or 10,000 X or a hundred thousand X their money. But they want to like, they want to like, you know, bajillion X, their money and um, and yeah, it's's just, it's just really unfortunate. So so to anybody that can't get their dot eth, just know your dot com, your dot net, your dot ai, your dot, anything is an ens name, all the same and just know if you're going to squat on a domain like that guy and fuck everything up.

Speaker 4: 1:23:07

If anything you ever do with that wallet, moving forward, identifies and doxes who you are, that company can then at that point, if they want to file a UDRP or ACPA even though they can't, via the UDRP, actually get it seized from your wallet If you are doing it in bad faith, they'll file an ACPA anti-cyber squatting like something act protection act and they'll come after you in court for actual criminal offenses instead of civil. With a UDRP you can usually handle that shit outside of a courtroom. Civil gets done, all that. But with an ACPA they're dragging your ass to court because you're damaging their brand and I would even argue sitting on domains of companies and not getting them to the companies is killing them on opportunity costs. Right now they could be setting up all this infrastructure for their companies on ENS, but they can't because someone wants to squat it.

Speaker 1: 1:24:03

Yeah, and, as I said, this has been an amazing conversation. I do kind of need to wrap it up. I do kind of need to wrap it up, but just kind of as a point that you guys are making. I think this scenario again, and coming back to the conversation that we were having, you know, despite everything that we know about eth and you know all the utility and the obviousness about you know the value of eth these type of scenarios may very well force the diversity that we're saying is pointless for people to explore, just because it's the only opportunity that they have to participate in the space without being taken hostage. So that's another thing to consider as well, which, again, you know, kind of leads me to my general advice of just being diverse in the first place.

Speaker 1: 1:24:48

And hey, it's not cool to squat, squat. I understand why people do get your bread, but you know, personally I try not to, and the reason being is, again, you know, we we need to help try to create actions and processes and environment that welcome people into the space and bring mass adoption. The more people that are in creates demand, the more demand, you know, creates more value for the premium assets that you hold Henceforth. You'll make the money anyway. But if you get key people by trying to make it all up front, you know you could end up turning those people off and, very well, turning them on to creating their own naming service, which is what you were trying to avoid in the first place you were trying to avoid in the first place.

Speaker 4: 1:25:33

I do wonder, iheart, if one of the ways to spin this would be kind of like how, if a company ever wanted to do an off-chain deal for their name, thinking like example let's say someone had Coinbase, sol and Coinbase said to them all right, we'll buy it from you, but we're going to send you Sol from a different wallet to a different disconnected wallet and then you just transfer the name. So no one on the blockchain sees money exchange. So some companies might end up doing that type of stuff. But that's one of the things with some of these. Think outside the box.

Speaker 4: 1:25:59

If you have names of companies and they give away grants and do other stuff, it might be hard to try and do a one-for-one type of agreement with them. But if you can prove out a use case, educate them and then say oh, by the way, I can be the one to onboard you to that. I did it in good faith. That could be another way of getting money by giving the name to these companies but still receiving something which is technically might not be necessarily in good faith. People want to argue it that way if you get something out of it. But if you're going to give it to them for free anyways and they have a grant program, try and route it through that. That's what I'm doing right now. I talked to MassChallenge earlier today and I have most of the domains of the community collaborators, the partners because they're all local companies that I want to onboard to the blockchain. So it's an angle of what's in it for me is something that's in it for you as well. Everyone has skin in the game.

Speaker 1: 1:26:56

Yes, sir, yes, sir, I really appreciate both you and Gary for coming up on stage and adding so much value to the conversation. Thank you to everybody else who came to listen live. Again, I want to remind everybody that not only can you listen back right here on X, but this will also be uploaded via podcast to all major podcast players. So if you're comfortable with Apple or Spotify or iHeartRadio or any of those platforms, a couple days you'll see this up there and you'll be able to support us and listen back that way. But, yeah, love the conversation again. This space will love the conversation again. This space will continue to evolve.

Speaker 1: 1:27:36

Hopefully, some of the acquisitions that happened during this past week did happen to be brand names, so hopefully those people have, like I said at the beginning of the space, good intentions and or connections with those companies so that we can bring more people and more enterprises on board. But yeah, with that being said, I do want to thank everybody for attending our tech talk. It was a great conversation. Again, follow our speakers amazing people that are building real things in space. And, yeah, you guys have a great rest of the week. We'll see you next week where we'll be having an AMA with the same gentleman that did the podcast with me on the Sandboxed Out and be drilling in and asking him some questions of how you know, traditional digital identities such as ENS can be incorporated into their ecosystem. So, yeah, look forward to that conversation and we'll see you guys next week. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2: 1:28:25

Thank you so much. Iheart Domains.

Speaker 4: 1:28:28

Thank you guys.