Is Domaining Dead?: Auctions, Digital Identity, and the Crypto Community

Embark on an insightful odyssey into the evolving landscape of Web3 domains and digital identity with our special guests ULabs and Crypto Reporter. This episode delves into the pulsating heart of the industry, where bullish crypto trends meet the innovative spirit of NamesCon. We introduce our second premium tokenized DNS domain auction, building upon the momentum of its predecessor and elevating the domain game to unparalleled heights. With anecdotes from ULabs’ vibrant crypto encounters en route to Texas, the episode paints a vivid picture of the thriving scene that awaits us.

As pioneers in the realm of blockchain domain auctions with GBM, we take pride in our role in shaping the legacy of the digital age. We explore the transformative impact these auctions have on the domain and finance sectors, discussing the shift from mere speculation to the construction of lasting value. The narrative of this journey from the early days of Web 1 and 2 to the dawn of Web 3 unveils the ever-increasing stature of digital assets, stirring the entrepreneurial and creative spirits that thrive on innovation. This episode is a rally call to those ready to embrace the opportunities digital assets present and a reflection of the domain space's exhilarating evolution.

Rounding out our discussion, we highlight the essence of digital identity in the crypto sphere, sharing  our anticipation for the upcoming Consensus event and illustrating the importance of networking for domainers. From personal tales to the broader vision of integrating domains into mainstream platforms, we celebrate the visionaries who have carved the path for this digital renaissance. The future of domains in Web3, the value of community and collaboration, and the significance of firsthand technology encounters at industry gatherings are all key themes we unwrap in this episode, designed to enlighten and inspire. Join us as we traverse this thrilling domain landscape, where innovation and identity converge.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

no-transcript. I was speaking to myself. I was on mute like this whole time. That's crazy, yeah. So yeah, anybody, if you want to come up to speak, please feel free to request a speaker role. It's going to be a really informal space. Can y'all even hear me? Yeah, so yeah, I wanted to host a space prior to heading out for the next couple of weeks to consensus and names kind of thing. As I said in another space, it's going to be pretty hectic, booked up with a lot of stuff to do. So, yeah, before we get started, I want to say what's up to my guests on the stage. How are you doing? Ulabs and Crypto Reporter.

Speaker 2: 5:28

How are you doing ULabs and Crypto Reporter.

Speaker 1: 5:36

Doing good man Doing good. A lot of good news in the space. Yeah, I'm excited. Yeah, it has been a little bullish this past couple days, couple weeks, couple months actually, For those who have been in the space for a while and have kind of zoomed out, we've been in a pretty good spot for a while. That just keeps getting better and better. So, yeah, and it's cool because I'm going to NamesCon right in the middle of this, so it'll be interesting to see some of the innovations that aren't being talked about yet or haven't even been released yet on crypto Twitter.

Speaker 3: 6:11

And yeah, how are you doing today, u labs? I'm doing well, king. I'm doing well, just uh. Passing through new mexico right now on my way to uh texas next and then florida, I saw you open up the space. I want to pop in show some support.

Speaker 1: 6:23

Oh yeah, I appreciate the love and I think you in and show some support. Oh yeah, I appreciate the love and I think you might be traveling a path that I've taken many a time If you come in through, like the El Paso area and all that. But, yeah, safe travels. That is probably the most boring stretch of highway that anybody could possibly drive. So, yeah, be sure to entertain yourself. I'll get you through some of it, a little bit of it.

Speaker 3: 6:48

Appreciate you G.

Speaker 1: 6:52

And, yeah, without further ado, like I said, I don't intend to keep you guys long. I actually wasn't even going to run a space just because there has been so much going on and had the space earlier with Frieden, but did want to put a little something out there. Like I said before, I'm gone for for a couple of weeks and I'm I'm kind of putting out, I'm preparing everybody for there to not be a tech talk next week, but never know, might might do one anyway, it just depends again on on how hectic it is out there. I remember during the Eve Denver I just didn't have a chance to even sit down, even though I had some of the media space booked up there. They had like a podcast studio and everything. I ended up having to miss that. So, yeah, I just want to prepare everybody for just cool tweets about what's going on, but maybe not a tech talk. But yeah, without further ado, let's jump into it.

Speaker 1: 7:42

For those who are just now tuning in, welcome to iHeart Domains and our Tech Talk spaces. This is where we discuss news, innovations, education, alpha and business development in the Web3 domain name and digital identity space. We are your number one platform to discover, learn, grow, build and trade Web3 domains and digital identity, with a focus on technology investing and education. As always, our Tech Talks are recorded and you can view our content archive at iHeartDomainscom and in podcast form on every major podcast player, including Apple or Spotify at techtalkhost. If you're just now coming into the space and if you haven't done so already, much appreciated if you could like and retweet. And also, again, very open space today. It can be super short or we can go the distance, just depending on who wants to come up on the stage. But feel free to request a speaker role if you want to come up and add anything. We're not talking about any specific subject. I do have a few random talking points, but yeah, whatever's trending to you right now that's on your mind, feel free to chat about it. One of the things I do want to pin or take your attention to, kind of before we get into some random stuff, is what I do have pinned at the top of the space.

Speaker 1: 9:05

So today I tweeted out and announced that we are going to be hosting our second premium tokenized DNS domain auction. So a couple months back, or about a month and a half or so I don't even remember how long it was ago I think it was just about a month or so ago we did our first tokenized DNS domain auction on base and what that means is I took Web2 domains from my portfolio, so some coms and some XYZs. I used a platform called Namefy to tokenize those domains and put them on base and then I auctioned those domains through our auction platform. So, yeah, that's what I did about a month or so ago and we're going to do that again. So that first time mainly was for Providence. Wanted to establish you know the process and establish ourselves, as you know, one of the people to innovate and bring that process to the forefront. And bring that process to the forefront, especially coming up to NamesCon to have some good talking points and at least be a fun conversation to have right. But coming up to now, this one put a little bit better domains in the auction. Wanted to take advantage of the time that I'll be out there at ConsenSys, especially with the countless number of people that I'll be speaking to.

Speaker 1: 10:25

So, yeah, this tokenized domain auction, if you're looking up at the top, is going to feature eight tokenized domain names. Those domain names are actually listed inside of the graphic, but I will outline them so that you will know them. Now we have Gilliganxyz, we have BitcoinLoansxyz, we have GrokAssistcom, we have AlexaNFTcom, gpthealthplancom, gpthealthcoachcom, bitcoinbaddycom, gpthealthcoachcom, bitcoinbaddycom and EtherVoyagecom. And just to clarify for anybody who wants to participate in this auction, even though these domains are tokenized and they are NFTs on base chain, again, these are Web2 demand names, so once you purchase them, you are able to then set records.

Speaker 1: 11:31

I don't know if forwarding is available yet, but you can transfer them right out to whatever registrar that you use to hold your regular Web2 domain names. But, yeah, you're able to use them as such. So they are both Web2 and Web3 incense. They can host your website content, email, all that good stuff. And in addition to that, because they are already tokenized and on chain, they also can be set using DNSSEC to work as ENS addresses. So good opportunity as well for those who are wanting to kind of experiment with that dual utility and, you know, start participating in what we believe is going to be a trend, which is a lot of people coming into the space and just adopting their existing, you know, web 2.0 digital identity into Web 3.0. Go for it. Crudor Report.

Speaker 2: 12:19

Yeah, just adding to that. I'm thinking that it was a lot of the early innovators and you've not discussed this early in the space, which was there's a lot of early innovators that were doing DNSSEC, and I was talking to Sean Murray, and Sean is actually one of the first people to do a tokenized or tokenize a DNS name Right and then be able to do a loan. Now it was a wash loan, but if anything, it was just experimenting with the tech Right, and so what it showed is, for the first time in history, we had the capability of not just tokenizing, had the capability of not just tokenizing but being able to get, take a domain name and then use it as a line of credit, and this has been done in the past. You know you had people like I know Todd said that at one point this was an option and then also Michael Seiger had done some financing of a name as well, and so we've seen that it's been done in the past. I'm thinking that, when it comes to people like NameFi and what they're doing, I'm thinking that across the board, even with, uh, godaddy as well the ability to use um dns sec or gasless dns sec, and so now you have any domain name, I'm talking any particular domain that you already have, whether dot com, dot, dot, org, dot, xyz has the ability of becoming a crypto wallet address now, and that that's just a step in the right direction, and so I think that it's just going to allow for more adoption and more use cases.

Speaker 1: 14:15

I do also want to take a moment to shout out Sean. It was cool. I actually was on the spaces with him earlier, got a chance to hear him, and his input with and I think we talked about that earlier.

Speaker 1: 14:27

I see exactly, you know kind of where his vision is and the possibility for what domains can do in the alternative lending space. Again, like he's saying, like a lot of people who are thinking about this kind of looking at it straight up don't really know how far this can go in different industries that they may not be exposed to, and the industry that I know that he's exposed to is a very good place and would extract a lot of value for being able to see these as an asset and loan against them. But I wanted to give him his flowers as well. You know that he was one of the first to tokenize a domain, did the loan on it. He was also one of the first to really start talking about bringing DNS names into ENS using DNSSEC, you know, a couple years ago, and was one of the inspirations behind me, you know, originally experimenting with it. You know our platform came into the space again on the registration side and a lot of the acquisitions that I did at the, you know, at the beginning of my investment journey were just really to protect the assets that I were using as TLD. So I bought a couple of DNS domains, trying to add some additional utility to the people who were buying you know the Web3 counterparts that didn't really have much utility at the moment, was able to use those. I bought the ID versions of two of the TLDs that are a flagship and was able to use those and bridge them into ENS and give them away. What I did is, anytime you registered, you know the Web3 version of either DeFi, wallet or Xtrain. You registered, you know the Web3 version of either DeFi, wallet or Xtrain. You got the ID version on ENS for free so that you were able to experience, you know kind of the best of Web3 naming and you know I give credit where credit's due. Ens domains resolve they work, they, you know they're very well integrated. So I wanted to provide that utility alongside the emerging utility that I believe you know clean Web3 TODs will begin to offer. So yeah, shouts out to him for that. And then that brings us, you know kind of now, to where we are.

Speaker 1: 16:32

These sparks. You know his loan or that loan isn't necessarily newsworthy. Will it make the front page? No. Will it change the world in and of itself? No, same as this domain auction, right, but these are the sparks that create these ideas and that might put someone like a Mike Siver that sees this from a distance, or, you know, an Andrew Rosner or someone like that that sees something like this from a distance and has the ability to take this a whole nother level and get the kind of adoption that we're just talking about right and putting out there seeds and this is where it starts. And so from that one little move he'd made I think we've probably talked about the loan that he's done at least 50 or 60 times on spaces all that seeds. And this is the same way with this tokenized domain auction. So again, I'm excited to be able to do this one more time before going out to NamesCon, have some good talking points and plant some more of those seeds.

Speaker 1: 17:32

And yeah, these are some pretty solid domains so and priced very well. The minimum bids on most of these, the highest minimum bid is 0.222 for Gilliganxyz, for obvious reasons. You know names especially Gilligan is a pretty popular name have a pretty good premium, but the rest are 0.1, 0.111. So very affordable entry point for the initial bids. If you're not already familiar with the way our auctions work, we partnered with GBM who built our auction DIA, one of the things that they are most known for is their gamified element. So biggest difference between that and a traditional auction only person that wins in the traditional auction is the person that bids the most and goes home with the prize. Here you win even if you lose. So if you are the first person to put that minimum bid out there and someone does outbid you, the gamification element pays you back a bounty or a rebate that is paid for by the person that outbid you. In this case we have set our gamification rewards to that max tier so that first person that gets outbid will win 10% of their cash back. So on a 0.1, you'll get 0.01 back, which is solid at 30, 35 bucks right now Not bad for losing and then you can always use it to reload and jump back in there if you're trying to win the domain.

Speaker 1: 18:53

We're going to run from Monday to Monday. So basically the entire duration that I'm out there at consensus and it will be starting at 10 o'clock. Am using ETH on base chain and it'll be starting at 10 o'clock. Am using ETH on base chain. Very easy to do. Done several spaces previous to now explaining exactly how the auction works. Anybody, if you really need me to go through it again. You can always hit me in the DM and I'll walk you through it. But really easy. You just need to get your ETH on base. Don't need any other token, any other currency. Yeah, sign in and go away. Gas is super cheap. Got any more questions? Anyone that's on stage? About the auction itself? We can move past that one.

Speaker 2: 19:39

Yeah, I got a question for you, man. This is a personal question.

Speaker 1: 19:48

Yeah, go for it.

Speaker 2: 19:50

How does it feel to be the first person to run an auction using domain names and GBM and doing this whole process? Because, yeah, I think that's a stepping stone man and I don't think we talk about that enough.

Speaker 1: 20:13

I'm proud for probably reasons that may differ slightly than people would assume, would assume. The pride just comes from getting this far with something. And when I say this far, like I said, it's not necessarily like I moved the mountains or something like that, but it's still. It's a moment that's cemented in the blockchain, it's cemented in history. This is a humongous space that will likely get bigger and bigger and bigger, and I'm hoping that this moment will mean something to somebody and I'm proud that I've done more than just sit here, if that makes sense to you, that I was able to contribute something like that, and that's in help, you know, obviously with the help of the other people who built the platforms, but you know I had to put it together. I had to create a concept that makes sense. Again, put that spark out there, and I'm proud that I was able to do that.

Speaker 1: 21:09

Instead of just being, you know, and no disrespect to those who are speculators and that's all they really want to do. I mean, it takes all kinds, but, as you know, like my community, the people that you know I consider my tribe are builders and I'm proud that you know that within that tribe, I was able to put something out there and put my little stamp that no one can take away, and so, again, it allows me to have a different conversation. I've always had great conversations at these conferences, but there's levels, right, there's levels to the kind of conversations you're even qualified to have with people and names. Conference is one of those ones where it can be quite intimidating when you're speaking to domainers who know exactly what they're doing and you don't, right, you don't know what value that you offer to the space. Yet you're there. So, yeah, I feel a lot better about that.

Speaker 2: 22:04

Yeah, Like I said, man, I think it's history in the making. We're paving the way. It's innovators like you, man, that are actually paving the way and we always throw this term around bridging the gap between Web 2 and Web 3. But domains with a critical infrastructure of Web 1, web 2, and they will be in Web 3. And so it's awesome, because you're starting to see a lot. A lot of light bulbs are starting to turn on right.

Speaker 2: 22:36

People are starting to realize what digital assets are for the first time, and so a lot of people came in during the web web three craze and a lot, of, a lot of degeneracy.

Speaker 2: 22:48

I'm gonna just say this like a this A lot of crazy stuff was happening during that time, but now the market has cooled down. You had people building in the bear, and now the whole thing is OK Bitcoin ETF, ethereum ETF you know, larry Fink, you know trying to tokenize everything. The key difference between a lot of things right now, though, and domain names in general, is that domains are really a digital native asset, and so I may have a house that I want to take a loan out in nashville or in texas, but there's no way for me to actually see, you know if someone's like actually there or squatting on the land, unless you got cameras on right. But this allows for more transparency and it basically says that, hey, this thing is here and there's a way to verify that on chain, and I think that that's why domains have, like a um, a special utility or a special way of showing people that that, hey, that there are other digital assets out there and so it's just a gateway. It's just a gateway to everything else.

Speaker 1: 24:00

I absolutely believe it. I absolutely agree with you and I think the more that we start pushing our product per se, like domains. The perception of domains right now is you think of domains as businesses. Even now, when we talk about domains, we talk about them as businesses, but eventually we're going to start talking about them as people and I think that conversation is going to be completely different and definitely like there's there's that gap that we have in between. There. To make it make sense, go for it, you lads.

Speaker 3: 24:37

I was going to say, you know, for me personally, to watch you doing this with domains is it's given me a great deal of confidence that the market is finally being primed and ready. Uh, for really what I've primarily been working on the last decade. So for the last decade, I've been working on helping non-technical entrepreneurs go from idea to app store in 30 days or less by licensing my source code to them and to other people, other startups and such. But the issue for me was I would oftentimes license or sell my source code but there wouldn't be a paper trail of who had it there afterwards, what royalties I should be having I should be having.

Speaker 3: 25:08

So for me getting to the point where I could tokenize my mobile applications, the ones that I'm both selling- as live applications with user bases, verifying the information on chain that this has this many users at this date, at this time, but then also being able to tokenize the asset in which I license out, making sure that if I'm putting out this barber booking technology, this barber booking app, I only want 50 of these apps to ever exist and so, therefore, I would tokenize or tokenize or potentially even fractionalize ownership of the source code amongst any of the people who I have put in capital to build the application in its initial phases.

Speaker 3: 25:42

So for me to see you doing this with domains, I just want to give you your flowers. I'm not by any means a degenerate, I don't really shit coin all like that. Anytime I try to, I try, try to utilize things. So for me to see, um, there's ways in which just to further utilize not just the you know, the source codes, the apps, but also the domains, um, and then bundling all such together. Right, because we can bundle all three together. We can bundle a mobile application with the domain name and its branding and have that be tokenized and fractionalized ownership amongst 100 people. We can do that in a DAO-like capacity, but we have to normalize it at the first of this layer. So I want to give you your flowers, because it's been a long time coming.

Speaker 1: 26:23

I really appreciate that man, and that's what we're here to do, right Build, innovate, share, help inspire, so that somebody can continue to build, innovate, share and inspire. I don't want that to ever be lost on anybody that chooses to listen to my spaces. There's, there's a lot of spaces and there's a lot of great information out there. There are some solid people, bro. I swear I love their views and I love the the alpha that they put out there. I swear I love their views and I love the alpha that they put out there. But at the same time, you'll always hear me weigh in with you know, with creativity, with thinking outside the box, because there is a place for that. Every, every small business that you see when you drive down the street. That's not a McDonald's or a Burger King or a box store. That's somebody thinking outside the box and building the lane, and that's even completely possible here in domains.

Speaker 1: 27:17

And I don't want people to get stuck with the narrative because then we, we don't innovate, right. We, we just accept what people say is, is, is, has a market, has value, can be built on, can be adopted, and we just don't get any further. I think an example, you know, and this is kind of something that I've been seeing for a while because I'm in the communities, but it's something that clicked the other day and I was telling you about this yesterday. Crypto Reporter. But you know even the narrative about emoji domains. Right, and by all means, please do not go and register a big bag of emoji domains based on what I'm about to say, because the's what you're here to do is build, and if noggles, that's like worse than a than an emoji, that's the Unicode, you have to copy paste that when I heard you have your defy dot build and no one acknowledged or recognized the value like it was, it was instantaneous.

Speaker 3: 28:47

I heard defy dot build. I'm like bro, my God.

Speaker 1: 28:52

I thought it was a banger too. Actually, you know what I'm going to do with it. The next thing I was going to talk about was consensus and what's going to be going on out there, because that is an opportunity for me to get around some builders. I think it was you that said that that would be a good idea for a database or something of DeFi platforms and protocols. Well, I'm going to talk to a whole bunch of DeFi platforms and protocols and see if that's something they would think is cool and then put it in there, make it work and again, like that's how you bring value to something, somebody else might see something again. The TLD might be one that's only sold 5,000 domains in its 20-year history. Yeah, 99% of people who buy one may never be able to flip it, but it just takes that one to make it make sense to build something of value on it and then you've got a gold mine, and that's what I mean. The point that I'm making is, if you're a builder, there is no limit to what you can make valuable. That's the answer. Don't listen to what anybody else is saying. Going back to that dot noggles thing, you can't tell anybody that now is in a solid community that has a diehard base of people who would adopt it above anything and the dot noggles I see it everywhere. There are thousands of people who have bought that domain extension and that use that as their digital identity. And, going back to that digital identity, that's what we are here for. That is what we are selling is digital identity at its core, and there is a lot more value in that than just it potentially resolving to a domain address. People like to use their digital identity to flex, to show who they are online, to author stuff, to show that they're a part of it. Like digital identity, I use it every single day. So, yeah, just wanted to kind of put that out there. But thank you for those flowers. Ulabs, I really do appreciate that. Now I'm going to I know we got disconnected Crypto Reporter. I am going to move on to Consensus, though, if you guys didn't want to, well, yeah, kind of moving off of the domain option. So yeah, like I said, we'll be going to Consensus.

Speaker 1: 31:04

There's events starting Monday, but Tuesday is really when it's getting popping, so I will be up there from Tuesday until Saturday. There is about 100 or so side events. They are. There is something to do every single second of the day out there. Even Unstoppable is having two events out there. They're doing their, their women of Web 3. I think they're doing a brunch and Sandy is going to be on a panel as well. Got to give it to them. They go outside. A lot of platforms go outside. They go outside. Free name goes outside. Even handshake goes outside to an extent, and it helps. This is how we kind of make it make sense to other people. But yeah, so looking forward to that. But yeah, we'll be at a lot of side events there. Looking forward to that. But yeah, we'll be at a lot of side events there. Some big ones that are going to be there. Sponsoring is Forbes.

Speaker 2: 31:57

Actually, they're hosting a pretty big party you back up here. Crypto Reporter yes sir, we're back.

Speaker 1: 32:08

We're back, all right. I was just talking about consensus a little bit and some of the side events and stuff that are going on there. I don't know how many people here are even familiar with ConsenSys hopefully everybody by now but it's one of the largest cryptocurrency events in the world. I know, as time goes on, the years keep, we keep progressing in crypto. Big events are starting to pop up everywhere, but there was a time when consensus was kind of like it. It was like it in East Denver, but they basically do a city takeover in downtown Austin.

Speaker 1: 32:40

Austin is the tech hub of Texas. The downtown is fairly new, so within the past 15, 20 years, I would say most of the downtown that we have right now was built and it was built around tech, which is kind of why I make that statement often that like we're the tech hub or the going to be the crypto hub of the US. I'm dead serious about that. I mean we're trying to be. I mean there's obviously more attractive looking places than Austin, texas if you're looking at a beach or something like that but for the building, for the actual companies that are developing, creating software, that are mining, for the people that are trying to find careers in this tech space and a blockchain facts. A lot of them are migrating to Texas, and to Austin in particular to do so, because it's very welcoming of it. It's growing a lot for that. So, yeah, we'll be down there in downtown Austin.

Speaker 1: 33:39

They do again like they do a downtown takeover, so that shows you kind of what kind of influence it has over the city. You go a few blocks away from the convention center and you'll see a whole other building that's got the whole side of it with wormhole or something like that. It's very nice to see the city transform, especially if you're from Texas and remember again when that wasn't there. We'll be going to a lot of those side events up there. I don't know. I got derailed right now. What was I talking about? I got derailed talking about how awesome Texas and our city is.

Speaker 2: 34:21

I don't know, man, you had me mesmerized. But then I remembered all my exes live in Texas, so you know I can't even go back to them.

Speaker 1: 34:30

Everybody's exes live in Texas, I guess, speaking of Austin and I'm not from Austin, I'm from a little south of Austin, in San Antonio, but we're so close it doesn't take long to get there, but I actually just was up there. What was that when, two days ago, whatever Bitcoin Pizza Day was, what was that Two days ago, whatever Bitcoin Pizza Day was? So we have a city DAO in Austin called ATX DAO. So there are some crypto members, some prominent crypto people, up there. They started a DAO to represent the city. They started using that DAO to attempt to influence legislation in the Texas government and they've been, you know, kind of successful at it, right. So they they they're very well known in the crypto space, atx DAO, especially among people who are in the DAO space. Like I said, most of these dudes are pretty respected. What they've done locally in the cities is not only relevant there but to everywhere else. But, yeah, they they got uh sponsored for their pizza party, uh, by the pizza dow, so pizza down atx dow.

Speaker 1: 35:39

Um did one of the the bitcoin pizza day events, so went to that. Uh, if you're on warp cash, you would have seen the video, because I posted it there through a client called Dracula and I know I'm speaking foreign to a lot of people, but get bullish on Warpcast. Every single part of this process the Dracula and all that. That kind of stuff earns you tokens and airdrops and makes it actually worth your time to be on a social platform. We do this one for free, so just take that into context. But, yeah, they brought out the Doge McLaren. So if y'all have been to Consensus or even if you were at East Denver last year, the Doge McLaren that was out there I don't know how they got it down here, if there's more than one of them, but it pulled up to this pizza party. They held it at a local pizza place in Austin. Austin is very well known for you just got to really be there. Like seriously, I can't again can't compare it to a Dubai with all the glass and Bugattis and stuff driving around like that everywhere. But when you're talking about culture and soul, like a lot of some of the things that, like Texas is known for, is like holding the wall spots or very like niche spots, like family made spots. So this is a pizza place that you could bring like your dogs to. It had a playground, like hangout spots for the full bar and all that. So it was nice and that's where we're at, and they ordered just unlimited pizzas.

Speaker 1: 37:05

You show up, we talk Bitcoin, crypto. A lot of Nounish people showed up, which is nice. We are recently Nounish. I think I've had a Nounish spirit probably forever, but became officially Nounish during East Denver. Hedayath, a good friend of mine who also owns 1W3, aka WebHash, introduced me to the Yellow Collective. Thank you so much for that and from that I've kind of you know, I've kind of joined a lot of Natter's communities from then. So it's good to see a lot of them in person and not to derail too much.

Speaker 1: 37:39

But we're it doesn't matter what context you're here Like, if you're here just as a debater or if you're here like as a degen or whatever. I think all of us have come to a point, especially when we've lost a bunch of money and kind of lose faith, when you're starting to try to figure out, like, why even be here, when you want to make sense of being here, when you want to become or feel whole, and DAOs or public service goods or public goods, daos, are a good way to do that. You know people. I think I was asked the question on the space the other day. You know, can you flip Dow tokens? And I mean I'm sure you probably can. But the general thought when you're joining a Dow like this like an outage Dow or any public goods Dow is you're you're giving with no expectation of anything in return. You're you're joining a club so that you can have something to do, you can participate, you can help someone else. You're joining a club so that you can have something to do, you can participate, you can help someone else, you can build something, you can bring something to fruition. So I like that kind of energy that has now been brought into this space. For me, it kind of helps balance out stressing out about whether or not you sold a domain today, or this platform said some news that you didn't like, or your crypto didn't go up, or something like that. Like I said, it helps balance that out.

Speaker 1: 38:58

So love the nouns for that. There are communities, there's sub-dials, a lot of them out there, a lot of good stuff to join. But thanks to Hedayah for that. Like I said, it became officially noun-ish during East Denver. So, yeah, get to actually go see the Nouns movie during Consensus. It's a real movie. They spent a million dollars and they hired Stupid Buddy Studios, who was run by Seth Green, chris Waters and another gentleman I have not I can't remember his name, but yeah, they're the studio behind Robot Chicken. They actually produced a movie for the nouns called Shark Pickle Cone and it is going to debut at Consensus.

Speaker 1: 39:42

So, yeah, how cool is that? Looking forward to that one. And again, going back to use case, if you're a community like that, can't nobody tell you what kind of TLD or domain or emoji that will work best for you. You can make anything work. You know you've built a following, you've built a community and what works best for you is what will have the most value. Sorry if I kind of rambled on. Thank you If anybody at the top wants to chime in a little bit.

Speaker 2: 40:15

No, you're good man, you're good, this is your space. This is your space, your platform, man. But I think that everybody, if you haven't go somewhere and when I say go somewhere I mean go to a networking event, go to consensus, go to names right, in fact, that's how you're going to make those connections, and those connections are going to lead to deals and those deals are going to lead to a better life. And, in fact, I think me and Marcus actually met during Domainer Expo. Domainer Expo If you guys haven't heard, domainer Expo is a special place where you get to talk Web 3, web 2 and anything domains, and that's actually going to be coming up, I want to say sometime in December.

Speaker 2: 41:04

But yeah, when it comes to just networking, I think that that's an important part, even when it comes to domains.

Speaker 2: 41:15

I mean, even Ish will say you know, he will go out to a particular event and I think it was like like a recycling event, right and he will have like a couple of domains in mind, because he knows and understands that you got to be able to go out there and put yourself out there and be able to talk to the people that are in actual need of that particular domain, and so I think it got like actually a couple of sales from that too. So that was good, that if you're prepared right, if you have the knowledge base and if you're able to network and articulate yourself in a certain way, people are going to gravitate towards that right and they're going to be able to work with you and want to be able to work with you in the future. And so I've definitely had the honor of just doing a couple of things and going to a couple of events and from those events that's actually how it actually led to a couple of sales from that as well. So, yeah, go out there, explore guys.

Speaker 1: 42:25

Yeah, networking, especially outside of the domain bubble, will make you a better domainer. I promise you you will come back from that conference better at selling or communicating the use case or purpose of your domains to people, because that's what you're going to be doing the entire time out there and I'm talking about like. You really will have the opportunity to sharpen and narrow down what your point is as you get exhausted, trying to explain it to people. Because that's the other thing that you'll realize as well and I've said this a million times is that outside of our bubble, even in the Web3 and crypto space, the value hasn't been properly communicated to people for why they should have a Web3 domain, even though they know what it is. Most of the time, even when I'm talking to people, I can't even mention the other naming services. I just have to say eth to get them to latch on to some form of familiarity and then I can go from there about what I do and what value I add to the space and try to get them to join on and et cetera. But yeah, the more that we do that again will help you sharpen kind of your game, also help you find a direction for even where you need to probably put your money and your investments, because they're going to tell you right You'll see from their reaction if they're paying attention to you or not where they're seeing the value. But then, like I said, also, it helps us spread the word, one at a time, each one of them that hears it. One of them might bite it and take it to somebody else and then it spreads and spreads. We've got a job to do, not only with the Web2 people which I mean I'm glad we're focused on that but we have a job to do within our own bigger bubble of cryptocurrency and we've assumed that everybody just gets it and they just they. They don't Um, and that's something I keep bringing up.

Speaker 1: 44:17

Uh, you know, we had a really good conversation last night in a space that I really wasn't expecting to turn into that, but gary showed up and and laid out, like some, some really good points, um, but one of the things that, like I was bringing up in that space, that I brought up often whenever I feel like I can get the ear of ENS, is that you know, in the position they're in with the budget that they're in, you know they really do have the opportunity to make this make more sense to people. It's not just about making something work. It's the why and and then it's the yeah, it's the why. Like, even with a facebook or something like that, like there was, I feel like that was an easy, easily communicable why. You we have this thing called the internet that allows you to communicate with people without wires. You don't know how to use it. Uh, previously you had to use this america online disc or go to a library or something like that, but we brought it closer to you and you can talk to your friends.

Speaker 1: 45:17

It made it make sense, made it social, and I was explaining in that space that I feel like some of these platforms, these big ones, have a responsibility to encourage more clients that are more dummy focused, that don't make this seem like crypto. I forgot where I was kind of going with that, but, like I said, it was a great conversation. He really put in perspective what it would take for somebody to bring that to E&S for consideration and I respect that. That might be something that I probably personally wouldn't pursue, but I know some companies that might be a good fit to help do that.

Speaker 1: 45:56

But yeah, but with the point that I was making is we have to do a better job with making this make sense to even the normal people within our space. And so, when you're out and about, when you're networking, when you have these bags of domains, it's good to sharpen yourself by trying to sell them to somebody or talk to people about them, because, again, they'll definitely tell you if they're interested or not, and it's a good eye opener. Even at the pizza party, I probably had more conversations when we switched to Bitcoin than I was about domains, but I did have a few people did follow me and a few people latched on and they get it. And again, it's one at a time, it's what it takes.

Speaker 2: 46:42

You know, it's funny because I'm thinking, I'm really thinking about it and starting to realize that it's really the smartest people that understand the utility or the value or the inherent value of domains and I think we talked about this like it was probably earlier today. But yeah, the smartest people understand the concept and then some smart people just don't, which is kind of kind of odd. But when it comes to just domains and in and I'm talking, we got people like Ish, people like Rosner, in fact even hell, it goes far to say just anybody that has been really crushing it in the ENS or Web3 space know the inherent value of the domain. And I'm thinking back to the first time really seeing like a ethon. It was really due to a couple of people in particular, and one of the I remember at one of the events there was a Web3 conference, and this is why I say that, okay, we got to be networking more, we got to be talking to people.

Speaker 2: 48:00

One of the events that I was able to go to was a conference and in it it had like a Web3 section. The person that was speaking at that particular night was a person by the name of Carol Baskins. So that was the Tiger King lady, right. And for some reason she had like the, the dot, eth at the end of her name and I was like, okay, what is that? And so my friend of kind of explains it to me. It's like, oh, it's, you know, like a personal wallet address. You know you can send crypto. And that's when it really stuck to me. I was like that's when the light bulb went off, it was like, oh, this is something that has inherent utility, right, you don't have to really explain. Okay, why does this JPEG have utility? You can say with a domain, it's like okay, I have the ability to send currency from one spot to another instantly, and for that. That was really the way that I got into just web3 and and eth in particular.

Speaker 2: 48:55

And then, going back to that same conference, I realized the person that was actually hosting the conference was a domainer as well and he sold a domain, I want to say, for like 1.5, something crazy, right. And so I started to realize like all the entrepreneurs already have this inherent idea of what a domain name is or why they would need one. I mean, you got Elon with XCOM. You have Mike Novogratz. He owns galaxycom, right, I mean, of course, Michael Saylor, with Mike calm, a lot of the people that are in the space, they automatically get it, and I think it's it's important to like sharpen that skill. So yeah, and I think it's important to sharpen that skill. So yeah, and I noticed that the topic for today is domaining debt, and I don't think that that's the case. I don't think domaining is ever going to go away. Actually, I think, in fact, if anything, domains have become stronger in these past two years and we have yet to see what that entails.

Speaker 1: 50:06

Yeah, the topic was it was in kind of relation to, basically, you know kind of the subject matter that's been posted all over Twitter by you know a lot of different parties that haven't been the most positive conversations, and that was yeah, it was meant to be sarcastic like is it dead? And of course it's not, because, like, we're just barely scraping the opportunity. I'm wondering, see the word domains, I'm wondering if that's doing us a disservice, even though, yeah, it's what they are. But like so, and when I say, like that, one day, like our future is that people will start seeing these domain names as, like I said, people, cash App has done an amazing job at doing that. Cash App has made your Cash App ID so personal that that's a person, right, like you identify as that. And when we can get Web3 ID to that point where you know you can explain it as easily as it's the cash app for crypto and the person at the other end actually cares because they're interacting with crypto. Yeah, like that's where I'm seeing, like that's, if there is a ceiling, like that's our market, right, that's the box that we have to start thinking about appealing to, I think, rather than being stuck Web2 utility too much, trying to make these as well as websites, we start narrowing what these can be back into being business identity and useful for businesses. And I don't think many people that are coming into the space just need a website, like I didn't come to the space because I needed a website.

Speaker 1: 51:48

I hear a lot of people talk all the time about you know, decentralized and I'm going to put it in RWeave and IPS, and if the government takes it down and it's like, bro, what do you need that for? I mean I guess it would be cool. But if you walk outside and talk to 100 people, I mean, how many of those 100 people is that a trigger for that will make them pull out their wallet and buy something, trigger for that'll make them pull out their wallet and buy something. And that's what I'm saying. We've got to start thinking along the lines of those 99 other people. It's been us 1% and we built the tech and we've drawn our lines, but now we have to start collectively figuring out how to get the other 99 here so that people will start using it and we can keep building and progressing. And going back to what I'm saying domaining, I think, is a very corporate term, it is a business term and we may be holding ourselves back by calling ourselves that.

Speaker 2: 52:48

Yeah, it depends on who you ask. I don't mind being called a domainer now or a digital asset investor, right, I think, because I mean they're pretty much the pretty much the same thing. You just we're becoming better, better domainers along the way, and ens was definitely a part of that, because a lot of, like I said, a lot of people came in through the ens, the unstoppables, and, and came in through that way, and for these past two years, we've had this kind of squabble, if you will, between the people on the Web 2 side and people on the Web 3, and then, I would say, the innovators or the people that said, okay, there is some need for decentralization, there are some decentralized aspects that we need, but there has to be real utility or real use cases. And somewhere along the way, I think that a lot of people lost that vision of, ok, we can do this thing and it's going to be simple and easy to use. And ENS was really one of those killer use cases where it's like, ok, now, now there's a, there's a use for this, I get there, there's things I can do with it. Um, going down the line, we're starting to see that, okay, there's, there's more aspects to it. And then there's more integrations that could be done.

Speaker 2: 54:06

If you would have told me two years ago that GoDaddy would have done what they did, or you told anybody in the ENS community, even the GoDaddy community, if you would have told Michael Siger, hey, in two years GoDaddy is going to do this, you probably would have thought we were crazy. They would send us to the hospital and get us checked in because that didn't seem possible. But now it's done. Now we're on the other side. We've officially crossed the chasm. You know, etfs are here, people have the ability to to do this now without having to, you know, go through a whole bunch of like processes. And one of the one of the things that actually I was researching because I I do writing on the. I do a lot of writing in the space on the side. That's how I learned from Sean about the GASDNS SEC. Interesting thing right Before GoDaddy did their integration only less than I would say like 1,500 people less than 2,000 people, just to make it simple right.

Speaker 2: 55:13

I would say like 1,500 people, less than 2,000 people, just to make it simple right Actually went through the process of putting their domain on chain or trying to create their DNS domain and put it into a integrated with DNS so that it become a crypto wallet address. There are very few people who did that. You were one of them. Right, you had Sean. You had Jesse, jessexy Z, who's on base. You have a lot of, I would say, another one. Here's ABC. Abc dot X, y Z. They're an investor in the space, but you had a lot of those early innovators. Try to integrate it. Nft dot com. Right, tellerorg for people who know who Teller is that's a platform where you're able to actually take out loans on any ERC or 721 token. You had Nexus, nexusxyz, which was recently reported as a sale for like 200 grand.

Speaker 2: 56:09

Right, like, these were the early people that you know, took the time, had the technical expertise to go in there, actually incur a cost, because, for those who haven't been in the space for that long during 2022, gas was crazy. Right, you had 100 gas, 600 gas, and that was normal, right, right, you had 100 gas, 600 gas, and that was normal. Right, it was. And now we're looking at, thanks to people like Jesse Right now we're looking at five dollars or five, five gas, 20 gas, and that that seems regular and everybody's just thinking that, ok, they're not really taking that in and realizing how far we've come and the scalability factor of it now in and realizing how far we've come and the scalability factor of it now.

Speaker 2: 56:56

So now you have the capability of you know updating your records and you know putting things like like DNS and integrating that with ENS, like I said a couple of years ago, would have took 300 bucks right and over the weekend I did it for I want to say like 50. It's like that much of a transformation and so as these things go into the future, we're going to see a lot more people actually use this technology and I'm going to see if there's a way maybe we can get Nick or somebody in the community to actually show us, you know, how many people are actually integrating this now, because we had the prior data right and it was less than I would say 2,000 people really went through that process. I want to see where that is now. I want to see how much of the updated that is. So it would be great if we can get that data. I'm not sure if that's publicly out there yet, but yeah, I'm just excited guys, because that's how early we are. That's really how early we are.

Speaker 1: 58:01

Yeah, I think I think those that speak like extremely matter of factly about like what is or what will be in our space, like what is or what will be in our space, I think they do fail to zoom out, like as you did, and really taking consideration how fast everything has moved since this really became a thing. And when you do that, you understand that this technology is infinite and growing. Like you said, a couple of years ago, getting another wallet, integration was probably the biggest concern and you're right, like nobody at least I didn't I didn't foresee a partnership with GoDaddy happening so fast. I didn't anticipate a lot of the things, a lot of the growth that we're doing so fast. I didn't really anticipate, you know, having a presence like this at NamesCon so fast. I think I went to one of the very first ones where they had a real web three presence, you know the one where you know them and handshake were were on the same stage and stop one handshake. That was a good one too. But in any event, when you, when you zoom out and you look at how much technology has made these a completely different conversation as far as tech goes Again like how can you, you can't, you can't. You can't then limit yourself just because you hear somebody say that this is the only thing that's ever worked and had value, because I mean we're building the value as we speak. That's what gives us most of us value is the ability to now go dev and create utility and use case for these, and I'm excited as well to see where these continue to keep going and how we keep building.

Speaker 1: 59:37

One cool thing I wanted to touch on before we kind of close up, wanted to give props to Unstoppable Again. Another thing I didn't see coming. We've flipped the script from just being wallet addresses with cool names attached to them to now, again you know they've now become another player and entity that is bringing Web 2 into the Web 3 technology space with, you know, their com tokenization. So kudos to them for rolling that out yesterday. For those who don't know or haven't heard that news yet you can import a com into unstoppable domains and tokenize it and you can turn it into an unstoppable domain. I've even seen some people already list their domain on magic eden. So yeah, you can already list these on a marketplace and interact with them like you like you do nfts, in the same way that we're doing with our tokenized domains on namefi, and some others are doing with 3DNS, so they've added themselves to that list and this is a big deal.

Speaker 1: 1:00:39

Again, and I said earlier, right, there are a lot of naming services out there that I really don't realize, that are out there, and those are the people that are your enemy. The people, these bigger players, these ones who have these drawn out, dragged down, you know arguments with these are all good guys. These are the people that are building stuff that is making the space better, that are creating this innovation, that are, whether you like, whether they're centralized or not, then developing this kind of technology to bridge and create. Again, a why? A why should that space pay attention to this space? You've got to give credit where credit's due, and so that is exactly what I'm doing. So kudos to them Again. Another great talking point, at least, that they'll have during NamesCon, and I'm sure that they're excited about that. Another important reason for why not only you should show up, but if you belong to a platform, encourage as much as you can for them to show up so that they can also create that pipeline of value because you be doing it. They've showed up every year to NamesCon and they've created that pipeline. So if you're wondering why they're able to constantly make progress and innovation in this space, that's why Don't just sit back and wave your fist. Go out there and make some of those pipelines and those connections yourself as well, but again, do so out of love, because you got to give credit where credit's due At some point. Ens will benefit from the things Unstoppable is doing. Unstoppable will benefit from the things that ENS is doing. Likewise with Handshake, likewise with Freename. Likewise with Handshake. Likewise with Freename. Likewise with Space ID, with Bone Feta. These are all real platforms with real teams that aren't here just to cash grab. They're building something. So respects to them.

Speaker 1: 1:02:24

So again, congrats to that com tokenization. I am going to put a couple coms over there, just because that's what I do. I test out tech and see how it goes and then, yeah, I guess they'll also adopt the utility of Unstoppable. They have over 800 integrations, including the profiles. I've already actually seen a profile. So okay, and I don't know if I like this or not, and we shall see.

Speaker 1: 1:02:52

But when you tokenize a com, so because coms can resolve, I'm wondering if you'll ever be able to list one of these and have it still resolve to like an active working website at the same time, or for the always like revert to a landing page. So, like in Namefy's case, namefy has created a landing page that creates like a cool little AI description for it and even has a link for you to go to the open sea. So let's say someone was typing in the domain name straight up. That's where it would go In this case, with the unstoppablecom. I typed in a domain name that I knew was tokenized through UD and it took you to the UD profile, which is like cool and not cool.

Speaker 1: 1:03:35

It's cool because if you're one of those people that like really has built out like the profiles, if you're bullish on them when they first came out and know how to build one out, know how to showcase stuff if your domain is related to it and et cetera, the messaging and all that good stuff like you're gonna love that, like that's gonna be the bee's knees for you. However, one of the things it does do is it blasts the entire wallet that's connected to that domain out there for everyone to see. If you're just somebody that's flipping domains, it will show every. It showed the transaction history of that wallet from that domain name that it was in. And even if it's just you know gas here and gas there, if it's just a burner wallet, some people might not like that. You know somebody who's going to buy their web to domain gets to see all that. So that might just be one thing.

Speaker 1: 1:04:23

I don't know if there's a way to hide, like transaction history or not, from the Udb profiles, but in any event, you do get one with the comms, which, again, a lot of people are gonna see as the bees knees because it is cool. Their profiles are our social marketing tool, like if you're going to network, going back to these conferences and networking, and you go to enough of them. Well, that exchange of information, this shit is constant. You're somebody's always asking you what's your Twitter, what's your Facebook, what's your Instagram or whatever it is, and it's easy to be able to direct them to one place that has kind of all the information or whatever you want to showcase all in one place. So you know I use my Link3 profile. Anybody who's seen me in person has seen a little barcode on the front of my phone that you can scan. It takes us to what I call my decentralized Linktree Web. Hash works essentially exactly the same way. So they're a great platform for that. But, yeah, the UDMEs they are also very good for that. So, yeah, another good tool that will come with your com, should you choose to tokenize it and import it into unstoppable domains.

Speaker 1: 1:05:30

Yeah, anybody else has anything they want to chime in with. Again, we can chat about anything if you guys want to, or we're already kind of past the hour and again wanted to just put this space out before I go social MIA for this next couple weeks and dig into the best of cryptocurrency. I can't even put words for how hyped I am to really get out here again and meet real people and see all these products. Like, if you've been to these big conferences, it is exciting. There's things I've seen at conferences I've just never seen before because I guess the tech doesn't click, but it's cool to experience it there.

Speaker 1: 1:06:09

So, yeah, very excited. I hope I get to meet a few of you. If you do plan on going to Austin, very easy to find me. I am a very friendly person, accommodating person. I'm from Texas, so if you want a good time, please reach out to me. But, yeah, if anybody wants to leave a couple words, we just got Crypto Reporter up here. Yeah, if you want to say a word or two before we close it on up, go for it closing on up.

Speaker 2: 1:06:35

Go for it, Guys. Let's find some domains. Let's get this time going On-chain summer, let's go.

Speaker 1: 1:06:40

Yeah, on-chain summer for real. That is the narrative. That's going to be big. I'm hoping Austin is blue. I hope we see a lot of base, very bullish on base. Can't speak enough about how bullish I am on base, and that's not to say that I'm not bullish on any other blockchain. It's just again, when we're talking about, you know, the, where I think growth and building and development will go. You know, in terms of adopting real people, base gets it. They get it, they've, they've, they've owned it as their identity. You know, jesse's, he's killing it. I mean, he's putting, he's tapped in again and no disrespect to platforms that aren't tapped in cool, you might need a marketing agency or something like that to get you on that level, but they're cranking out merch, they're cranking out art, they're really trying to appeal to the type of people that, like I said, that will become eventually our mainstream crypto users and they've got that tie in already with the corporate money. So, yeah, very bullish on base. Hopefully get the link up with some base communities out there. I definitely will when I go to the nouns move because you know, a lot of our nouns communities are on base. A lot of communities, blue chip communities, that weren't once on ETH are moving to base, so yeah, we can definitely talk about that too.

Speaker 1: 1:08:00

But, yeah, thank you guys for attending another iHeartDomains Tech Talk. It is a great Friday. The market is good. Next week will be amazing. Hopefully get to meet again anybody who's going to be out there at ConsenSys or is going to be out at NamesCon. Y'all enjoy your weekend. Love you guys. As always, let's keep on building, keep on demanding and, yeah, I'm sure I'll pop up on another space and see some of you guys a little bit later today. Thank you again to Crypto Reporter. You are awesome. And also, yeah, monday is going to be our tokenized DNS domain auction. So, again, very low opening bids, great chance to snag some dot coms. You know be a part of this history, this merge of technology, and, yeah, I will talk to you guys in probably a couple weeks, unless I pop on with an impromptu space during consensus. You guys enjoy, thank you.