Web3 Domains and the Future of Web2 with Unstoppable's Matthew Gould | Saw.com - Uncomfortable with Jeffrey Gabriel

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today I have the CEO and co-founder of Unstoppable
Domains, matthew Gould.
I got to sit down with Matt forthe first time at the ICANN
conference in Puerto Rico and Iadmit I did not know much about
Unstoppable and I really haven'tinvested a whole heck of a lot
of time in Web3 domains either,and the reason because of that
is I kind of feel like it's justa big money grab.
But after our meeting I have tosay what I have heard from Matt

(00:23):
about Unstoppable and whatthey're planning on I'm actually
pretty impressed with.
They have big plans, big goalsand they certainly are not
fly-by-night.
Unstoppable domains areawaiting approval from ICANN to
become a registrar.
They have plans to invest inthe next round of GTLDs and
they're innovating.
They're invested in thisindustry and plan on being here

(00:47):
for good.
Matt and I discuss his storycrypto Web3 collisions with
other Web3 extensions.
What happens then Web2collisions with Web3 when the
GTLD auctions come around inthree years and I hit him with
some challenging questions,concerns and objections in
general regarding Web3.
Some of those questions are whydid you only charge one year

(01:11):
for one of your unstoppabledomains?
What are you going to do ifanother namespace starts a
matching extension and anotherentity wins the auction for the
same extension.
What do browsers like Safari,chrome or Firefox have to say
about unstoppable domains orjust Web3 domains in general?
How do I contact a registranton one of your domains and have

(01:34):
you ever considered tokenizingunstoppable?
And finally, we touch on domainlending and I hit him with a
bunch of questions anddiscussion points about that as
well.
So this is a good show, greatguest.
I learned a lot and, I hope,him with a bunch of questions
and discussion points about thatas well.
So this is a good show, greatguest.
I learned a lot and I hope youdo too.
Thanks for listening.

(02:02):
Today on the UncomfortablePodcast, we have Matthew Gould,
the CEO and co-founder ofUnstoppable Domains.
He's leading the charge inproviding the World Web 3 domain
names.
Matt has grown the company toover $100 million in revenue and
a billion-dollar valuation.
Prior to joining the domainindustry, he founded multiple
companies across many differentsectors, and these can range

(02:23):
from a Y Combinator-backedbusiness called Talkable Tom's
Shoes Bonobos Pura Vida, and healso holds a Bachelor of Science
and Finance from GeorgiaInstitute of Technology.
I've known about Matt for quitea while, but we finally got to
meet in person at the last ICANNin Puerto Rico where we had a

(02:43):
sit-down conversation about Web3, about Unstoppable and just
about domains in general, and Ithought it was really
interesting and then I invitedhim on the podcast.
He said sure, so welcome my newfriend from the business.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Well, thank you, I'm doing well and thanks for that
intro.
And, just to be clear, Ifounded founded several
companies and then some of thoseare actually companies that
I've worked with when I was atTalkable Right.
So, like I work with Tom Shoesand Bonobos and Pura Vida, these
are in their e-commerce brand.
So my background is actually inlike on the tech side, is in

(03:20):
e-commerce and you know, Istarted founding companies when
I was as early as 15.
I think I can go back and findmy first.
I actually have my very firstbusiness plan here in my office.
I actually keep it and I'mgoing to frame it.
But you know, and it was for acompany that used software to
identify undervalued houses it'scalled Holden Properties.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Right, I was also a poker player, and you did that
at 15.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
So the genesis of that business was like a
services company, right, andthen that evolved into a
property management andacquisition one as I got into
college.
So when I started the servicescompany when I was still in high
school with a friend of mineand we cleaned out foreclosed
homes, right, and that's whatwe'd spent our time doing in

(04:08):
Atlanta.
And then we evolved that intoproperty management and then,
because we like computers, wewrote software to kind of
analyze what was worth buying inAtlanta.
So, and then all the e-commercebrands.
I actually was post moving toSan Francisco and my friend Alan
found it talkable and took itthrough YC and I was one of the
early employees there's, likeyou know, definitely less than

(04:28):
10 people.
I may have been employed likefive or six or something and he
brought me in to run theanalytics department, right.
So I was the first dataanalytics person and then I
ended up growing into likedirector of operations I think
it was my and I managed to befor all the product development
and the engineering teams aswell as the analytics teams and
all the testing and everything.

(04:49):
So really grew me in my careeron software on that side.
So yeah, it's been.
It's been a fun journey andunstoppable, evolved out of my
love and hobby, which was crypto.
Like so, if you saw me in SanFrancisco in 2013, 2014, 2015,
and 2016, I would be working 50hours a week at a startup, and

(05:13):
then my nights and weekends werealways at crypto events.
I was very early.
I was buying Bitcoin under ahundred bucks.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
Oh, you bastard yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
I was working on Ethereum when it was on test net
, so I had Ethereum when it wasunder a dollar.
So I was like super, superearly in the space and I wanted
to contribute.
So 2017 rolled around and Ileft the startup I was at to go
start my own thing.
I took some time there to tryto figure out what exactly that

(05:45):
was and I ended up landing ondomain names.
So, and you know, domain namesare interesting for a lot of
reasons which you know we canget into, but I think the
biggest improvement for domainnames is it's just wonderful UX.
You know, as everybody knows,you don't want to type an IP
address into a Chrome browser inorder to find a website.

(06:08):
You don't want to type in atext address to find somebody's
wallet.
That was the intuitive, justreally high level 10,000 foot
view.
And then since then, we'vegotten really into the guts of
what it means to buildblockchain domain name systems
and kind of how that mightimpact the market or the
internet over the next decade ortwo.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
Let me ask you this when you went to California with
your friend Alan and you'reworking in analytics at Talkable
but obviously you still had theentrepreneurial itch you
probably got to a point or acrossroads when you said to
yourself I'm out of here, I'mgoing to go do my own thing, not

(06:48):
in a bad way, but like when wasthat time that it kind of just
became obvious that it was timefor you to go and leave?
And why was that?

Speaker 2 (06:57):
Well, I had a different vision for where the
product should go.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
Right for where the product should go right.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
The thing is is when you're working at a company
every day.
I find it's easier to work at acompany if you are 100% behind
the mission, and when you join acompany, you're always 100%
behind the mission.
That's why you joined in thefirst place.
But then, as you get better atbuilding things and
understanding how the marketworks and just to be clear, my

(07:22):
first two years at Talkable werefantastic.
Every day I walked in I learnedsomething new, right, and that
was the reason why I movedacross the country from Atlanta
out to San Francisco to trysomething new is because I knew
I needed to extend myself andhonestly, I looked at it and I
said software is the future,right, and instead of trying to
make like a real estate businessthat's software enabled or

(07:44):
something just make a puresoftware business.
That was kind of the you knowthe like light bulb in my head.
So yeah, move across thecountry.
You know, sell everything.
Sold my holden propertiescompany right, close it down
like everything, just soldeverything all I had was a
suitcase and a backpack.
You know, uh, get a tiny littleroom in San Francisco for, you

(08:05):
know, 650 bucks a month, and ifyou know San Francisco, you know
it must've been a pretty awful.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
That might've been a shoe box.
Yeah, it didn't say Reebok onthe side of it.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah exactly, you know, just outside the city, but
still on the train line Right.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
And then just really deciding I'm going to put the,
I'm going to put the 50 hours aweekend to learn how a software
business is run.
And so you know, there's a lotof things about running a
software company that aredifferent than running a real
estate company or anything othercompany, right?
So the first two years was justpure learning how the game
works, right.
And then after that, I startedto develop my own product sense

(08:37):
right for software.
And once I started developingmy own product sense for
Software, I remember going to aShopify event and this is before
.
Shopify is the beast that it wastoday and Shopify was building
a product that was complementaryto what we were building.
And I said to myself this isgoing to be the winner in the
space.
And I went back to Alan and Isaid we should pivot the whole

(09:01):
business and we should buildShopify.
Now you got to understand thisis 2013 or 2014.
It's pretty early in thebusiness and we should have,
honestly, if we're looking back,still my opinion.
But we were in a really goodposition to build that same type
of software.
And then, after it wasdetermined, no, we're going to
be a marketing analytics company, which was our niche and where

(09:21):
we're at and where they stillare today.
They still exist today.
That's when I started lookingright, because it's kind of like
I felt like this product wasnot going to be able to compete
in the market versus shopify andI could see the writing on the
wall that like we were going tohit a cap because of that, um
and yeah.
So that's when I startedletting my mind wander.
And crypto was my hobby, and Ido think that if you have a

(09:43):
hobby that you're spending 10,20 hours a week on anyway, then
that's a really good place toturn into a business If you're
the kind of person who can stillenjoy it if it's a.
You know some people if theyturn their hobby into a business
, they no longer like theirhobby, but I don't have that
problem, right?
So so for me, it was a goodidea to turn my hobby into a

(10:04):
business.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
So problem right, so, uh.
So for me, it was a good ideato turn my hobby into a business
.
So, um, I find it.
I find it interesting, though,that you you were, you know,
largely into crypto.
Crypto at the time.
I mean the amount of money thatstarted pouring into crypto.
The new business ideas arebeing based on it, the new coins
are being launched, the youknow the buzz that was happening
, and then you decide to choosedomains as part of it seems a

(10:26):
little opposite.
You know, it's kind of likebuilding a new age library.
You know it's just not as likewhen you hear about a lot of
these other companies that wereusing Bitcoin or blockchain.
You know, domain, bringingdomains to the blockchain,
doesn't sound to me as excitingas what some of these companies

(10:47):
were talking about doing withtheir own coins or Ethereum or
whatever.
So I find that a little.
Why domains?

Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yeah, so-.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
Being a registrar, like being a registrar of
domains, or really a registry ofdomains is not the most
exciting company in the world.
When I explain it to people,their eyes usually roll into the
back of their heads, you know.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
I've got.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
I've got.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
I've got a lot of reasons why I ended up in
domains.
So, number one I did not wantto build a finance app, okay.
So if you look at crypto, Iwould say 50% of what's going on
is finance, right?
So I just made a decision as anentrepreneur I don't want to
build a finance app because it'sextremely highly regulated,
right?
It's just a lot of excessregulations and I didn't want to

(11:36):
spend my whole time justdealing with that.
And if you look at Coinbase,coinbase has one of the largest
legal departments as apercentage of headcount of any
startup.
It's like it's like one out ofone out of 50 people at Coinbase
is a lawyer, right?
And like that's wild, if youthink about it.
Like that's a really high ratio.
It might be even one out of 30.
Like they've got a very largelegal team.

(11:57):
So you know.
So if you're asking, like I gotinto crypto, why didn't you do
one of these other crazy things?
Well, one I didn't want to doanything with finance, so that
that eliminates that's theunited states.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
Yeah, and I and I know someone from draft kings
and you said their number oneexpense is legal.
Yeah, exactly, not marketing.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Legal, yeah, yeah, so like uh, I don't like all that
regulation because I think it.
I mean, and that makes sense,right?
I launched a blockchain domainscompany we've talked more about
.
You know, administrators andregulators in the block, in the
domain, in the regular domainindustry.
We'll get there, but that wasit.
So like finance was off thetable.
And then the other thing I kindof like I wrote down a list of

(12:32):
things that would really improvethe crypto market.
I said I wanted to say what arethe top five things you need to
have in order for crypto to beglobally adopted.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
This is 2016,.
Right, 2017, when I'm doingthis idea of formalizing.
And number one was, you know,needs to be easier to buy crypto
, like get money in the system.
Well, that's finance and that'sCoinbase, right.
And then another one that wassometimes tied for number one

(13:02):
but always came in in the topthree was UX, right, so UX was
always number two or number one,depending on how you rated it.
And then number three wasregulatory clarity, which I had
no control of.
So when I went around and Iasked, like, what are the top 10
problems in crypto?
I asked a bunch of other people, right, and I have my own
opinions too, but I like to getexternal validation.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
And.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
UX.
Yeah, ux was the one where Icould tackle because I didn't
want to do finance.
So that's onboarding crypto.
I have no input on regulatorsand that just leaves UX.
And then looking around at UX,domain names make a lot of sense
because you're copying andpasting these crypto addresses
and I've actually copied andpasted a crypto address

(13:44):
incorrectly these cryptoaddresses, and I've actually
copied and pasted a cryptoaddress incorrectly.
I've actually had softwareinsert the wrong hex address
when I was copying it back thenso that I sent it to the wrong
person.
So I actually have lost moneydoing that back then Was it a
lot of money.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
in the moment you hit submit, were you like, oh shit.
Or was it just?

Speaker 2 (13:59):
It was like a thousand dollars right.
So which is not unreasonableamount of money.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
There's enough that I remember right you're living in
a six hundred dollar a monthapartment in san francisco.
That thousand dollars probablymeant a lot.
Well, this is.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
This is 2017, so this is like three years later right
and yeah, yeah, yeah careeradvanced.
You know I was doingsignificantly better in my life
at that time, right?
Um, so uh.
But so that that came up.
And then it just so happenedthat at the same time, I was
going and doing a lot of eventson the side with friends, right

(14:32):
Hackathons on the weekends andso forth and playing around on
the blockchain, and one of thethings that Brad Cam, who's one
of the co-founders of UnsolvedMovements, and I always came
back to from a businessperspective was tying reputation
to blockchain addresses is areally kind of cool thing to do.
And remember I said regulationwas one of the top three
concerns and we were saying,well, if we had and this is also

(14:55):
back then people were sayingthe worst part about crypto is
if you send money, you can't getit back.
There's no chargebacks, right.
And so we were talking about ifyou had reputation added to you
know crypto addresses on thepublic blockchain, then you
would know who you sent it toand you could ask them to send
it back if you needed to, andthen that would also help
decrease fraud and scams, whichwe thought that regulators would

(15:16):
also be interested in on theblockchain, right.
So, like you know, addingreputation data to blockchain
addresses we thought was amarket that no one else was
addressing, and so we actuallybuilt projects with others that
did exactly this.
Like there were some Redditclones back then where people
would tip in crypto.

(15:37):
It was like a big deal backthen.
People wanted to build like aReddit, but with crypto, and
every single one of those weended up building a naming
system for.
So you have to understand, I'msitting here and I'm like
collecting my list of problemsin Web3, and one that always
comes up is UX.
And then on the other side, I'mlike building hackathon
projects on the weekends and Iactually built a few exchanges
right, like Dex's and so forth,with some friends.

(15:58):
Again, I didn't want to dofinance, but I was trying to see
what was what we could do.
And then we were doingreputation stuff.
And then this connection waskind of made and it was like oh,
if we make domains forblockchain addresses, we can
make the UX 10 times better forpeople to send crypto to each
other.
It's a very easy pitch.
It's like why do you need tohave matcrypto, right?

Speaker 1 (16:19):
Because if you have matcrypto, you don't have to
remember your Bitcoin address oryour theory address or your
Litecoin address Super easypitch.
But doesn't that kind of goagainst the whole point of
blockchain and all that, thedecentralized nature of it all?
Now you're centralizingyourself by creating a history
of how you are and the wayyou're acting.

(16:40):
It's the same as a possiblepublic embarrassment of getting
caught doing something illegalor bad or being rude to someone
on Twitter and someone calls meout and says you know, jeff is a
womanizing asshole.
Look at these tweets like that.
You know it would hurt myreputation, right.
So you're bringing it's kind ofcontradictory, don't you think?

Speaker 2 (17:01):
No, because you can still have privacy too, right.
And so when we're thinkingabout making it easier for
sending around cryptocurrencypayments, and then we were also
thinking about giving you theoption to publicly display
reputation data, like revealingwho you're interacting with, and
then we finally thought and ifyou wanted privacy, some of that

(17:23):
data you could store off-chain.
And if you look at unstoppabledomains right now, as of today,
when you go on profile that youset up for your crypto address.
You actually have checkboxesthat say like, do you want this
to be private data or do youwant this to be public data?
Right, and we give you a littlewarning.
It's like hey, this is going tobe public, so anyone can see it
.
And you have both options, soyou actually can store private

(17:50):
data and you can store publicdata.
And then my final statementhere is people are going to say,
well, if you send anytransaction on the blockchain,
it's completely public, right,and as a technologist, I will
tell you yes, it is today.
But privacy tools are coming forthe blockchain in this decade,
and tools are coming for theblockchain in this decade and it
is technically possible to sendtransactions privately, even on

(18:16):
chain, and there have been demoapplications of this done.
Brad has actually done a demowith sending Monero to a domain
name, and Monero is a privatecryptocurrency.
So if you tie Monero to yourunsolvable domains, you can
actually send private moneyright now, and then that same
technology that's being usedthere will be implemented on
other chains.
So someone's alreadyimplemented it on Ethereum,

(18:38):
although it's clunky and nobodyuses it.
I believe that the same techcan be implemented on Bitcoin
and we're going to get toprivacy rights on the blockchain
at some point.
I mean, the EU is pretty strongabout these things and I think
we'll get there.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
Okay, so going back knowing what you know about
crypto and you're talking aboutblockchain and privacy we have,
obviously, the new ETF that hascome out a few months ago, which
has made Bitcoin go wild.
When these financialinstitutions are buying these
giant blocks of Bitcoin, howdoes that look on the blockchain

(19:15):
?
And is it by the individualtrade, or is it the individual
owner of that ETF?
Is it just the finance house,the auction house that looks
like?
Is the owner that owns andholds the Bitcoin, or do they
have to give it to theindividual and put it into a
separate wallet for that person?
Who's holding the Bitcoin?
Do you know?

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
Is it in a ledger wallet, in a safe at Bank of
America?
What did they do with it?
I mean, it could be trillionsof dollars that could get
heisted.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
Well, so it depends on the ETF, right?
Yeah, so Fidelity actually hastheir own wallet software.
Everyone keeps them a multi-six, right.

Speaker 1 (19:51):
Okay, so like Abby Johnson, CEO of Fidelity, you
know like has.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
Yeah absolutely.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
You know where like, so they have individual wallets
for each individual person.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
No, no, no.
So they so the ledger of somost, and I can't speak for all
of them cause I don't run theETS.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
Yeah, of course.

Speaker 2 (20:10):
Uh, all the trading happens off chain.
So when you're trading on NewYork stock exchange, the ETF or
whatever, or you're trading onCoinbase, or you're trading on
finance or Kraken or anywhereelse, it's all off chain.
And then what they do is theyjust settle it up in a day
between customer accounts, alloff-chain, on-chain.
All you see is the depositaddress for Coinbase or the
deposit address for Fidelity orthe deposit address for

(20:32):
BlackRock, and it's all storedin there cumulatively.
There's actually some prettycool ETFs.
I forget which one does this.
I'm going to guess, and if Iget it wrong I apologize.
I think it's VanEck and VanEck,actually, and I could be wrong,
but it's one of them and theypublish customers own 1 billion
in Bitcoin, right, and here's alink to our Bitcoin addresses

(20:54):
with $1 billion in it, right,and so you can actually see how
much money they have by going onchain and seeing that they hold
the amount of money, unlikegold.
Gold, like one of the biggestproblems about the gold etf for
people who are gold bugs outthere.
They're like, oh, you don'tknow if they actually have your
gold.
They could just be lying um forthese etfs at least one of them
, and you can check which onethey actually publish every day,

(21:15):
how much their customers ownand then the blockchain address.
We can go see how much they ownright, yeah and you can verify
those two things.
So it it is, in my opinion, astep above holding gold inside
of an ETF, because you canverify that the custodian
actually has as much as they saythat they do.

Speaker 1 (21:31):
Got it Okay.
So let me ask you this how manyextensions does Unstoppable
Domains have today?

Speaker 2 (21:47):
right um and and we expect that number to grow right
.
So if you come back and talk tome in a couple years, I
wouldn't be surprised if we haveover 100 um.
We're seeing a lot of interestin branded extensions, so we
most recently just launched uppudgy with pudgy penguins.
We have blockchain withblockchaincom.
We have several other brandedTLD announcements coming up and
that's been a huge focus for us.
If you remember, back in 2011,12, 13, I can't remember the

(22:10):
last auction, a lot of brandsbought their extensions but they
actually have no idea how touse them, a lot of them being
dropped or they're being justsitting there.
Right, exactly, and we thinkthat this decade there's

(22:55):
actually a consumer use case forbrands, which makes more sense.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
And so we think we're seeing a resurgence in brand
TLDs and we're actually activelyreaching out.
So if you're a brand and youcurrently own a TLD and I can
consumer or fintech, where itmakes a lot of sense for you to
consider the launch of your TLDnow with a Web3 product focus,
that hasn't made sense in thepast decade.
Now there's other companies,like Pool, that were selling
that or talking about sellingthat service.
You know, obviously you'reoffering that too, but what's
stopping?
You know, if it's fidelity?
We were just talking aboutfidelity.
So what's stopping you sayingto them you need to get your
fidelity extension and thenfidelity goes and gets it with
ICANN in the next round in threeyears and you've got them

(23:18):
fidelity.
What's stopping someone onHandshake doing it?
Or maybe you know someone elsein another namespace, someone on
Handshake doing it, or maybeyou know someone else in another
namespace.
Well, so yeah, and now it'slike whack-a-mole for a large
company like Fidelity saying youknow what the hell?

Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, yeah.
So this is why we really likebranded extensions, right?
So I think it's going to bevery easy for brands to be able
to assert their intellectualproperty rights over these
extensions, even in Web3.
And there's going to be fakeTLDs launched all the time.
Fake TLDs have been around fora while now.

(23:55):
I mean, there have been justfake ripoff TLDs.
There's even a com on Bitcoin.
Right now there's aBitcoin-based.
You just be aware People aregoing to make fake TLDs on-chain
all the time.
Some of these people are notserious.
They're just people who arethey're trolls, software
developers.
I think the com one, forinstance, was just a software

(24:17):
developer who was playing aroundon Bitcoin and trying to see
could he make an extensionservice Because he's not trying
to actively market?
Could he make an extensionservice Because he's not trying
to actively market that right?
So because he knows better.
So there's going to be a wholebunch of these fake extensions,
just like there are fake producthandbags in New York when you
go down and shop.
That's just how it is.
They're going to happenfrequently in the blockchain

(24:38):
space.
That's just part of thebusiness and sometimes, every
now and then, you're going torun into some people who are
going to try to cause someissues with that.
But you know, the way toapproach this is to disclose the
collisions to customers thatthere are a possibility and that
they could happen, and then tryto inform applications as best
as you can to make sure they'reresolving the correct one, and

(25:01):
then have apps acceptance be thething that determines it, right
.
So in the case of unsolvabledomains, we're already accepted
in a thousand plus applications,right.
And then any other knockoffswere currently resolved in like
zero applications or maybe likefive or 10.
So that's going to hopefully behow it is.

(25:21):
Now, if we start having consumerharm, I think that that's when
some of the regulators will kindof step down and then try to
say you know, this is okay, thisis not.
But I think right now they'rekind of letting the free market
met things out to see you knowwhat the results are.
You know they don't want tostep in too early to kind of say
one thing or the other.
Yeah, so that's.

(25:42):
But I think brands are in avery good position.
Like you know, you don't wantto launch a com on the
blockchain, right?
Verisign would be very upsetwith you and I do think that
they have recourse.
And then there's the same thinghere for fidelity right, or,
and especially, for banks.
You know, california, forinstance, has special rules for
what you can name things ifyou're a financial institution,

(26:04):
right, and so there's likespecial protections for that
because it's people's money, andI think that ultimately we're
going to find out that, you know, the law feels the same way
about that when it comes towallet addresses for sending
money around.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
So and that's scary, though, is when, if you have
collisions and you're usingdecisions and you're using an
unstoppable domain as a wallet,and someone goes to send me
money and it has a possibilityof someone else creating a
wallet for themselves and makingthemselves look like me and

(26:38):
having the same domain as me,and then they could obviously
pick that off, that's alegitimate concern, especially
to the uneducated person like me, when it comes to Web3 domains.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yeah, well, that would require apps to resolve it
, right?
And I think that any apps thatare resolving are going to
resolve what's seen in themarket as being the one, as
being, uh, like the one thatpeople expect it to be, or or
they're gonna, uh, havedifferent options for people to

(27:12):
be able to select where they'retrying to send things to.
So, uh, and just to be clear,we have not had a single
reported incident of thishappening yet, right?

Speaker 1 (27:23):
so.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
So, for all the fake copycat collision TLDs that have
been created, we have not had asingle customer report of
interacting with an applicationthat routed the payment to the
wrong place, and so you know.
If there is one, please let meknow immediately, because that's

(27:47):
the type of consumer harm thatwe would want to make sure that
people are aware of so that wecan add.
You know we can advocate for itand help protect it.
But we know we're out in themarket telling people like, make
sure you're resolving the rightone, make sure you're telling
the consumer where that thing isgoing, uh, and then have some
ability for the consumer tocheck and make sure it's safe.
I'll give you another examplehere like inside of our APIs
which are reading off of Web3,and this is where we encourage

(28:08):
people who are Web2 companies ifyou want to start resolving
domain names in yourapplications, go check out
Unstoppable Domains APIs.
We have safety features in themand what happens is, if you're
reading off our APIs, we'll letyou know things about that
domain name, and I'll give youan example.
It's like we're working on thisright now and this is something

(28:29):
that I don't have a releasedate for.
But if we know that the addressis owned by a squatter and not
the brand, we throw that back inthe API right.
And so you can imagine that whenwe talk to other applications
in the space, the other bigapplications, the big exchanges,
the Coinbases, the OpenSeas,these people in the world we say

(28:49):
we have an API where we'redoing the work for you to
identify potential issues in thespace for brand protection and
brand safety and that can helpyou prevent customers from being
scammed.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
And this is also a.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
Thing that I don't think domain people are thinking
about, right, like you're usedto doing brand protection and
we're doing a lot of work inbrand protection behind the
scenes by the way, you'll seethat over the next month,
because we're taking it veryseriously and you think about
brand protection you're like oh,I don't want someone to build a
website and pretend to be mybrand, right, and what I'm
telling you is you don't wantsomeone to build a wallet and

(29:25):
pretend to be your brand.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
That's what I'm more concerned about Right.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
Absolutely.
And so you, um, we recently, uh, we recently signed
partnerships with several bigpeople in this space, uh, brand
protection companies.
Um, you may have noticed thatwe are now in global block, uh,
uh, which is, you know, which isthe brand safety alliance, and
all the big players are in thereGoDaddy, et cetera.
So we're in there as of now.

(29:49):
And then we're also workingwith Mark Monitor, we're working
with several brand protectioncompanies and we are providing
additional services to thesecompanies to help protect brands
.
And I'll give you anotherexample Someone squats on your
domain name, someone squats onyour eth, right, so they go and
register Coca-Colaeth.
This is a common problem,probably the number one in the
business, that people come to meabout.
They say, matt, how can youhelp me?

(30:11):
What we're doing is enrichingour APIs so that when, if we get
a notification from a brandthat says, hey, that's not me,
right, we throw that out in ourAPIs.
So when OpenSea is reading that, right, when Coinbase is
reading that, when anyone elseis reading that, they get the
information hey, this is notlegit.
So that way they can protecttheir customers, print them and
be accepted.

(30:31):
And this is the thing.
When I go to the domainindustry and, like you know,
unstoppable domains and saying,hey, we're stepping in the
domain industry, we want to dothe right thing.
This is one of the areas wherewe're actually focused right now
.
That, I think, is a really goodthing for people to look at and
kind of see what we're doingand how we're trying to help,
and I think that's going to be abig thing.
Like I said, pretending fakewebsites are bad, wait till you

(30:51):
see fake wallets right, andthat's what's coming.

Speaker 1 (30:53):
That's really bad.
So let's back up here before wekeep talking about the
fraudsters and squatters andpeople like that when we were
talking about a little bit ofcollisions, right?
So in three years um, I have adot link sticker here, I'm an
investor in dot link.
In three years there's going tobe another round for people to
apply for more new gtlds.

(31:14):
They're not new anymore,they're 10 years old, but they
still call them the new gtldsand apply for more.
So one of them that's probablygoing to be the most applied for
will be dot crypto.
You have dot.
You have crypto right now atUnstoppable right.
Are there other cryptos rightnow out there?
I'm sure there's quite a fewright In Web3.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
I mean, I have not looked as of this date, but it
wouldn't be surprising thatthere are.
I mean, like I said earlier,Wannabe copycats.
I mean I'm sure, yeah, thepeople are all over the place.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
But let's pretend that another namespace I know
ENS can't do it, they can onlydo eth.
But let's just say they cameout with their own crypto today
and they are kind of consideredlegitimate as well, and they're
pushing it Now.
You have it kind of consideredlegitimate as well, and they're
pushing it, now you have it.
And then we go to the auctionand let's say a private equity

(32:11):
firm comes in with unlimitedmoney, or Coinbase comes in and
says we want Dark Crypto andthey win it in the auction for a
hundred million bucks.
What happens then in that kindof a situation?

Speaker 2 (32:21):
Well, we're not going to lose it, right?
So it's an existential thingfor unstoppable domains to make
sure that we secure our TLDs andauction and we'll be willing to
pay whatever price is necessaryin order to secure our real
estate in those.
So I think that, like you know,let's see what happens in three
or four years, but I feelpretty confident going in that
we're going to either, you know,pick up all of those ourselves

(32:43):
or work with partners to pick upall of those and make sure that
we can continue forwardoffering those extensions.
I will point out, if you lookat what we're doing, we no
longer launch generic TLDs likewe used to.
Right?
So when we were out in 2019,there was no path to launching a
new TLD for the cryptocommunity inside of ICANN.
There was not even a scheduleddate really for the next ICANN

(33:06):
auctions and a piece of loreabout Unstoppable that most
people may not know.
When we started out in 2018, weactually tried to acquire an
existing GTLD and we found outthey were too expensive.
We went and talked around withpeople and they're like we want
500 grand for this and I said,well, my angel round was 180
grand, right.
And then, not only that, theonly ones that were existing

(33:26):
that had nothing to do withcrypto, so there was no path
forward other than going outwith our own extensions.
At that point, and now thatwe're a little bit more mature
and we kind of see how themarket works, we understand that
launching, launching genericswe're going to be faced with a
pretty hefty bill in the nextauction and that's just

(33:47):
something we're going to have todeal with.
And fortunately, we've gotreserves in order to go after
those hard.
And, if we have to, we'll goout and find those really
aggressive private equitycompanies and work with them
right, because we're going to bethe ones who can extract the
most value from those TLDextensions at the end of the day
, especially if we continue onour growth path.
So that's how we think about itand I'm also very interested in
how the auction process willlook right.

(34:07):
So you know there was a lot ofcompetitive bidding in the last
auction round in 2013.
And a lot of people made outwith a lot of money for just
driving up prices.
So you know that's going to bean area of concern for
Unstoppable Domains.
Like, we're going to want tomake sure that the bidding
process is a little more thoughtthrough.
You might see how they auctionspectrum.

(34:27):
We think there's a couple ofexamples.
Those auctions are prettycomplex but you have to think
through the game theory.
But I will say that UnstoppableDomains will be coming to those
auctions with the intention ofrunning a TLD for an existing
community.
We're not coming there to justbid up prices for other people
and I'll just let other peopleknow, like who do you think is
going to be able to make morevalue for those domain names?
I think it's certainly us rightand you know, if you're, if you

(34:50):
, I mean some people woulddisagree.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
They, you know.
If GoDaddy says we want it andwe could do a better job, you
know, you just don't know.
Or Coinbase wants it and theythink they could do a better job
, obviously you have theclientele and the people that
are into this stuff all day andyou've exemplified that over
years of building your businessto over 4 million registrations.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
I'm optimistic.
I also think there's a prettyhigh probability we can find
someone in the space who goes.
You know we could do this evenbetter with Unstoppable than by
ourselves.
People are going to have a lotof things um to consider in that
round and listen.
The round's going to becompetitive and we're aware
before we go any further.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
Um so, due to my recollection again almost 10
years ago here that, unlessotherwise other I think there
was different options for theauctions.
But one of the options for anauction was everyone bid in the
auction.
So it could be 10 people andlet's say Doc Crypto sold for 10
million bucks in the auction.
The losers, based on theproportion of what they bid in

(35:54):
the auction, would get that muchmoney of the $10 million back.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
So in essence, you would get paid to lose an
auction I would love, I wouldlove to be paid to lose that
sounds.
That sounds amazing right yeah,and there were.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
There were people I'm not going to get into it that
applied for a lot of extensions,but the application process was
done prior to people knowingabout how the auctions were
going to work out, so peopleweren't didn't apply knowing it
was going to be this way, but ina lot of ways it worked out
well for especially the littleor smaller guys that didn't have
as much money.

(36:26):
And I think, going into it,there were a lot of people that
obviously kept, you know, the um, their lips sealed, that they
were even applying or onlyapplied for one or two, and then
others kind of revealedthemselves as applying for like
30 of these or 50 or whatever itwas, and then they started to
almost create little likealliances and things like that

(36:48):
not to bid each other up.
And again the game theory beganand you know, I think the
problem is is, if you do thatagain, you're obviously going to
have people who are only goingto apply and they're going to go
for crypto, crypto and theseothers that are probably going
to be your biggest dark coin,possibly.
You know some of these others,and that's not the right thing
to do it way to do it right.
And then there's the discussionof if you're in the auction and

(37:10):
you lose I heard this at I canwas what if you still had to pay
what you bid, even thoughyou're a loser?
And it's like, okay, well, whogets that money then?
Does it just go to ICANN?
Like that's insanity.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
You know that doesn't make sense, I think this is
probably the number one insidebaseball thing about the next
ICANN.
Thing that hasn't been thoughtthrough is how they run the
auctions.
I think it's going to bemassively important and, you
know there's going to be allsorts of crying about how that's
done.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
And I can't think of a way that everybody's going to
be happy with it, because if, ifICANN walks away with all of
the money from the auctions,that's not really fair either,
that they get the hundreds ofmillions of dollars that that
generates, right, and I thinkthey're still sitting on the 500
million from the applicationsfrom last time I've heard so, um
, you know, so they're going tobe getting another $500 million
or more because the applicationfee, the guess it's not 100%.

(38:06):
It's at like $250,000 or$300,000 a piece now, up from
$180,000.
And it's not in writing yet,but that was the gossip.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
Yeah, and Unsolvable Demand is in an unfortunate
strategic position because youcan go on our website and you
can look what TLDs we offer,right.
So if you look at us that's whyI was saying earlier we're
really focused on branded right,on a going forward.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
Yeah going forward.

Speaker 2 (38:32):
And then, if you look at it, there is a branded TLD
application process which wewill be filing for right For the
brands.
And if you you know, if you, ifyou happen to be dot fidelity,
please reach out Right, Because,like you know, I would just
give you like that's a great one, Right, and that's the type of
thing where you know this it'spretty well established who
fidelity is, or dot BOFA, or dotPayPal, or any of these people

(38:53):
who are established FinTechs orconsumer brands that are
interested in getting in.
Like, we think there's a veryclear path.
I mean, you'd have to be crazyto try to contest one of those
guys going into these auctions.
And so that's where thebusiness focus has shifted over
the past three years.
And listen, when you run abusiness, you make the best
decisions that you could at thetime, and we're aware of oh wow,

(39:15):
we're going to have to come tothe auctions with a lot of money
and that's fine.
We'll do what we have to inorder to make that happen and I
think we're going to have areally attractive business,
honestly.
So the most valuable domainscompany in the world is GoDaddy
and VeriSign.
They're worth $15 and $20billion respectively.
You give us three years to getto the auctions, we might be

(39:37):
there, and so we'll be able tobe coming at the auctions just
as hard as anybody else.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
So let me ask you this question you mentioned
earlier that VeriSign wouldn'tbe excited if you took com and
you used it in a way onto theblockchain.
But what's stopping like?
You probably have met with thefolks, joe Algana and Tess Diaz
from ITcom.
Why not be selling thesubdomains and allowing people

(40:06):
with their wallets on there andit attaches to you know, web3
there, where you probably don'tfall under the ICANN rules why
wouldn't you do that?
Why wouldn't you do that nowand make money and do this
before these auctions and buyyourself, like you know, a good
$5,000 crypto name?

Speaker 2 (40:22):
I have a very strong opinion that consumers are not
going to want subdomains andthis is actually backed up by
evidence and we have our numberone competitor in the space has
been trying to push subdomainsfor five years.
Five years they've been tryingto put them and the adoption has
been extremely low for usage.
Whenever they've donesubdomains they've given them
away for free.
Anyone who knows how tk worksknows how that works out, right,

(40:45):
you just get a bunch ofregistrations from people who
are squatting and no value add,and people don't use them, right
?
So people do not want to beadvertising somebody else's
brand, especially if it makes iteven longer for you to remember
the person's address, like,would you rather have a
five-digit name or a nine-digitname?

(41:08):
Right, and because if you addthe dot and then three more
characters, you're there.
So, yeah, I just thinksubdomains are not going to be
very popular.
And if you look on the internet, there's a couple of places
where it's worked like uk, right.
I look on the internet, there'sa couple of places where it's
worked like dot, uk, right, Ithink you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
Like there's a couple of like like dot ukcom.
Central nick was selling thatand then dot uk came out.
So now you have couk and nowyou have dot uk and now you have
dot ukcom.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, I I just think that most consumers aren't going
to want to have, uh, subdomains.
The internet works that way too.
Um, most businesses don't havea subdomain right and and you
get a subdomains.
The internet works that way too.
Most businesses don't have asubdomain right and you get a
subdomain.
If you sign up for some ofthese site builders like Wix or
Shopify or something like that.
Everybody upgrades to, not asubdomain right.
So, like you know, yeah, it'sprobably an okay user onboarding

(41:55):
place to get people started,but everyone ends up upselling
and so it's just when I talk tomy team, I'm I have this
actually posted in our corporateSlack.
I have a note.
It's like things we don't workon subdomains in that list,
right?
So, like I'm serious, it's upthere.
It's either number one ornumber two on the list.
I think it's number one.
Subdomains are something wedon't work on subdomains because

(42:16):
we do not believe it, andthat's a personal product
decision.
Like I told you earlier, Ideveloped my product sense and I
was like, I have opinions aboutthings.
I have opinions about that one.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
I think it makes sense what you're saying Now.
So you brought up tk that theadoption rate isn't high at all.
Right, people are registeringthose for nefarious things.
People aren't buildingbusinesses on them.
Renewal rates are probablyquite low.
So I brought up 4 millionregistrations.
I always felt that when I heardabout Unstoppable Domains and

(42:46):
some of these other Web3companies that I just thought
the majority of people buyingthem weren't even using them for
wallets, that they were justhoping that they can flip them
for a certain amount of money,especially knowing you don't
have to carry a yearly renewal.
So out of your 4 million or sonames that you guys have
registered on Stoppable, howmany do you think are developed
or actually in use?

Speaker 2 (43:05):
right now, yeah, so we have to cut this up a couple
of ways.
So, first of all, most peopleregister between five and seven
domain names.

Speaker 1 (43:13):
All right, Out of time.

Speaker 2 (43:16):
Well, no, most people buy like one to be perfect, if
I look at not most, but like theplurality.
Someone comes through they buyone domain.
They're like is this real Right?
And they buy one then they,like you know, play with it, see
if it works or whatever, andthen they buy like another five
or six, and that's typical, likeif you start a new company or
something or you want to set upyour personal website, you.

(43:37):
So, first of all, so they takethat 4 million number right,
divide by, let's divide it bysix, right, and so then you're
going to end up with right at700,000, right, and so of those
700,000 that you end up with,about one third of those end up
configuring right, so, and thatmeans that they're setting up

(43:59):
210,000.
Yeah, something like that.
So remember, like out of so700,000 is kind of closer to the
number, total number ofcustomers.
Our total number of customersis right around 700,000.
That's actually funny.
We backed into that.
It's less than a million now.
So and then out of those lessthan a million customers we have
, you know, 25 to 35% of them Iwould actually say it's closer

(44:20):
to 30, is setting them up andconfiguring them to use in Web3.
And then the others are parkingright.
So like I don't think that's toobad, especially for, like a new
product in a new category.
I know a lot of people buy adomain name because they have an
idea to do something with itand then they just say, oh wait,
no, I don't want to do that,end up never putting the website
up.
So I think that's pretty commonand we're happy with that usage

(44:41):
and the use is actually muchhigher than you would think.
So we have I'd have to checkthe number on configured domains
and the number of configureddomains is probably at a million
.
I know we just talked aboutactive domains or whatever
Configured total.
I could go look I would betit's at a million.
And we have over 30 millionrequests per week per api for

(45:04):
resolution right so so like nowthat's tiny for the internet.
The internet has 30 millionrequests a second I don't know
what's not.
It is ginormous, right.
So, like.
So we want to be like dns formoney right, then, like, that
number should be super high too.
But 30 million is not nothingon a weekly basis to our APIs,
and that growth has been prettygood.

(45:24):
And then the other thing I'llpoint out is we just went
through a massive two-year bearmarket, right.
So all the speculation in the2021 bubble it kind of went into
2022, that popped.
I think it popped right aroundFebruary 2022.
You can go back and look, butall that speculation on that
bubble got drained out of themarket.
So people coming now are muchmore serious about what they're

(45:45):
trying to do with these domainnames than back then, and so we
had speculative fever and wedidn't know it at the time, but
there was definitely that timeperiod where it was rampant
people coming in.
But that has drained out andyou can see the crypto market
coming back now.
So bitcoin's up 3x or somethinglike that, but our

(46:06):
registrations are actuallygrowing at a more stable rate
than what you're seeing forbitcoin.
So, like I think the market hasfinally broken off.
Uh.
Cryptocurrency speculation fromweb3 domain.
Uh, right, I think, I thinkthat that I think that some of
that has been separated out overthe past couple of years,
because the two things are notthe same.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
So looking at your business and your business model
and you're talking abouthopefully getting and continuing
to grow as a business andhaving the money that's similar
to GoDaddy or some of theseother major players and going
into that auction.
But when I look at yourregister, I want to register one
of these domain names.
You only have a one-timeregistration fee and I mean you

(46:51):
might've done great during thosehighly speculative times and
then you have these people thatspeculated and bought a lot of
the good one, words and thingslike that and then they're gone.
You know, the idea is, even ifyou were charging a buck a year,
you at least could turn oversome of the inventory and the
good stuff, cause it's probablypeople that bought stuff from
you that they forgot, if theyeven own it or can't even access

(47:12):
it anymore.
So, like what was behind thethinking of a one-time charge
for life model time charge?

Speaker 2 (47:20):
for life model yeah.
So if you're gonna have, like,a business that really makes
waves in the market, typicallynot good enough to just have new
technology, right, like, havingnew technology is great, but
what you want to have is a pieceof new technology that also
changes the pricing model, right.
And if you have a combinationof new technology plus new

(47:40):
pricing model, that's when youreally get disruptive.
And if you look at whathappened online, a lot of online
services moved to being free orfreemium right in the early
2000s and then that ended upjust eating the lunch of all
these.
And Salesforce is another greatexample, like the idea that you
could buy sales teaminfrastructure seed at the time.

(48:00):
It was very revolutionary atthe time.
It was very revolutionary atthe time.
So they had like a new software, saas plus a new pricing model.
And so Ensemblejs did the samething with this market.
And when we looked at therevenue and I actually pulled up
GoDaddy's filings I think Iforget what it's called.
It's like a.
You know they have theirquarterly filings.
So I actually pulled them upand I looked and I said how much
money are they making and where?

(48:22):
And 60% of the revenue isservices on domain.
Maybe it's 50 to 60.
And then 20% is domaininventory sales, like domain
sales, and then 20% ismarketplace.
So majority of the revenue forthe largest domains company in
the world was not from thedomain name registrations.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
It's actually from selling Microsoft Word or a
website Email and websitebuilder and hosting and all the
other jazz.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
Exactly.
So how do I want to disrupt themarket?
And I said well, you know, whatis great for crypto and
marketing and go-to-marketstrategy is no renewal fees.
Very simple, straightforwardvalue prop you can communicate
to anyone on the planet norenewal fees for these domain
names.
And then the goal is to build amodel where we can make money

(49:09):
on services for those domains.
And like what are the money onservices that you can make for
domain names?
We're launching a walletproduct.
We already have a custodyproduct for these domain names,
security products, which I'vebeen talking about with you.
I saw it.
Yeah, apis, branded domain nameTLD management.
So imagine we come to the nextICANN round and we are the

(49:33):
registrar and technologyprovider for 100 plus brands for
their Web3 strategy.
And that's where I'm trying tomake money.
I'm not trying to make money onthe renewal fees for these
domain names.
I'm trying to make money as,like, an infrastructure provider
for Web3 enablement for thedomain name industry broadly,
and so I think that's the kindof long term vision that I have

(49:55):
for the company.
And then, as a user, I just haterenewal fees.
So, like on the consumerexperience side, very early on
it was like what's the thingthat sucks the most about domain
names and it was paying theannual fee.
And if you took like a surveyof people who have domains, like
, what are the things you hateabout domains the most?
Like the stupid annual fee isprobably top three on their list

(50:15):
.
And now we have removed that.
And then I've said this beforebut on a tech side, once you
register the domain name on theblockchain, assuming that the
consumer is self-custodying thatasset, there's no more cost to
me to provide that service,right?
So, like my infrastructure costis zero after the initial

(50:36):
registration if you'reself-customing that domain name.
So I don't want to be chargingyou for something that doesn't
cost me very much money.
Now domain names get into ICANN.
Icann has annual renewal feesof like 40 to 50 cents, like 25
cents plus whatever.
So you know, if our domainnames and we've told our
customers this if our domainnames are integrated into ICANN,

(50:58):
there will be a yearly fee forthe whatever the charge is to
get that service onto yourdomain name, and so there's some
things that might be there, butdomain should be cheaper.
You should not be paying $14 ayear in order to just keep your
space in line and hopefully Ican sell you $100 a year in
services on top of your domainname, and that's where I want to

(51:20):
make the money.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
So I'm trying to shift how the industry makes
money, in addition to adding newtechnology, because I think
that's going to be much moredisruptive have you ever had the
conversation with um like appleregarding safari or google
regarding chrome or firefox,regarding apple regarding safari

(51:43):
or google regarding chrome orfirefox regarding their browser,
and asking them to resolve some?

Speaker 2 (51:47):
of your tlds.
And what?
What do they say?
Yeah, so we've talked to um.

Speaker 1 (51:50):
Well, I mean, I don't want to say all, there's like
100 browsers, but we talked to alot of the main main ones, like
if you pulled chrome, Iunderstand that would legitimize
a hundred percent your businessand it would be that would
legitimize 100% your businessand it would be overnight and I
think ICANN would be shocked.
That would be a pretty majorthing.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
And everybody knows that.
That's how com got in.
Everybody knows that com paid.
What was it Mindspring orwhatever?
What was it Netscape?
Was it Netscape?
I think it was Netscape.
Everyone knows com gaveNetscape 1% of their company
back in 1992, or whatever it was, in order for them to resolve
com in the browser, and that'show Netscape got in right.

(52:29):
That's how com happened.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
I didn't know that.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
Oh, wow, yeah, that's how that works.
So, like BearSign, that's howthey got in.
Business was by making thosepartnership agreements.
So we think that's totally aviable path to, uh, global
acceptance, acceptance for ourweb3 domain names, like we think
it is.
However, we also think thatpeople are going to defer to I

(52:52):
can't and um, and that's wherethey're going to stay, at least
for the next three or four years, right, and they're not going
to try to pick a market winnerin this space.
Now, some of the browsers thatare smaller are willing to go
ahead and resolve Web3 domainnames.
So Opera Brave and Opera are tooright, and so some browsers are
willing to take that the bigones that are owned by the

(53:14):
slower moving companies.
We don't think they're going tomake that move.
I just think they're going towait till after the next round
of ICANN auctions.
So Web3 domain names, in termsof global acceptance, are going
to be on hold until the industrydevelops more.
That's yeah, that's my.
I mean, I would love it to beotherwise and you know we love

(53:35):
those teams and think they dogreat work, you know, at Firebox
and at Google Chrome and atSafari, but we're just not a
priority.
All those companies are doingright now is investing in AI.
Everyone knows what's happeningat Google Domains, and that's
because the entire company'sfocus is on AI.
I just think we're outside ofthe window of being important

(53:57):
enough to care about in thedomains industry, which is a
blessing and a curse.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
Do you think that if a company like Chrome that
doesn't just cater to peoplelike more tech, people who are
more tech savvy like you or I,since it caters to the masses,
allowing Web3 domain extensionson there with the possibility of
collisions would potentiallycreate more headaches for them

(54:24):
than benefit?
Do you think that's apossibility when they look at it
?

Speaker 2 (54:29):
I don't think that's their consideration at all.
No, yeah, no.
First of all, I think theirprimary consideration is they
just don't care enough about themarket, right yeah?

Speaker 1 (54:39):
But do you think they're going to make more money
by adding you?
That's another question.
Does it really benefit theirbusiness?

Speaker 2 (54:44):
I don't think that well.
So you're talking aboutbusiness.
I mean, google is just a verystrange case, so it's easy to
talk about.
They don't care about abusiness unless it can do a
hundred million a year sorry, ahundred billion a year in
revenue no-transcript.

Speaker 1 (55:31):
And then you have some of these other major
players.
Yeah, I think they're probablyall probably thinking the same
thing.
So let me ask you this.
I'm a domain broker.
I need to ask a selfishquestion here.
You know, from time to time wedo have people that have asked
us about some of your names.
How the hell do we contact theregistrants?

Speaker 2 (55:50):
Ah, great question.
So there's a.
Well, there's a couple ofthings right.
So if it's a brand throughbrand protection, right Then,
like we're, that's where we'respending most of our effort in
order to try to place right.
So if it's a brand looking forbrand protection and they want
to contact a registrant, I wouldadvise them to go through our

(56:11):
like, like our brands programand that's linked on our website
, and then we actually gothrough the effort of trying to
track down the owner in thecases where we can.
For just you're trying toregister a domain in general,
expect to see that contactinformation displayed more
prominently on marketplaces overthe next year or two, and I'll

(56:34):
tell you it's because the peoplewho own them currently actually
want the exposure, and so it'sjust right.
Now there's not goodmarketplaces for Web3 domain
names.
We're trying to change thatthis year and we're talking to
all the major marketplaceplayers and we're also providing
more information inside of ourmetadata on our APIs, and so,

(56:56):
for instance, in our metadataand our APIs, we now display
registration price right, solike, just as an and like we're
looking to display registrantcontact information too, right,
and so, like we have to checkthe price.
We have to re-ask our users toenter in their information so
that they can consent to havingit publicly displayed, right?
But we want to surface that.
So, basically, who is for Web3,we do think that we will.

(57:19):
We do think that we will getthere.

Speaker 1 (57:21):
But there isn't a like.
I can't just search a domainname, click a button and then I
just put in my own email addressand a message and it sends them
that that doesn't exist.

Speaker 2 (57:30):
So what we?
It does not, because thesethings do not come default
enabled with an email address,but we recently default enabled
them with a messaging inbox.
So we actually attached a webfree messaging service to the
domain names.
Again, we're thinking aboutthese as consumer endpoints, so
like if you buy a domain nameand then people send you crypto,
they probably want to be ableto message you right to talk

(57:51):
about the crypto.
They're just like hey, I justsent you the money, did you get
it right?
So 100 of our domain names,when you configure them, come
with a messaging service rightso like we actually have
messaging built in.
Um, I think messaging is goingto be how you contact people, as
opposed to email for web3,because it's much more consumer
product.
Like, a lot of consumers don'teven check email anymore, like
gen z, they just don't even lookat their email inbox.

(58:12):
If it's not work, uh, and soyou know, you've got to hit them
up where the message displaysin one of their messaging apps
right on their phone, and somessaging, I think, is probably
going to happen.
Messaging and marketplaces sothe combination of marketplace
features, messaging and thengetting our users to include
their opt into having theircontact information displayed on

(58:34):
their listings and then in ourAPI, are areas we're trying to
make that better.
But I know that's bad right nowor areas.

Speaker 1 (58:41):
We're trying to make that better, but I know that's
bad right now.
And then when I worked atUniregistry with Registrar we
had millions of names therethere was a gentleman that
handled abuse and before Iworked for Uniregistry I never
really realized how much abusethere really is.
So you would see, we would havelaw enforcement calling, we
would have whatever, some reallygnarly stuff that people put up

(59:01):
and we would take it down allthe above.
He would go through this everyday and I wouldn't want his job.
So when there is an abuse callfrom somebody saying there's
something, whether it's atrademark infringement or
illegal activity, or someoneasking you about whose wallet is
this right, it's on this namewhat do you do and how does that

(59:22):
work?

Speaker 2 (59:23):
So we have a pretty complex abuse system right now,
right.
So, we're plugged in.
If someone registers inabusivecom, we're inside of that
system now.
So we get the email that sayslike hey, this is abuse, need to
take this thing down right.
So we're already set up.
We're set up to be a registrar,you know, pending a few things.
So we have those systems inplace.

(59:44):
For the typical like dot comtype stuff Abuse takedowns.
We're integrating that into oursystem.
Right now we have the abilityfor brands to flag things as
abuse, like I was talking aboutearlier that we're hoping to
expand out through our APIs sothat we'll also be able to flag
them when people go to thosewebsites.
So that's not a takedown, butthat is a flag on those domain

(01:00:06):
names and then on our supportteam they actually have abuse
email reporting and so thosethings come into the support
team, they get manually reviewedand then the support team flags
something as abuse and weactually had one this morning.
So I just talked about this.

Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
So it's every day right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
So every day there's abuse and it came up on the
standup and you know we had todecide how we're going to handle
this and we basically flag theminternally, email the owner,
say, hey, can you respond tothis abuse claim?
And then you know it's on, it'sbeen, we'll.
We'll basically put it into apause state while we hear back
from the owner, right, and thenwe resolve it like you would

(01:00:46):
typically do it with ICANN.
So we're trying to replicate asmany of the processes as we can.
The biggest difference withWeb3 is that someone buys a
domain name and puts it in theirwallet and then runs away with
it Right now in the systembecause they're not ICANN
compliant.
There's nothing we can do aboutthat, but once we move the
domain names to be ICANNcompliant, we will have systems

(01:01:08):
in place in order to make surethat we can trace those out for
individuals.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
So you'll be ready to .
So technically you can't takethose names down.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
So we do take them.
What do you mean by take down?
So we do take them.
What do you mean by take down?
So we do take them down fromour APIs and we do take them
down from resolution inside ofour libraries.
Now the record of thatblockchain existing on chain
will be there, but that's also athing that could change in the
future.
So if some of these things wantto upgrade into ICANN
compliance, then thoseextensions on a per TLD basis

(01:01:43):
that are integrated into ICANNwill follow ICANN rules for
takedowns.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
And so.

Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
Ensaful Domains has always been very clear about
this.
We will follow all regulationsin the jurisdictions in which we
reside.
You know we're a UnitedStates-based company and, yes,
ensaful Domains still has, youknow, complete control over our
suite of smart contracts and wedo upgrades so and some of our
legacy stuff is locked right andthen when we upgrade our

(01:02:10):
contracts, we make we makechanges on the rule set.
That's happening and right nowwe're in the process of adding
upgrades for com domains,because we have com domains
names on our site right now andcom has a different set of rules
and so when we tokenize comdomain names on chain, they will
be 100% I can't comply.
So we have a registry system,we're adding com TLD.

(01:02:33):
That TLD will have a differentset of rules than what we have
for x, .888, eth, right.
So it's going to have its ownrule set and that will include
for com, and no one should besurprised.
You can, that on-chain domainname for com will 100% be
revocable, right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:50):
Got it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
So people who think that just because something is
on-chain does not mean it.
You can have on-chain systemsthat follow 100% of all the
regulatory rules.
And yeah, just another examplein the space is Circle.
They have USDC coin.
And inside of Circle smartcontracts for USDC coin.
They have an administrativepause function.
So if someone sends USDC cointo a terrorist group they can

(01:03:14):
pause it right and that's tofollow the money laundering and
other terrorists you know.
So same exact, very similarconcept here is going to be
applied by a subtle domains,forcom, and then any web free
registries that we work sorry,web two registries that we work
with to be on chain 100%compliant.
That's what I'm trying to saythere's this misperception in

(01:03:34):
the industry that because youput something on chain, it can't
be compliant, and that is wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
And we're going to make sure that whatever we make
will be 100% compliant on chain.
And then one of my lastquestions I have for you what
really separates you from theENS guys?
I know they just have eth andthat's it.
So what else other than moreselection and I believe they can
only do wallet with Ethereum,but you offer money, different
currencies, with your wallet.
What are some of the otherthings that you offer?

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
Yeah, so I mean, they're one of our competitors
in the space.
They have a lot of support fromthe Ethereum community and the
Ethereum Foundation itself,which has been very helpful for
them.
Like we've both been innovating, so ensemble domains was the
first one to do multi-chain.
It's like supporting all thedifferent, like dot, you know,
sorry, supporting bitcoin andand litecoin and ethereum and

(01:04:27):
solana all to the same address,right?
Um, we were.
We moved to a cheaper blockchain, so we're on a it, an L they
call themselves a layer two andthat means that our transactions
are much, much cheaper.
So if you try to register a edomain name, you may pay $50 in
gas costs, plus the $5 for thegas for the registration itself.

(01:04:48):
So you're paying, you know, 10times more.
And for us, we actually coverthe gas fees for the
registration of ours because wemoved to a cheaper blockchain.
Us, we actually cover the gasfees for the registration of
ours because we moved to acheaper blockchain.
I think we're also currently inmore applications on the long
tail, so we have like over athousand plus integrations.
They have fewer, but they arein some of the larger Ethereum

(01:05:09):
based applications, but as someof these other blockchains
become more important this year.
You know we're continuing togrow, so it's just kind of like
a different strategy forgo-to-market and growth.
And let me think if there'sanything else.
Oh, and this is probably a bigone, eth does not have a path to

(01:05:29):
integrating with ICANN becauseit's a reserved geographic
domain name for Ethiopia, right,and so there is no path forward
for eth to get acceptance intothe global namespace community.
So eth uh, and I think NickJohnson's even posted about this
they're going to remain a uhusername system for web three,

(01:05:49):
whereas unstoppable domains ispursuing aggressively giving um,
I, I can integration over thenext five plus years for our
plus years for the TLDs that canbe compatible.
So that's maybe another big onefor domainers.
It's like e does not have apath forward in the next UTLT
auction round to resolve inChrome browsers and crypto does

(01:06:13):
right, and so I think that's apretty big differentiator there
for us.

Speaker 1 (01:06:17):
So yeah, do you think that the ENS guys can can go
and lobby Ethiopia for them tothen Ethiopia to say we want to
start using our extension now orthey don't allow three letter.
Do they not allow?
I think they don't.
Do they not allow three lettercountry code?
Is that why I think they don'tdo they?
Not allow three letter countrycode.
Is that why I?

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
think it's been deprecated, but I mean
absolutely.
I think that community has likea 10 year plus path, right, If
they were to get started todayand move in that direction.
But the leadership over therehas said that they're not
interested, right?
So they don't think it's anecessary step for them and we
just take a different take.
We, you know, we basicallydecided hey, we do need to work

(01:06:57):
with ICANN and move theseforward.
So you can see, on our website,like we now clearly delineate.
These are web three only.
You know, .888, x go becausethey are outside of the what's
going to be acceptable in thenext GTLT round.
And then you know around andthen dot crypto and the others
that we think are going to makeit.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
Absolutely so.
What else are you guys workingon?
These days?
Sounds like you got a lot ofstuff, but are there any other
bells and whistles that you'dlike to tell our listeners about
?
And about more about yourcompany, rather than me
hammering you with questions?

Speaker 2 (01:07:28):
Yeah.
What's different about Web3 forour domainers?
Maybe so yeah, wallets isdifferent, the types of domains
that people want to register aregoing to be different, the way
that marketplaces are going towork for domain names in the
future is going to be differentand I think, lending is going to
be different.
So, for people who love domainsand you want to stay on the

(01:07:49):
cutting edge of domains, thoseare the things that clue in with
Web3.
I mean, those four areas Ithink are going to transform the
industry over the next five to10 years.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
So let's talk about briefly.
You brought up not just use ofwallets, but you also brought up
game name tags, right, andthat's something that people
definitely keep throughout there.
I mean, I still when I log intomy PlayStation I have mine from
when I was a kid.
I'm not going to tell peoplewhat my name was, but you know
that's like my username ondifferent accounts and I think

(01:08:20):
as gaming gets more and morepopular part of fabric of
society, you know that namebecomes important.
So that's one thing right.
What else is there?

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
Yeah.
So all right, let's dive in.
So, first of all, I think let'sjust tackle, let's just take it
from the top.
So wallets I think, first ofall, when you check out with a
domain name in the future, likewhen you check out right now,
most people add a website right.
They're like I want a Wix to gowith my, with my web, with my
domain purchase and what we'resaying at Unstoppable Domains.

(01:08:49):
When you check out in the future, there's going to be a good
portion of people.
There's going to be a goodportion of people and it may be
90% of people buying a domainname who are going to want to
add a wallet.
And why do I say it's going tobe 90%?
It's because there are 500million people using crypto
right now.
That number has grown 10x inthe past five years and if it
grows 10x again over the next 10years, that means we're going

(01:09:11):
to have 5 billion people usingcrypto wallets.
Every single one of thosewallets is going to want to have
a domain name to make it easierto receive cryptocurrency.
And so that means, if I'm right, and we're really going to have
5 billion consumers who aregoing to want to own a domain
name for their wallet.
That's going to 10x the size ofthe industry, and that also
means that in the future, 90% ofall registrations for domain

(01:09:34):
names are not going to be forbusinesses, and this is the
thing that domainers need tothink about, like you need to
think about this.
Is you know?
Is this guy potentially rightthat 90% of domain name
registrations in the futurecould be consumer instead of
business, right?
So what does that change?
Well, that changes the game forregistrars, because if 90% of
people checking out are nolonger buying a website, they're

(01:09:55):
buying a wallet.
They need to start working ASAPwith unstoppable domains right
To get a wallet product, becausewe have one and we have a buy
API and you can buy it from usand we can make it super easy
for you to integrate that intoyour product.
So that changed the wholecheckout experience, because
most people are buying domainsfor wallet addresses as opposed
to being a business, so there'sa different type of products
that's going to be sold when youcheck out.

(01:10:15):
What else does that change?
The type of domain that youregister you just mentioned.
You have a username that youuse on Xbox, or maybe use it on
steam or whatever.
That looks a lot different thana domain name for a business.
When I'm registering a domainname for a business I want to
have, like Decatur pizzacom,because people who are shopping
for pizza in Decatur.
I want to be able to targetthose people to get them to my

(01:10:37):
website.
But if you want to have adomain name for your personal
identity online, when you're onyour social apps, on social
media, inside of games andpeople sending you money that
looks like I don't know if Ilike it your name's like Twinkie
the Kid.
Yeah, yeah know, I don't know ifI like your name's like twinkie
the kid, yeah, yeah yeah, it'slike, and it's also like, uh,

(01:10:58):
you know, uh, the I might gowith like gold bond 007, right,
because my last name's ghoul,right.
And and that also looks verydifferent because you know, if
you look on gamer tags, peopleuse alphanumeric, right.
And if you talk to a domainerright now and you say, are
alphanumeric domains worthanything?
Most of them like, if I tellyou I, and you say, are
alphanumeric domains worthanything?
If I tell you I have aneight-character-plus

(01:11:20):
alphanumeric domain name, I wantyou to broker it for me for
sale.
You would say it's worth zero,I'm not going to broker it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:27):
Probably not.

Speaker 2 (01:11:28):
I wouldn't really be that interested in it Exactly,
but some of these famousYouTubers have handles that are
eight characters that arealphanumeric, and how much do
you think you know?
How much is that worthbrokering?
That might actually be worthsomething.
Yeah, and so you're going tohave a lot of unused real estate
that exists right now in domainland.
It's all of a sudden going tobecome useful, right.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
I think the thing is, though, when you get down to
the consumer, it's hard to get apremium out of them.
Is that, when you get down tothe consumer, it's hard to get a
premium out of them, you know,and it's hard to get them to pay
, like what you're asking for onyour, on your, on your
unstoppable domains, is isreasonable.
Yeah, once you start gettinginto the thousands of dollars
and that's where you know a umdomainer is making their margins
they got to be selling namesfor at least a thousand bucks.

(01:12:10):
Well, and then it doesn't work,I think think you're wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:12:16):
We have sold domain names to customers for
six-figure sums that are theirrepresentations online and
there's so many moreregistrations, right, like, if
I'm I mean I'm not sayingthere's, I mean this is the
thing that I'm saying that isridiculous, right, like, that is
really out there is that we'regoing to have 3 billion new

(01:12:37):
registrations.
So you know, like 3 billionplus, like we're going to 10
exercise in the market.
So I think, if we're going tohave 3 billion plus
registrations, there's going tobe somebody who wants to have
the number one, two, three, dot,whatever, and they're going to
be willing to pay a milliondollars for that because you

(01:13:00):
know, know, people pay a milliondollars for that license plate.
Oh, I agree, definitely, yeah,and I think, and I think that,
because the volume is going tobe so high, you're going to have
more of those than you think.
So there may be less forconsumers, but there's so many
more consumers, if that makessense.

Speaker 1 (01:13:09):
Um, because, yeah, that's, that would be my counter
to that so, with your, withyour connections in the crypto
community and your knowledgefrom the crypto, which you've
obviously exemplified here.
And talking about your past,have you ever considered
tokenizing unstoppable domains?

Speaker 2 (01:13:25):
Absolutely, Absolutely.
And the thing is, when Istarted the business, I actually
said I think we're going tohave regulatory clarity within
five years, Right, and then it'sgoing to be very easy for me to
make that decision.
It's been six years and westill have nothing, Right.
So you know our advice.
Our advice has always been likejust play the long game, Right.

(01:13:50):
So like, however long it takes,we'll play the long game and
then if you see what coinbase isdoing, I think you know that's
probably you know leadership inthe space right now for how you
go about it and you'll recognizethat coinbase is ipo.
But they also have a blockchain, now called base chain.
Maybe you're not aware andthat's okay.

(01:14:11):
Well, they actually have theirown blockchain now and it seems
pretty clear to me that there'sa path towards tokenization for
Coinbase using this model.
And we're lucky in UnstoppableDomains because Coinbase was
started in 2013.
We were officially founded in2018.
So Coinbase is five years aheadof us on this path and we can
watch how they're going with it,right?
So, in terms of like, whenUnstoppable Domains would be

(01:14:31):
looking at something like aftercoinbase goes through it and
gets all the regulatory claritydone, you know, and coinbase
tokenizes, which I think isinevitable at some point in the
future.
Maybe I'm wrong 90 chance, right?
Um, that'll give a really goodexample of how to build your
business.
And the other thing is, if youtokenize too early and you and
you create the incentivestructure that's incorrect for

(01:14:52):
your business, then then you canget stuck right and you can
have, like a bad design, thewrong economic incentives, and
then you also have regulatoryproblems.
So we thought about it a lot.
There's a lot of interestingways to do it.
We continue to think about it.
You know.
We consistently check in andsay like it's now the time,
what's the right design, andI'll tell you that the thinking

(01:15:13):
around it has changed probablyevery six months for the past
six years and it's gotten better.
So you know, as we think abouthow we might roll something like
that out, but yeah, not in arush to do it.
you know no plans to do, noplans to do a token out of today
, but constantly researching itand you know, I think it could

(01:15:34):
be very interesting for a lot ofreasons.
So, and I can't, you know, asfar as I would want to do it in
a way that would help thedevelopment of the industry,
right so, and it would belegally compliant, and I think
that that is possible.
But no rush to get there.
There's plenty of things tobuild between now and then.

Speaker 1 (01:15:52):
Got it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
All right.
So now let's talk quick aboutlending, and we can, we'll wrap
this baby up.
Lending yeah, this one'sactually pretty easy, but might
not be obvious is we're in thedigital real estate business,
right, and there is no mortgagelender, right, and I think the
reason why there's no mortgagelender for digital real estate
is that we don't have reallygood marketplaces and settlement
right, which causes too muchfriction.
So, like, when you're trying tobuy and sell something, you're a

(01:16:22):
domain broker yourself, it canbe a lot of hassle to kind of
get these things closed.
We move everything on chain formarketplaces, settlement
transfer, verified ownershipthen I think we're going to be
in a much better position forlenders to come in and provide
more liquidity to the domainname industry, and I think we're
seeing that growth and soUnstoppable Domains is in a

(01:16:44):
really neat place, because weare at the intersection of the
crypto industry and the domainname industry, and if you know
anything about crypto, they'rereally good about finance right
and so we think there's a verygood path for us to help bring
liquidity into the domain nameindustry through lending over
the next let's call it two yearsand you'll see us start

(01:17:04):
experimenting with that in thefuture.

Speaker 1 (01:17:05):
And just so people know the numbers.

Speaker 2 (01:17:07):
Nft Finance, which is a brand new industry didn't
exist three years ago has grownfrom a less than $10 million a
year business three years ago tothey did over 100, sorry, they
did over 1 billion inoriginations in 2023.
And I suspect they will do over10 billion originations in 2024
.
Now, that's aggressive.
Maybe they only do five, butI'm telling you the market is

(01:17:29):
growing really fast for on-chainlending.

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):
What's the name of the company?

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
Oh no, there's not just one.

Speaker 1 (01:17:35):
There's a whole segment of the whole sector.

Speaker 2 (01:17:37):
Nft finance is like the sector, growing super fast.
My only comparable here wouldbe if you go look at stable
points, you know there was athere was in the last cycle
before 2021, less than there'sonly a couple of billion of
stable points and then all of asudden you saw it grow to over
100 billion stable points inlike three years and I think
that NFT finance may be that forthis cycle.

(01:18:01):
So we could see that inflectionof sub-billion dollars in
lending.
Now lending is different thanstable coins.
The notional value of loans issignificantly higher than the
actual refinancing, but I thinkyou could see a huge, tremendous
volume growth in lendingon-chain over the next three
years, which I think might catchpeople off guard and we want to

(01:18:21):
bring that to the domainindustry right.
So that's one of the thingsthat we are actively researching
and we're going to try to putall the things in place so that
we can do that in a compliantmanner.

Speaker 1 (01:18:31):
Got it.
So when I worked at Uniregistry, part of that was representing
Frank Schilling's portfolio of350,000 names.
So in essence we created apayment plan system and he was
the lender right and because heowned the names outright and
because we collected thepayments and held the name, you

(01:18:55):
know, and the risks weren't veryhigh.
The biggest, the biggestproblem was is that on these
smaller deals where you wouldsay you can start using a name
for you know, little to no moneydown, meaning like a hundred
bucks or two hundred dollars amonth or something like that,
very similar to you see in thecheckouts, like buy this t-shirt
today from a firm for threedollars a month, um, we would

(01:19:23):
find that after the, the defaultrates on the lower end names
were almost 50 percent.
You know these people wouldmake two or three payments and
then that dream they had orwhatever it was, there would be
a very small company like I'mjust example atlantatowingcom
would be some guy that got toldat the bar that he needed to get
a towing name for his businessand so he got that and didn't do
shit with it for three monthsand then he just lets it go.

(01:19:44):
You know there are lenders inthis business, one being Domain
Capital.
But you know, I think that they.
I think the problem is on a lotof these lower valued names.
It's very hard for a lender whoends up holding the bag to get
their money back in a reasonableamount of time.
And I can sit here and I cansay Atlanta Towing is a $5,000

(01:20:06):
name or $7,000 name, but youmight wait three years to get
your money back versus otherplaces, and if you liquidate it
in an auction, like onNameJetter, at GoDaddy or
Expirey Auction or whatever,that name's going to sell for
$150 or $200.
It's not like selling carswhere you know what you're going

(01:20:27):
to get and you can base it.
I mean, these people are goingto really take some baths on
that.
So how do you see that working?

Speaker 2 (01:20:35):
Well, a couple of things.
My research that I've done isbasically, if you're in the
under $50,000 domain name valuemarket, it's very hard to get
liquidity.
I think we can agree.
When I was doing it, I actuallythink it's a very big
opportunity for someone likeusolvable Domains, because what

(01:20:57):
we're going to do is automate it, so it's basically a
click-through flow for beingable to lend out your domain
names, collect payments and thenalso repossess them.
And so my basic theory is thetransaction cost is too high for
giving the domain back and allthis other kind of stuff for
giving the domain back and allthat kind of stuff.
And so if we can just bringthat transaction cost down to

(01:21:18):
essentially like 20 bucks, thenall of a sudden I think it makes
sense.
And so what you're describingto me is like oh, I have to talk
to the guy and then he wouldrent the domain for three months
and then he would default.
I view that in the future as amarketplace feature click, click
, click.
I'm now renting this thing.
If I miss a payment, boom, itgets automatically revoked and
sent back to the other guy.
Like that's how I view thefuture of this happening.

Speaker 1 (01:21:40):
But you're not thinking of some bank coming in
and paying that seller thepurchase price when they put it
up.
That's not what you're thinkingabout.
You're thinking you're payingthis guy as the money comes in,
right?

Speaker 2 (01:21:51):
Well, so there's a couple of things here, right,
that you were talking about,essentially lease to own, I
think.

Speaker 1 (01:21:57):
Yeah, anywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:21:58):
So that's one of those things is lease to own.
But then there's also a marketaround like just straight up
borrow, and I think that thatmarket can also be satisfied by
reducing the transaction costs Ireally do and also a little bit
more legwork on automatedappraisals, which you'll see us

(01:22:20):
do as well.
So I think the appraisalbusiness is not great right now
in domain names and everyoneknows that If you try to do
automated appraisals on domainswith a hundred names, like a lot
of the prices would bedifferent than what you know
no-transcript, like a lot of theprices would be different than
what someone more experiencedwould give you.
And then that combined with thetransaction costs of making

(01:22:41):
these things work.
So I think if we can bring thetransaction costs way down, it's
super simple.
So that'll make it easier forus to experiment on lending.
And then we will be workingvigorously on automated
appraisal, valuation and otherways to kind of get like a cash
price for these.
That'll make it easier forpeople to take loans Exactly
what you're talking about.
So, yeah, I do think thatpeople will eventually lend

(01:23:02):
money against domain names oncethey feel more stable about the
valuations in the market and thetime to sell.

Speaker 1 (01:23:10):
Yeah, I mean, hey, the credit card companies have
made it work for years withoutsecuring anything really except
for your credit.
So, yeah, there's definitely apossibility there.
Um, that's interesting, youknow, I mean for me and and as a
business and a business ownerand a broker, and and seeing all
these different ways ofhandling it where we've had
buyers go to domain capital andborrow money to buy the name.

(01:23:30):
We have, you know, deals thatare in escrowcom or with other
escrow companies, that ourpayment plans are happening, and
you know it, it makes sense,and a lot of the times people
have nothing but the bestintentions to use the name and
go out there and make a businesshappen and sometimes it just
doesn't work out, or you know,um, or it does and they keep

(01:23:52):
paying.
So, you know, I think it'sgreat and when I first got in
the business, payment plans werekind of frowned upon and
they're like people alwaysgroaned and you'd always have to
ask do you want to do a paymentplan?
They can pay you what you want,but you have to wait two years
while they pay you and they'd belike, oh, I don't do that, you
know.
But now people are a lot moreopen to that, and it's a setting
that is available on differentmarketplaces so cool.

(01:24:14):
Well, I think that coverseverything.
Today I've learned a ton aboutyour business and I think a lot
differently than I did aftertalking to you in Puerto Rico
and now today, and it's beengreat to get to know you better,
and I hope that people listento all of this and hear about
how invested you are in this,because one of the things I said
to other people was what's theguarantee that these extensions

(01:24:38):
around 10 years from now, if Iwere to build a business on it
or use it regularly or spend amaterial amount of money on a
name, and people just say Idon't know?
But now, obviously you're inthis for the long haul.
You have big plans.
You know you're investing yourlife and your time into this.
You're obviously verypassionate and you're public
about it.
I think those are all thingsthat people were hesitant about

(01:24:59):
before meeting you.
Right, and hopefully at leasthearing this and they haven't
met you in person that they cancome into this more of an open
mind if they have some extramoney to invest in these
extensions and see what you cando with it.
I think it's a pretty excitingthing.

Speaker 2 (01:25:13):
So thank you.
I appreciate that and I knowthat what we're doing is new and
different, carries a lot ofrisks.
We can't offer any guaranteesaround things or where they're
going in the future, especiallywith the TLDs, but I do think
that our thesis around what'sgoing to happen in the domain
industry is going to come true.
I think people will use domainsas wallets.

(01:25:34):
I think that the types ofdomain real estate that people
use as a consumer is going to bedifferent.
I think that you're going tohave much better on-chain
marketplaces and lending in thefuture and all these things are
just huge opportunities for theindustry because it would grow
the industry to be at least 10times larger and that's like a
very strange thing to say Likethe market's going to be 10

(01:25:55):
times larger and that's like avery strange thing to say like a
market's going to be 10 timeslarger and that's really hard
for domains people to getbecause it's been the same
industry for 30 years and now,all of a sudden, you know if
consumers come in here andhonestly, as a domains industry,
we should encourage it, right.
So I'm talking to registriesright now and I'm talking to
registrars right now.
I'm like guys, you should tellconsumers they want to use
domains as crypto walletaddresses, right, you should be

(01:26:16):
telling them that, the same waythat you market, like, if you go
to any of these big registrars,like, get a website and launch
your brand and launch your smallbusiness or whatever, you know
it's going to take people in theindustry to start telling
people, hey, you know, get adomain name and connect your
crypto wallet to it, and thedomain industry can actually be
one of the points of entry forpeople to start getting into
digital currency, right, andgetting on chain.

(01:26:38):
And, you know, instead ofseeing this as a potential
threat to the industry, let'sfigure out our differences and,
and, you know, let's talk toeach other, let's start having
conversations, let's try toresolve the conflicts where
possible and then, you know,let's look at the opportunity
together and, and, like, I thinkit's's pretty big.
So that'd be my message topeople out in the domains world
um, and we're open for businessand would love to talk to you

(01:27:00):
and we're very open-minded andwe've already pivoted our
business model several times.
Like you heard us on, you heardme on this thing.
It's like we originally wentweb three only now we definitely
want to integrate with web two.
We're committed there.
Um, we we were.
We're want to be 100 complianton the TLDs.
Now We've made some huge pivotsin the business because we're
here to make it successful andwe're pretty pragmatic about

(01:27:23):
that.

Speaker 1 (01:27:24):
How many people work for you now.

Speaker 2 (01:27:27):
We're in the 37.
You're a real company.

Speaker 1 (01:27:34):
40 people is a lot of people to be working at a
company.
That's a lot of payroll everymonth.
It's a lot of investment.
It's a lot of differentdepartments and people doing a
lot of work.
That's great.

Speaker 2 (01:27:43):
Yeah, and I think we're the.
I think that the team is thebest in the business when it
comes to Web3 domains.
We have some really talentedindividuals.
They're really putting in hardwork just across the whole
spectrum, right.
So we've got the whole thingand we're full press on this
over the next couple years andwe know the domain industry is a
, you know, long-term businessand we have the ability to see

(01:28:05):
it through long term and I thinkI love it.
I love being in a nicheindustry.
They're like why domain namesyou know that's so much more
boring compared to launching acrypto exchange or whatever and
like I've always believed thatthe riches are in the niches,
right.

Speaker 1 (01:28:18):
They are.

Speaker 2 (01:28:18):
And you want to be.
You know, I always remember thestories like the garbage
collection company, wasteManagement or whatever they're
like a $20 billion companybecause no one wants to do
garbage collection right.

Speaker 1 (01:28:29):
It's not glamorous.

Speaker 2 (01:28:30):
Right, exactly, and the domains industry has that
same thing, where it's notglamorous to be in the domains
industry but everyone's ignoringthis thing, and I think there's
a big change here that's goingto grow the industry
substantially.
So, you know, that's why I loveshowing up to work and working
on crypto domains, as opposed toworking on crypto DeFi exchange
something crazy, because thatworld is nuts, like the crypto

(01:28:53):
industry is absolutely.
It moves so fast.
It changes every 30 days orsomething completely new.
We just consistently work ondomain names over time and we
can invest here for a 10 yearperiod.
That's much better.
Maybe I'm just old I turned 40,right, I've got a kid now.
So, like, maybe it's just me.
Getting old is the biggestchange.
But, honestly, like, I lovethis business compared to

(01:29:18):
anything else that I could bedoing, and I think it's the best
business for me to be workingon inside of crypto and I'm here
to learn more about the domainindustry and bring, as an
outsider, some of this new techhere, because I think it's going
to help grow the opportunityspace for everybody.

Speaker 1 (01:29:31):
Sounds great.
Thanks again.
I appreciate your time.
I'm sure everyone else will too, and good luck, thank you sir.

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