Web3 Domains Transform How We Exist Online

What if you could truly own your digital identity instead of just renting it? Every major shift in internet history has fundamentally been about identity - and Web3 is poised to deliver the most transformative change yet.

In this fascinating deep dive, I explore how our digital identities have evolved from the static Web1 era (where owning a .com meant credibility) through Web2's social usernames (which platforms ultimately control) to today's emerging on-chain identities that nobody can take away from you.

The current system is fundamentally broken. We're juggling dozens of usernames and passwords across platforms, building our digital lives on rented land where one hack, ban, or missed renewal can erase years of online presence. Web3 flips this power dynamic completely by making your wallet your universal identity - carrying not just access, but your assets, history, and proof of who you are.

This blockchain-powered identity revolution enables powerful features like token-gating (access based on what you own, not subscriptions) and human-readable Web3 domains that transform cryptic wallet addresses into branded digital names. As major companies like Shopify, Amazon and PayPal enter the space, we're witnessing the accelerating transition from traditional logins to wallet-based authentication.

The distinction is profound: online identity is borrowed, on-chain identity is owned. Online identity is controlled by corporations, on-chain identity is controlled by you. This isn't just a technological upgrade - it's a freedom upgrade that puts you back in control of your digital self.

Ready to secure your place in this new digital landscape? Start by registering your Web3 domain and experiencing what it feels like to truly own your identity. The future isn't just online - it's on-chain.

Own a Web3 TLD with Freename
Freename.io is the leading Domains platform in Web3. Users can mint their own customized Web3 TLDs.

Geek out with style - NerdMerch
Shop web3 tech inspired print on demand merch featuring original designs by IHeartDomains

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing Tech Talk Podcast
• 2:11 Web3 Education and TLD Registrations
• 6:02 Evolution of Internet Identity
• 9:26 Problems with Traditional Digital Identity
• 12:07 Benefits of On-Chain Identity
• 17:38 The Transition to Web3 Identity
• 21:38 Identity Ownership Challenge and Closing

Transcript

Speaker 2: 2:10

Thank you. Thank you, gm, gm, and welcome to our Tech Talk podcast. This is a live bi-weekly discussion that we record here on X, where we highlight news, innovation, education, alpha and business development in the web through domain and digital identity space. I am your host, marcus aka Wynne Airdrop, founder of iHeart Domains. We are your number one resource for unbiased Web3 and blockchain domain educational content, with over 150 of these recorded Tech Talk episodes and YouTube videos produced and archived over the past three years and Tech Talk episodes and YouTube videos produced and archived over the past three years. You can search our entire podcast archive for all prior recordings in an easy-to-read blog overview of each of our episodes directly on our website at iHeartDomainscom. Also, all prior recordings are also available in podcast form that you can listen to on any major podcast player. It includes Apple Podcasts, spotify or iHeartRadio, and that's easily reachable at techtalkcom, so you can simply just go to the reader or the podcast player that you like. It'll pull our channel right on up.

Speaker 2: 3:19

Before I get into the main topic and I'm going to actually keep this one kind of brief, but I do really look forward to getting into the topic of discussion but before I'm going to start off, like I typically do, with just a couple of openers. I do want to remind anyone who's listening to this, both live and listening back to it on the podcast later on, that our eight module self-paced certification course for those looking to build a career or base level knowledge in Web3 is currently live at learnweb3.xyz. This is, again, a self-paced course that you can take on your own time and I'll take you through all the fundamentals of blockchain, cryptocurrency, identity, what all these things mean, and kind of positioning you to figure out how to place yourself in the future to come, whether you're an individual builder you know, want to get into the space really just as an investor or a collector, or if you're looking for a full-blown career change and you need that kind of skill set or prove that type of skill set. We built this course for you. At the end of it, you'll receive an on-chain certification, so basically an NFT graduation certificate that you'll obviously be able to use to prove to anyone that you've gone through this course and that you have that basic level of education and obviously the fact that it in your on-chain resume is on-chain and as an NFT, it's kind of proof enough. But yeah, learnweb3.xyxyz and again, the name of the course is the fundamentals of web3 and digital identity, and that is now my uh. Lastly, uh, for any of you who are looking for your permanent web3 digital identity, you know, looking for the perfect, perfect Web3 TLD to mint your domain on. Registrations are currently open for dgen exchange, defi wallet and the .88888, which is 5-8 TLDs. These are TLDs that are on Freename. You mint one should own forever. A lot you can do with them currently, now and in the future and we'll have to top off on that in a little bit during the spaces, uh, but you can use them right now to send and receive crypto using metamask snap so you can grab your nameggen or mydefi wallet or syncryptoexchange. Again. At iheartdemandscom, right on the home page, you'll be able to see the registration info. You click and it'll take you directly where you can pick the name of your choice. Well, all right, all right. I'm going to get into the main discussion at hand.

Speaker 2: 5:54

Again. The topic of today's podcast is going to be online versus on chain identity. Every big shift in the internet always really comes down to one thing, in some form of a fashion it's identity, whether it's personal identity or business identity. That's been pretty much the narrative of every new shift in the internet. In web one, identity meant owning a com. This was your online home, this was your storefront. If you owned a good one, you were instantly credible. That's pretty much still the case today. In the web one or what we call the web two world, which has transitioned into, they have a saying that com is king and ai is slowly creeping up behind it. But again, in Web 1, those static assets or those kind of you know, those older assets, the traditional assets, the NS assets your com was basically how you represented your

Speaker 2: 6:56

identity. Web 2 introduced a slight shift. So now, suddenly, in addition to your website or in lieu of a website, your identity could now also be potentially your handle. It could be your username on Twitter or on Instagram or on TikTok. Now we're entering into a world where usernames become your brand. You know your presence. The platforms that you're able to build or the community that you're able to build becomes your brand. But here's the problem you still don't own it right. Those platforms own it and for all sorts of reasons, we've seen examples of people unfortunately losing you know anything that they built on some of these

Speaker 2: 7:39

platforms. And now here we are in this new thing called Web3. Now, this time, identity is bigger than just how people find you. Identity in Web3 is more interactive. It acts as your login, it's your wallet, it can be your membership card, it's proof of who you are and what you've earned. And the biggest difference is that, unlike web one and web two, you can actually own

Speaker 2: 8:07

it. So let's kind of talk about how the old world of identity works. So, right now, the way we log in is functionally broken. I mean, like, how many logins do you have? Some of us have five, 10, 20, 50, maybe even 100 different logins, each one with its own username password. You might have to add in a two-factor code, et cetera. Some are tied to an email, some are tied to Google, some are tied to

Speaker 2: 8:38

Apple. You get my point, and the problem with that is that that's extremely fragile. If your email gets hacked, your whole online identity goes down with it. If Facebook bans your account, your identity can vanish overnight. If you don't renew your dot com, I mean, well, it's gone Right. So think about that for a second. We build our digital lives currently on rented land. We build our digital lives currently on rented land the usernames, the logins, even the domains that we think we own. They all sit on servers that we don't actually control. And once you realize that, you then start to see why we might need something new, and that's something new is on-chain

Speaker 2: 9:22

identity. This is where we enter Web3 and we enter wallets. When you log into DApps, which are decentralized applications same as any other app, and when you log into DApps like MetaMask, phantom or Coinbase Wallet, you actually aren't using a username or password. You're using your wallet and your wallet is your identity. It's one universal key that pretty much works everywhere in Web3, and it carries more than just access. It also carries with it any of your assets, your history and your proof. So you don't just say I'm a member. You get to show that actual membership token in your wallet. You don't just say I'm a member. You get to show that actual membership token in your wallet. You don't just say I paid. The blockchain re-verifies and shows it. It's permissionless. There's no middleman, there's no password resets, no forgot my login, just you, your key and your identity. Your online identity in this case is truly yours. It's not leased, it's not rented and, most importantly, it's not at risk of being shut down by a

Speaker 2: 10:28

corporation. And so, now that you're able to bring your identity on chain, well, there are several unique ways that you can use it, all powered now by the blockchain. We've talked about this in several different episodes and I've talked about this in several different other settings, but there's a lot of big features that are exclusive to Web3 and blockchain that enhance the way that you're able to use identity in a way that's different from Web2. One of those first things being token gating, aka access without asking so. In Web2, axie asking so. In Web 2, access is controlled by usernames and subscriptions. You pay Spotify and then they flip a switch and they turn it on. You subscribe to Netflix and then you're able to get in, but they also can revoke it at any time. Again, miss a payment, any reason, violation of account these things can be shut down and, all of a sudden, your username and password doesn't

Speaker 2: 11:26

work. Well, in Web3, access lives in your wallet. You simply need to hold the token that's required to get in and you're in. If you don't hold the token, you're out. It's really as simple as that. Now imagine it's transactionally

Speaker 2: 11:43

right. When people think of NFT technology and how it can be used, token gaining is probably one of the best examples that you can give. Imagine something like an NFT ticket that now allows you to to control the treasury or to make decisions or to participate in governance rights in a completely in a business, a nonprofit or whatever it is. Imagine holding a membership token that unlocks a private discord or gated content. Maybe a mastermind group, maybe something with there actually was a Discord I used to belong to that did private Blender classes and I mean these are classes that and you got to download the software. They had some way that they had copied the software where anyone who was a member also got to download Blender software for free, and that was pretty big

Speaker 2: 12:38

value. If that's what you're developing with or building or creating art with right, you're not asking for permission anymore in these cases. You're just proving your belongs with what you hold in your wallet, and that flips the entire power dynamic. You own the access and you essentially carry it with you. Another way that blockchain empowers identity is it makes it extremely usable in this world of Web3 by connecting it to a wallet. And again, this is another way, that another value proposition that will become bigger and bigger and bigger as more people come into the space. I just read today, I believe, that Shopify is introducing a stable coin, introducing a stable coin. So more and more large entities are looking at the rails of Web3 to improve their payment processes, to raise money, to improve their experiences, whatever. At some point, hundreds thousands, millions, hundreds of millions, billions and the whole world will have some exposure to Web3 or crypto, whether they want to or not. And that exposure, as we all know, when you first into cryptocurrency, is your

Speaker 2: 13:47

wallet. That wallet, for most people, starts off exactly the same and looks kind of exactly the same, which is a big random mess of jumbo numbers or whatever, but it usually, if you're talking about an EVM wallet, it starts with a 0x and it's a 42-character string. Well, the problem is that nobody wants to and most people don't trust, and not only just don't trust the string, they don't trust themselves to get it right, but most people don't trust themselves to send anything funds to something like 0x, 7a, blah, blah, blah, blah blah. This is where Web3 domains step in. They make on-chain identity human readme. So, instead of sending something to 0x, blah, blah, blah, we're talking about now being able to send things to places like Marcusdj or purchasecrypto or even something custom like iHeartDomainsdefi wallets, and it's more than just

Speaker 2: 14:46

cleaner. Web-through domains are permanent, and this is where we bring on-chain identity into play. Nobody can delete your name. When it comes to identity, I mean, imagine your name, your real name. You go by every single day, one day being changed or being different and nobody ever referring to you that anymore. I mean that would be a pretty devastating experience, and that's the same thing that can literally happen if you build your house on rented ground, if you build something on a social platform that can take your name, if you build something on a website that can get shut down. Not to say that you still don't have to do these things, but as we start looking into the future and what things may be possible, you have the opportunity right now to prepare yourself for it, or maybe even be the person that develops the technology that replaces the old ecosystem, so that you're helping more than just

Speaker 2: 15:35

yourself. But in addition to being permanent in Web3, it is also portable. So one of the beautiful things about Web3 is that it is a decentralized public ledger, meaning that anything that has the capability to read and resolve the information that's on the blockchain could essentially read anything or any identity or any domain name. As we know right now, it's kind of the integration game, but in essence, every single thing that's ever mentioned in the blockchain, every record, every single piece of your on-chain identity is accessible and therefore portable. In order to access another D-app, or access or import your information into another D-app, you just simply got to connect your wallet. It doesn't take the same processes in Web 2.0. Like even right now, I just got my Solana phones right Finally, after so long of waiting for those

Speaker 2: 16:27

things. But one of the processes that it gave is it gave the ability to import any of your info from an old phone or old device, such as an old Android or an iPhone. You're able to import that into this new thing so that it starts off on familiar ground right, whatever apps are compatible with it. You're going to get an experience that is similar to the one that you just left. That's a physical process. You have to put the phones next to each other, you've got to use username and password, you've got to wait for one thing to download the other. And again, even though it's convenient and it exists and we all take advantage of it, there are faster and decentralized processes that will eventually start gaining steam, and then, of course, with anything that is permanent and that is portable. It is also now branded. This can now become your digital brand or your calling card, because it is, again, something that you're not going to lose. It's something that you are able to use. You're not going to lose, it's something that you are able to use. So now think about sending money to yourfriendeth instead of copying and pasting a 42-character string. That's usability and that creates an identity that people will actually need to use and will want to use. Now we are early, but that is changing extremely fast as new companies and industries enter Web3. As I've mentioned a bunch of times before, we're really in a transition. Right now. We're at a crazy intersection where there is multiple technologies kind of converging and changing the way that we think and deal with anything. We've got Web3 on one end and we've got AI on the other end, and they both complement each other Right

Speaker 2: 18:12

now. The current reality is that half of the internet is still logging in with emails and passwords, and then you've got us on the other half that are experimenting with wallets and domains. It's a little bit messy, kind of just like the early days of the internet, when some people were on AOL, some people were on Yahoo and some were trying to build their first dot com. But, like I mentioned earlier, with the entrance of people like Shopify, people like Amazon coming into the space, walmart coming into the space we've got PayPal into the space this tide is starting to shift. More apps are starting to let you connect to wallet instead of log in. I'm seeing a lot more examples of that. More companies are launching stable coins or thinking of ways to get into the space and either bring their finances or the way that you pay them, or even your experiences themselves on chain. More and more communities are starting to realize what you can do with nfts and are starting to use token gated experiences instead of white lists and email lists, and more people are starting to register web through domains instead of just relying on traditional handles. Again, if you're already in the space and in web 3, this concept has clearly landed with you

Speaker 2: 19:27

already. Most people in the Web3 space understand the value of a Web3 domain. Most people in the Web3 space understand the value of ownership and how transformational these particular assets can be. Again, this is already happening and when this transition flips fully, on-chain identity will soon feel just as normal as logging in with Google does today, except this time, when we're talking about on-chain identity, we're talking about identity that is not rented but is owned. So, to kind of wrap this up and tie it all together, online identity is about convenience. On-chain identity is about convenience. On-chain identity is about

Speaker 2: 20:12

ownership. Online identity, unfortunately, is borrowed, but this new concept of on-chain identity is permanent. Online identity is controlled mostly by the companies and the apps that you use to log into, and your on-chain identity is controlled and is curated by you. We are moving into a future where your wallet is both your universal login and your universal identity. Your tokens, your POAPs, your transactions, all of these things. These are your memberships. Your Web3 domain is your name, it's your brand and it's the highway that people can use to send and pay you, and no platform, no company and no government will be able to take that away once it's minted and built on Web3. This isn't just a technological upgrade. This is a freedom

Speaker 2: 21:04

upgrade. So a challenge to you is don't just keep using the same username and passwords because they're familiar. Again, as the space exists today, certain processes have to be had, but it's just like the transition from checks to credit cards. You had some people that, even though they saw the writing on the wall, he still held on Right. Well, you still got to embrace the writing on the wall to an extent, so that you don't get left behind. You still got to embrace the writing on the wall to an extent so that you don't get left behind. So you've got your username and passwords, but experiment more with logging in with your

Speaker 2: 21:35

wallet. If you don't already have a Web3 domain, get your first and get that experience of feeling what it feels like to build an identity on chain. Add a couple of POACs, add some NFTs that represent a little bit of you. Mint a couple of things. Right, you can upload using I forget the name of the like. There's R-Weave and et cetera, but there's other exact apps out there where, if you're an artist, you can mint your art. If you're a poet or if you're writing essays, if you're writing articles, you can actually mint. These things sit inside of your wallet and will become part of your on-chain resume and how people see and identify

Speaker 2: 22:13

you. Again, experience what it feels to own your identity and not just rent it, because the future isn't just online, the future is on-chain. I told you guys I would keep this one nice and brief, but hopefully locked in with a lot of different value Again, as we start looking into the future, and sometimes it's hard to see because you're looking at what it looks like right now, but just follow the signs. Right, the news points exactly. You know all these different news things and updates that we see here on X. They're pointing the picture and they're leading dots to an on-chain world. An on-chain world and again, it doesn't have to be a huge on-chain world, but as long as you can position yourself early for it, there's bound to be some sort of

Speaker 2: 22:54

success. On the other side, again, you can listen back to this episode and any past episodes of our Tech Talks here directly on X or on your favorite podcast player by going to techtalkhost and choosing the one of your liking. Again, you can listen to this on Apple Spotify. Pretty much every major podcast player on these episodes, past and present, will be on. Also, you can visit our website at iheartdomainscom. In addition to the recording of this episode, there's always, always, always also a nice blog overview as well, just in case you'd like to consume your content that way. Thank you, guys all, for taking the time out of your Friday to tap into our Tech Talk. Happy, demanding. Focus on your mission, not your condition. We'll talk to you guys in a couple weeks. See you soon, thank you.