Your Brand Doesn't Need a .eth Name (And Here's Why)

What if most of the advice about brands needing .eth domains is fundamentally misaligned with how established companies actually build and maintain their brand identity? This provocative Tech Talk challenges conventional Web3 wisdom by examining why major brands like Nike and Apple might be better served by alternative strategies when entering the blockchain space.

The podcast dives deep into the critical distinction between Ethereum Name Service (ENS) as a powerful technological protocol versus .eth as merely one namespace option. You'll discover how ENS's own technology actually provides brands with a smarter path forward: importing their existing DNS domains directly onto the blockchain without diluting years of brand equity or confusing their audience.

Through practical examples and strategic analysis, we explore the logistics of blockchain integration for businesses, the power of consistent branding during technological transitions, and why custom TLDs represent the natural evolution for brand identity in Web3. Rather than forcing brands to adopt an unfamiliar extension that potentially misaligns with their identity, the discussion reveals how companies can leverage blockchain technology while maintaining the domains they've spent millions building.

The conversation culminates with a thought-provoking perspective on the parallels between domain adoption during the early internet era and today's Web3 evolution. Just as few could predict how valuable domain names would become for business, we're witnessing the early stages of blockchain-based digital identity transformation. Whether you're a brand strategist, Web3 enthusiast, or digital identity professional, this episode provides crucial insights for navigating the evolving landscape of digital ownership.

Ready to rethink your Web3 domain strategy? Tune in to challenge your assumptions and discover why the future of brand identity might look very different than many Web3 maximalists predict.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Episode Introduction
• 3:57 Why Most Brands Don't Need .eth
• 9:07 ENS vs .eth: Important Distinctions
• 15:22 The DNS Solution for Brand Identity
• 21:13 Freename & Custom TLD Strategy
• 30:22 SEO Benefits of Web3 Domains
• 35:07 The Future of Web3 for Businesses

Transcript

Speaker 2: 2:15

Thank you. Thank you, hello, hello and happy Friday. Going to get started in just a second. Yeah, thank you guys for being here and welcome to another iHeart Domains Tech Talk. Yeah, excited to get into the topic today. This is one you know I've spoken about and you know, kind of given my opinion on a few times, but I'm going to dive into it in a little more technical detail to make it make sense. So very excited for the conversation. But again, I'm going to get started here in just a second. I am pinning a couple things to the top of the space and then we will jump right into it. So I apologize in advance for the awkward silence. All right, I was looking for something in particular to pin, but I can't seem to find it. But in any event, we'll go ahead and get started, go ahead and wrap up this beautiful Friday and jump into this weekend. Been experimenting with this new time and I like it. So, a little bit later in the afternoon, for me, the previous tech talks have been earlier, at 630 in the morning, so you know quite a big time difference. But yeah, continue to experiment with different times and this is about the third one we've done at this time but in any event would like to welcome anyone listening both live and listening in the future on our podcast, to our tech talk podcast.

Speaker 2: 3:42

This is a live discussion that I record here weekly here on X, where we highlight news, innovation, education and alpha in the Web3 technology and digital identities space, ie those Web3 domain names. I am your host, marcus aka WinAirDrop. I'm the founder of iHeartDomains and I'm also the community manager at Freename. We are your number one resource for unbiased Web3 and blockchain domain educational content. I've done about 150 of these tech talk episodes that are also YouTube videos over the past two and a half years and if you would like to listen to any of our previous recordings, you can reach our archive in one of two different ways. In one of two different ways, you can either listen to these episodes and read an easy blog overview of each directly on our website at iHeartDomainscom, or, if you prefer to listen in your favorite podcast player, including Apple, spotify, iheartradio, any of that good stuff. You can easily listen to these episodes there and you can get to that archive at techtalkhost. Simply just choose a player that you want and it'll take you right to it.

Speaker 2: 4:49

Open news is pretty much going to kind of be the same. Not much has been going on. Well, okay, there's a couple things that have been going on in the Web3 domain space Not directly related to, like, tlds or anything of the sort, but if you are a holder of soul domains, sns, any of those you may be eligible for the airdrop. Well, you likely are eligible for the airdrop that they are going to do. So, again, make sure you double check and verify all links. If you go directly to their Twitter profile, you should be able to find the airdrop checker. But for those of us who I mean, I've given this advice for years right, one of the best things you could possibly do if you're an investor in this space is diversify your bags. If you have diversified into the SOL space, especially if you're early and especially if you set it as your primary for your Solana account. But, yeah, you probably do have an allocation of their new token that they are going to launch. Don't know how big this token is going to be, but free money is free money and it's free money from Web3 Domaining. So that's probably the biggest piece of news I can think of outside of our own space.

Speaker 2: 6:05

As I mentioned last week, one of the things I do want to remind everyone of is that DomainXBT, our own AI agent that we built to help both Web2 and Web3 domainers, is live. It is public for anyone to use. It is 100% free. You do not have to have a chat GPT account. If you are curious about Web3 domains, web2 domains, want to ask a question, want to appraise a name, all you have to do is go to domainxptcom, type the name in and it will do all the work for you. If you want to do anything additional, such as create art banners, full HTML websites, et cetera, you're also able to do so from the what would you call it, the custom GPT. So you have a chat interface again that you'll be able to interact with when you get on the site, and then you'll also have the option to go into ChatGPT, into the actual custom built module for it, which is where you'll have a lot more capability. That will require a Chat GPT account. But yeah, in any event, domainxbt, the most awesome Web 2, web 3 tool, buddy, companion, ai built for domainers. So, yeah, encourage everybody to check that out.

Speaker 2: 7:16

And then, last but not least, on the announcements, our own djain, exchain and defi wallet domains are available for registration. If you're looking for a cool name to enter the space with, or just want to show love and support to our community and keep us building and growing, keep me happy. Feel free to register your favorite name on djnexchangedefiwallet. All on a free name, and you can easily get to that at iHeartDomainscom. It is literally smack On the first page. You'll get the option to choose the name that you're looking for. All right, without further ado.

Speaker 2: 7:57

Getting to the main topic at hand, as you can see pinned up at the top of the space why most brands don't need a eth. So yeah, once again, I do want to welcome everybody to our Tech Talk podcast. Today's episode might ruffle a few feathers, and that's actually kind of a good thing. It's always good, again, to keep yourself diversified, to keep yourself up to date on what's going on in the industry, but also to keep yourself from becoming like a maxi or trapped in kind of a thought process that isn't productive, and not necessarily saying that you know, my ENS brothers and my E brothers are, you know, stuck in a bubble. But I think sometimes the maximalism on one particular TLD or chain or another can sometimes like eclipse what reality is.

Speaker 2: 8:42

So again, we're going deep into something I hear way too often from brands, startups and strategists on Web3, which is should we get our eth name? My answer, as you can see at the top, is not really. I don't think most brands need a eth. In many cases, I actually think it's kind of counterproductive, and I'm going to break it down, like I said, from a very strategic perspective, so that people can see that this isn't coming from feelings or anything like that. This is coming from logic, right, and this is just the way the space is going to pan out. So let me, first and foremost, give some kudos to eth dot. Uh, ens or not E, but ENS, per, and that's. That's another thing that I want to clarify too. You're going to hear some distinguished, some distinctions between ENS, which is the giant that produced E, and then E itself, which, again, is just a community TLD at the end of the day.

Speaker 2: 9:38

So first things first. Ens, or Ethereum name service, is one of the most powerful protocols of Web3. It is probably the most integrated protocol in Web3. Of course, we know that it has its native metamask resolution. It's on Etherscan. You can use it on OpenSea, on Uniswap, even Ledgers, everyone and anyone in Web3 has their eth. It works perfectly, right. You get an address, you get a profile and even an avatar.

Speaker 2: 10:08

The problem is that eth, again, it represents an ethos, it represents a blockchain, it represents a culture that may not necessarily align with everyone, right, and then, even when you're talking about ENS and eth, those two names get conflated. The things have to be kind of separated and I'll explain a little bit what that means. But ENS is a tech and, again, eth is just a namespace. And while eth has a strong cultural capital in the crypto native world, it doesn't necessarily mean anything or even convert to any type of value to legacy brands who have spent years, and sometimes millions, building on their primary domains.

Speaker 2: 10:53

So, one of the big points that I make about brands and there's a couple of things right, and this derives from a few different conversations I recently learned, apparently, that there is a department inside of what was it? Godaddy that's apparently storing eth names for the biggest brands in the world. You know who may eventually come looking for it. I don't know if it's going to be like a philanthropic effort or when they come for it, they get it, you know, gifted to them so that they can be welcomed into the space of Web3, or if it's like a situation where they're going to have to pay like a premium for it. But again, there's a reason why brands don't want these things and why it may be an uphill battle trying to really to pitch these things to them. So again, brands already have an extremely strong identity.

Speaker 2: 11:41

Think about this If you're Nike, if you're Apple, if you're Shopify, your brand or your domain the current one that you use, the one that people can type in right now and go to your website has pretty much been baked into everything that you've done marketing-wise since your inception. Nikecom isn't just a domain, it's an experience, it's a trust signal and, because of all the years that they've built on top of it, is an seo juggernaut. Same with applecom, same with anythingcom. If you're a brand and you've been building on it, again there is real real estate, there's real value to that name and you've probably put it on a billboard or something.

Speaker 2: 12:21

So when, when someone says, well, you need to grab this name on the blockchaineth before someone else does, I think they kind of missed the point or kind of missed that when they're looking at brands, because the big question is what do these brands gain by suddenly promoting a eth handle. And I'll explain what that means, because I think previously the conversation was this is the brand's gateway into Web3, but that's not necessarily the case. Eth isn't the only entrance that these brands have into the space. But going back to the eth handle, for someone like Nike and I believe Nike does have Nikeeth it's interesting that I'm using them as an example, but I don't think they use it publicly. But again, like putting the E on the back of it, especially with an IRL or an in-person audience that's coming to buy shoes that doesn't necessarily know about crypto, it extremely confuses their audience, right? It also again it dilutes their brand authority by adding this other thing that they have to explain If the world already knows you as Nikecom, why suddenly start marketing and pushing Nikeeth? And then here's the ticker, especially when EMS themselves again that juggernaut behemoth of a platform that powers the community, tldeth, especially when it allows you to import your DNS domain directly and just use it just like an ETH name. So yes, in this case ENS has kind of shot itself in the foot. Nikecom can actually become its own ENS name by changing the records or by using DNSSEC and essentially it will work exactly the same. It will resolve on chain. It can receive crypto, it can be used with dApps. There's no need to rebrand, no need to retrain your customers. You get to keep your brand and you get to still bring it on the blockchain.

Speaker 2: 14:14

I want to talk about a couple value propositions, and I'm going to talk about this a little bit. Then the value proposition for brands doing this and how I think they'll come in the space, and then what I think the next proposition for value for them is. So again want to touch back on ENS and DNS. This is something that I actually have a very early experience with.

Speaker 2: 14:36

Back during the right, I guess, when we entered the bear, when gas was just extraordinarily high for no reason to even change records on ENS, most people weren't thinking about using on-chain DNS set to bring DNS domains into the ENS ecosystem just because it costs a few hundred bucks to do so. I, however, wanted to prove a point and wanted to push that technology forward, and there were a few people that did so. So even when people weren't talking about on-chain DNS domains, when people weren't talking about turning dot-coms into Web3 addresses, I, along with others like Sean Murray and a few others in the space, were already experimenting with that technology and paying the gas to do so, but then they made it super duper easy. First there was that GoDaddy thing, right? So, if you don't already know, the GoDaddy and ENS partnership allows you to pretty much easily go in behind the scenes and turn your whatever domain is sitting at GoDaddy if you're using them as a registrar, you're able to turn it into an DNS domain, essentially, but then DNS itself. They made the DNSSEC well GASIS a lot cheaper, and also they have GASIS DNSSEC and there's also a million ways to bring a DNS domain on-chain.

Speaker 2: 15:55

My point being is that any brand that has a domain name can essentially create a clone that is able to be used on chain. So, going back to the Nike scenario and this may be the worst scenario to use, I'm sure there's probably better examples, but I'm going to go to them, and this is very well what they might do, because, again, I know adidas has their eth. I think Nike has their eth, but as far as I know, they do not use it, and this is why, because you can now use your own brand, in this case Nikecom, as your wallet address. You can actually set it as your primary ENS name, depending on how you bring it on-chain. In the case of on-chain DNSSEC, which is how I brought two of my domains into the space, I was able to set them as my primary ENS name and they actually do reverse resolve. When I'm out here in the wild playing around with my burner wallet If any of you have ever seen testdefiwalletid that is one of my burner wallets that is based on a DNS domain. You could do every single thing with it that you can do with any other ENS domain or eth.

Speaker 2: 17:01

I have seen a couple of reports from some you know, some strictly eth maxis, and there's a difference. There's a difference between ENS maxis and eth maxis. Eth maxis love ENS and eth and reject anything outside of it, even though ENS empowers it. And then, of course, ens maxis just love the tech. But for eth maxis they will say that the on-chain DNS counterparts don't work everywhere. Not sure where they don't work, but mine haven't had any issues. And then the important thing about this is, all of this is with zero need to touch a eth.

Speaker 2: 17:34

Another thing logistically too, and this is something that was brought up by Gary himself, gary Palmer Jr if you guys have ever, you know, spoken with him or been in space with him. Extremely intelligent individual. He is a bulldog for ENS. He is one of those eth maxis who is like eth or nothing. He was the one who mentioned this secret, like this fund or whatever, this wallet that has all these ENS in it, right, and he was explaining the reason why this was set up. And as he's explaining this, I'm like'm like well, this is the problem in itself, but he was explaining that the reason why some brands have not come on board is because of the logistics of it, right? Uh, you know, first they have to understand what it is, but then, second, it has to be custody somewhere, right? But then, in addition to that, it's got to be renewed and someone has to keep up with it. It's something that can easily be forgotten about if you're not crypto native.

Speaker 2: 18:28

And as I'm thinking of these things, I'm like well I, if you bring one of these things on chain using DNSSEC, guess what you never have to deal with on the ENS side. You never have to deal with renewals, so you get the best of both worlds. It's the easiest path into Web3 for a company. You just have to have one technical guy one time figure out how to bring this thing on chain. You have no cost ever on the on-chain side, no management, no renewals, no expiration ever, but you still manage your name, the exact same way that you do your brand, the exact same way that you do on the Web2 side.

Speaker 2: 19:04

So again, why would a serious brand with compliance teams, investor pressure, suddenly start pushing a eth when they can keep the domain that they've spent years building equity around and, to be honest, they shouldn't ENS functionality? So again, and this is a shout out to ENS, I love the tech. I cannot negate the tech, I cannot deny the tech. I believe that a lot of people will come into the space via that tech. I do believe that this tech is the easiest vehicle probably to bring most brands on chain and to get them to understand the value of a name. But that tech does not require them to come in through a eth.

Speaker 2: 19:45

Now, once they are here again, once a brand is here, once they start understanding the value of their name on chain, once they built a brand-chain right or once they brought their customer base on-chain through bringing their brand on-chain with, again, not confusing their audience, keeping their brand consistent, just maybe introducing the utility or some sort of benefit on the other side. Right Now, then they have the opportunity to completely harness and create a entirely new community on-chain, which I think is the next level of progression for brands as Web3 begins to pick up steam, and the next thing for them now is going to be the ability to issue either identity or the ability to name or label things that they're putting out in the space with their own unique identifiers. And so if you ask an ENS maxi or eth maxi how that would look, most of them will think or hopefully say and I say with hope that brands will come into the space on a eth third level domain. We do know some examples of some partnerships that they were able to land. Again, kudos to them for those partnerships. I think some of those partnerships were given just due to the size of the relationships to the people that they have with those particular entities in the space and the relevance. But people like Base with Base E. So obviously, if you want your name associated on their registry per se and I'm using quotations because I don't even know what to call it if it's a third-level domain, bro, but if you want a name on their registry, it will read baseeth. Same thing with. What is it? I think Uniswap. They have unieth. There's a couple different examples out there. Even my own degen has been cloned as degeneth right.

Speaker 2: 21:37

But now taking it back to what I just mentioned before if labeling thing, and especially okay. So here's a couple of things. Number one there's more than one blockchain. I'm not sure if I'm the first person that has ever said that out loud or if it's like the first realization. Some people may have heard of this, but there's more than one blockchain and a lot of them are not called ETH right, and a lot, especially, as you know, web3 continues to grow. More things continue to be innovated and built.

Speaker 2: 22:08

It is, I mean, it's not hard to think that there might be a lot of brands that come into the space that just have nothing to do with ETH right, ethereum itself as the blockchain, as the currency, as the technology, as anything right. I mean, what if a brand comes in through Solana? What if a brand comes in through Bitcoin? My point is is that the same scenario that I gave before is, if it confuses branding or it adds unneeded dilution, at that point it just does exactly the same when it comes to labeling or issuing subnames For an Ethereum-focused community where it's really a part of your ethos, your identity, be cool, right. But if it's not, again, if we're going back to a Nike where, in the dozens of years of existence, it's had nothing to do with Ethereum ever Most of its customers just want some new Jordans that has nothing to do with Ethereum.

Speaker 2: 23:03

But you're able to provide either like NFT, to label things with that thing, dot their name, and then now that goes obviously into my best opportunity that I have to put out here. This is where free name and the custom TLD strategy changes the game. You know, I've said it a million times and of course we know, and I'll do the commercial again. With FreeName, of course, you're able to own your TLD or bring TLDs on chain, such as Nike in this case, instead of Ether. Even in my case, I'm able to own Dgen straight out instead of having to dilute it with a Dgen Eth. You're able to issue your own subdomains, which, again for identity, if you're building a community, that's the cleanest potential or cleanest possible way for great branding and again, to not lose them in the disconnect of trying to figure out what something else is and for labeling things and I've spoken about this on other spaces as well, how I know and predict that names will be used in relation to AI agents and assistants that will begin being deployed. These on-chain assistants will need names so that you'll be able to tie it back to their original owner.

Speaker 2: 24:31

And when we talk about branding, branding isn't something that blockchain does for you. Branding is something that these brands have done over the past dozen years and, if anything, it brings value to the blockchain and not vice versa. Again, so I don't think brands have anything to gain by adding a blockchain to the back of their on-chain identity, blockchain to the back of their on-chain identity. I think, most likely, they'll be attracted to the technology of being able to own their brand undiluted. You come on, represent yourself personally as your namecom or your namexyz or whatever it is that you've spent millions of dollars on. Look at the iconcom. That's just a sale that just went through a couple of weeks ago for $12 million. I asked a lot of money to spend on something to then put all of your marketing budget into for branding to just abandon it, because you want to adopt the technology when you don't have to dismiss, dismissed or when you don't have to abandon your name in order to adopt that technology and when you can still come on chain and create an entire following community without diluting that brand that you've built.

Speaker 2: 25:43

Um, so, yeah, with that being said, uh, what are some strategic takeaways, uh, I think, from this conversation for brands looking to enter the space?

Speaker 2: 25:53

Um, if you're a brand, I do think that the obvious choice for you is to use the technology, something like and another thing too as well, I think I mentioned at the beginning of the space there's multiple ways to come into the space. If you're a debater, you're a brand in Web2. I focus this conversation on ENS's technology just because I'm speaking about this in relation to eth, because I don't want to take anything away from the value of ENS itself. So I do want to highlight that ENS itself has amazing technology that allows you to bring DNS domains into the space. There are, however, other ways to bring DNS domains into the space, including our own technology at Freename, our Miro technology, which right now is available for ws and eventually will be available at several different registrars, or any registrar that wants to integrate that technology in order to bring your coms, your xyzs and et cetera into the space. So again, even us at Freename, we see that as a logical solution again for legacy brands who have built on their domain.

Speaker 2: 26:56

We see that as a logical solution, again for legacy brands who have built on their domain. So, if you're a brand, bring your DNS domain into the space, turn it into your own personal identity, use it which is something that your customers are already familiar with to then educate your customers on blockchain, to create benefits and ecosystem and a community on blockchain. And then, when you start bringing your community into the space and you want to now reward them, to tokenize them, to track them, to give them a sense of ownership, you can then launch your TLB on Freename. You can issue something that is undiluted. You can give them their names dot your brand. Or you can issue assets that are that asset name, dot your brand. You're also able to own and control your own namespace, which there's a lot of different things you can do with that, from token gating events to all kinds of different things. Right, there's a million ways that a lot of different people are either currently using or anticipate using Web3, digital identity and, again, owning your own namespace for a company is a big piece of digital real estate and I think it's going to be the natural progression and the natural choice after they bring their own brand onto the space and then again, if you are.

Speaker 2: 28:08

So now, on the contrast to everything that I've said about brands not needing a eth, do I still think that eth has a relevance in the space? Well, obviously, like a million plus people have gotten one. I think that there is still going to be a big culture here in Web 3.4, and, as Web 3.0 grows, there's still going to be a need, a desire and a market for them. That same thing exists for every single one of our TLDs as well, and that's the other point that I want to make, too. Any one of us who owns any other TLD that is in this space, that is natively in this space. Look at the eth playbook. Build a community based around the value that you're able to offer Web3. And you're able to generate a sizable revenue and a sizable community as well. And then, of course, if you're sitting on any brand names, you can use those to bring brands to the space and also convey that value to them. So again, we're very fast heading to a world where more people are coming on chain. As people come on chain, they're going to be dealing with wallet addresses, they're going to be dealing with smart contracts, they're going to be dealing with assets, and all of these things need to be named. All of these things are things that our Web3 identity and our digital identity are here to solve, and in this space, this is where every single brand is going to need a way to keep track, to label, to manage this community, to incentivize this community, and the path to doing so, again, I think, is by owning your own namespace, issuing your own namespace undiluted, and, again, for that, most brands aren't going to need a e.

Speaker 2: 29:47

Hopefully, I did a good job of conveying that message without being too harsh on ENS. Again, I have a pretty good, sizable portfolio of it for individuals that are coming in the space and looking for something easy to use and don't have that much going on. Again, wonderful names to use. I mean, there's a million other TODs to choose from. But brands, when we're talking about how to bring them into space, how to convey value, it's really good to understand what is most likely to be something that they'll be receptive to. So that they're receptive to it. If you keep trying to pitch them a particular extension we're trying to pitch them a eth in this case and you see them rejecting it, then maybe you've got to look at it and see that the reason why they may be rejecting it is because it doesn't connect, and to figure out a better way to get them to connect, because, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how any of them come into the space. As long as more people come into the space and more people start adopting the space, they're eventually also going to run into things that need a name, or they're going to run into a situation where they're going to need to name something themselves and eventually we're all going to win. So, yeah, once again, I do want to thank you guys for tuning in live to this Tech Talk. Also, for anyone who is going to be listening to this after again, we are going to publish this on our podcast in the next couple of days. Hope you take a lot from it as well and take this consideration in your investing journey.

Speaker 2: 31:13

And there's a lot of different ways that you can enter the space. You know you can enter the space. You know you can enter the space flipping. You know single SLDs on different name services, all the way down to owning these namespaces yourself and creating and building your own communities. And, again, to understand where these things will fit, to understand how likely it is that certain brands or certain entities, certain individuals will receive this tech will make it a lot easier for you to communicate it. We do this every single Friday. Again, I've been running these tech talks for over three years. Thank you, guys all for tuning in. We'll talk to you guys next Friday. Have a great weekend and, again, focus on your mission and not your condition. Actually, no, before I close, we actually got ECW that wants to pop up, I'm gonna add.

Speaker 3: 32:02

I just wanted to ask, let you know one thing I was taking a look at while you were mentioning the reasons for a brand or I'll even use it at the more minor level a local business in any city or that has any sort of competition in Google.

Speaker 3: 32:17

One thing that we could do to possibly help is that, from the SEO side of things, which they do understand, their rankings. Currently, the dot eth again, is the only web3 domain when appended with dot limo or dot link. So the url is, you know extra, you know when airdrop dot ethlimo or dot link, whatever it would be. Uh, the amount of power that that double extension has in the search engines is surprisingly more powerful than most people realize. Even though it is a subdomain. It's rooted on that ethlimo or ethlink where everything in the SEO tool, ahrefs, which is one of the tools some people use, SEMrush or some of the others, it's a 76, which is pretty powerful and authoritative.

Speaker 3: 33:02

So, in essence, if someone creates a basic HTML page and I was just looking at one right here something like in defense of electricity markets or something, with the exception of one image, it's an ugly blog aesthetically. I'm not saying the content is bad, just the aesthetics, with all text with links. Those links are not only visible in any browser Safari, chrome, whatever people would use but the link juice is getting recognized by Ahrefs, which is our best indication if Google's picking up those links as well. So, in essence, for and I believe eth on, wherever they're sold, at about $5 a year, plus whatever it costs for the hosting, which hopefully isn't much, you can get some free, low-cost HTML Web3 storage. So for basically $7, $8 a year, you can have almost I won't say an unlimited, but an X number of pages that could each have different links pointing out, and it can actually be a very, very cheap alternative to some of the more costly SEO link networks, delivering the same amount of power to the website, thereby freeing up money for them to do something else more money into ads. They can keep it in their wallet, you know whatever they want to do.

Speaker 3: 34:14

So I just wanted to let you know that might be the only reason why, if there's hesitancy about bringing any sort of local brand, local business, whatever you want, into the eth or the Web3 ecosystem, this one right now and I just double checked the stats might be the hybrid between the thing that they do understand their SEO rankings and I have to run a test to see if the links move spots, one or two or three spots up in Google. But if they do, I'll let you know and that might be a selling point to get them into Web3. And then ultimately, once they're in, they can then get more involved if they so choose. I just want to bring that to your attention. That might be the one reason why it could work, because it's something they already understand.

Speaker 2: 34:54

Yeah, and as you were saying that and I appreciate you saying that and this is a great final thought to kind of leave with but, as you were saying that, like the realization came over me. So, like fads, right, or things that are just like trends, they typically fade away pretty quickly and even the best of them will fade away in like a few years. But, but things that have like legs, things that that will like again, that that we think will eventually become like standard technology, I think we can pretty much say that Web3, or blockchain, is one of those things, right, that I mean blockchain has been around for quite some time and, with that being said, I'm just, I'm transporting myself back in the days when you know DNS or domain names or internet as it was first introduced to me. Like it was first introduced to me, I think, when I was in what was it like eighth grade or something like that. I think it was the first time I really paid attention to the internet and it's just crazy, like back then.

Speaker 2: 35:56

I wonder how many people thought about any of this. I wonder how many people even knew what an SEO was. I wonder how many people thought how that would translate into the value for their business. I wonder how any of those concepts that we understand and that people are out here every single day usually convert and sell 10 million, 5 million, 1 million, whatever million dollar domains to people on a continuous basis. I'm wondering if any of that stuff connected or was even thought of then. And then I just want if you could put yourself then and then now obviously understand you know where that space has gone.

Speaker 2: 36:33

It's really easy to then now see yourself here and again it's we've, we're kind of past the. Is this a fad thing, right? So I think by now we all recognize that we're in the middle of a movement, right, we're in the middle of a technological movement, that we've chosen our horse to ride in this technological movement, meaning these domains, and as you're speaking about what businesses will eventually use these for, or how you communicate this to a small business, again I'm just thinking like man. They just don't know, and even we don't know, how big these things are, how monumental these things may be or useful these things may be to a business in 20 years, because we can communicate even this utility now and we're still again, many years removed from the best of these. And if people can't imagine that again, I take you back to when you first learned about the internet.

Speaker 2: 37:24

If you can't imagine that, again, I take you back to when you first learned about the internet. If you could have imagined that domain names would be sold and bagged in the way that they are now, based on what they do for business, and so, even though if I were to explain this to a small business owner I might confuse them with that analogy I would hopefully bring them back to get it while it's cheap, because you don't know what it'll do in years from now, when there's a whole lot more utilities. And I'm even smart enough to explain to you why not own it once, own it forever, and then you can build with it and do something with it or not do something with it. But at the end of the day, we know that technology is always going to change you. Outgrow our belief, so invest in technology. That's how I want to end this space. Thank you again for bringing that up, sir, and again look forward to speaking to you guys next week on our next Tech Talk. Focus on your mission, not your condition. Happy domaining, thank you.