Unstoppable Domains Enhances the Hedera Ecosystem

Welcome to gossip about gossip. Powered by Hedera Hashgraph. And each episode will cut through the hype of blockchain promises and explore real world examples of organizations creating the next generation of decentralized applications, which will bring trust back to the internet for us all. Hello everyone, and welcome to the latest episode of gossip about gossip. The podcast where we talk about real world applications of distributed ledger technology. My name is Zenobia gods Chuck and I'm the SVP of communications here at two worlds labs, focused on growing the Hedera ecosystem. Today, I'm delighted to be joined by Aaron quirk, who joins us from unstoppable domains. Hi, Aaron. How are you? Hey, How's it going? Glad to be here. Good, good. All right. So we have I know you all have been engaged with the community for those who have not participated in one of your events. Can you explain what unstoppable domains is and how it works? Yeah, I'd be happy to. So at unstoppable domains, really, our main mission is to onboard the internet onto web three, and we do that by offering Web3 domains. And so a Web3 domain is kind of an interesting thing to wrap your mind around. When I first heard about Web3 domain coming from a computer networking background like myself, when I hear domain, I think of like connecting to a computer on the internet or like an internet address. And so I'm trying to figure out, like, you know, what is this Web3 domain thing? And so it's a little bit different. It's a little more broad of a term than what people think about with a normal domain. So the main use case for a Web3 domain is to make it a more simple way to receive payment and to map your blockchain addresses to a human routable address. And so that's kind of where that domain, you know, terminology got LinkedIn there. So, for example, if someone wanted to send me a payment, they could use my domain name, Aaron quirk dot x and they could say, I want to send him some Ethereum or some Hedera or, you know, whatever chains that I have addresses linked. And then the wallet would map that to the right address and then process the transaction accordingly. So that's kind of where Web3 domains got their roots, but we've been doing a lot of building to add, you know, layers and layers of additional utility on the web, three domains to help it to enhance your communication, to have it be a portable profile that travels with as you travel around the metaverse, have your login credentials, all kinds of things. So it's a very broad, you know, aggregation of Web3 utilities that you can own. And so how do people engage with, you know, you've picked now an unstoppable domain. How do people engage with that? They email it, they connect it to their wallet. What are the kinds of things they do? Yeah so the primary you know, the primary entry point is, you know, you get a domain, you can either get, you know, like a free promotional one that we offer. You can go and buy one if you want, a really specific one. They're offered for sale. We have partners who resell them. So step one is to just, you know, get a domain and then that is going to be minted as an NFT on the Polygon network. And so it's kind of interesting that we're talking to you on the Hedera podcast because we are, you know, traditionally like in Ethereum and polygon technology, but we are looking to really be a collaborative project where we play, you know, with all the networks and all the blockchains, regardless of where people are going. So while our source of truth is, you know, on chain for polygon, we want to work wherever our users are. And so that's how we are talking to you today and other chains as well. Yeah and I think either you see a maturation of this market. I had a guest on a couple of weeks and we were talking about there's no other technology market where there has been a single player that exists and thrives and all the others fall by the wayside. Most technology evolutions happen and you start to see, you know, what we are calling cross-chain collaboration, but it's happened in previous technology evolutions and revolutions past. So this idea that you have to pick one and you have to only be in one camp seems to be falling more and more by the wayside. Yeah, I mean, that's like saying you're going to live in New York city, but I'm never going to leave New York City and go visit other places. You know, definitely workers might disagree with that. I do love that city. Right and so you recently did a collaboration with a number of different Hedera projects who I think saw the value of this cross-chain collaboration. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so so it was really like a three way partnership. So the people that we were working with on the Hedera ecosystem were the Hashgraph dot name naming platform. So that's with all the, you know, the dot bar domains that work with Hedera. And then we have hashtag wallet, which of course, is the leading wallet and the ecosystem. And then we were really excited to work with the dead pixels NFT project and they have, you know, those amazing ghost and NFTs. And so. You know, we were able to kind of touch on a lot of different pieces of the ecosystem and get lots of different types of engagement, which I thought was really neat. But the way that it all came about is I went to college with a guy named ash auro. He works at SeaWorld's labs, you know, part of the NFT program there. And so him and I have been talking for four years, you know, just about blockchain stuff. And then, you know, when I started working at unstoppable, we, we were really looking for an opportunity to be able to work together in some way. And so, you know, this got kicked off that, you know, he was in contact with me Chan from hash pack. And then we got in contact with Nate Western from Hashgraph dot name. And, you know, from there it became a pretty natural partnership. And so, you know, we always want to collaborate with other naming systems because I think, you know, if we can have a synergy between, you know, hashgraph, that name and unstoppable domains and other, it's only good for the whole ecosystem, you know, if everybody is playing well together. And so we actually started the Web3 naming alliance. And so, you know, hashgraph, that name is part of that. There's other naming systems that are part of that. And the idea is to all be driving towards the same goal of onboarding the web to Web3 three. Yeah, and again, very similar to previous technology revolutions, right? You see these alliances forming. You see people agreeing on a common way to communicate because at the end of the day, the end user doesn't want to know, the majority of users don't want to fight this fight, right? They don't want to have to choose something. They want the most utility across the most number of services. That's exactly right. Yeah and so the neat thing we were able to do with Hashgraph Don name, as you know, on their service and in their SDK is they added support to be able to resolve unstoppable domain endings with, you know, on the Polygon network. And so if you go into hashgraph, that name is SDK or on their service, if you type in one of our domains, it'll come back with our addresses for Hedera. And if you type in one of the Hashgraph dot names, it'll come back with an address that resolves to an H bar address. And so with that kind of Native level of resolution support, it was an easy add for cashback because they were already using Hashgraph to our name. So they just, you know, they get to come on board with unstoppable kind of as a secondary benefit. And then so that's, that's what they added. And then on the unstoppable side, we added support for each of our domains for a lot of our existing utilities like log in with unstoppable and with our badge, service and scanning, you know, for looking for on chain activity related to your Hedera addresses. And so with that, you know, we have added benefit for the Hedera ecosystem when you're on unstoppable domains as well. And so now walk me through, you know, I've now I'm now using hash pack and I'm trying to buy some of these NFTS, you know, whatever my favorite NFT is that I love. How does that process work? And then specifically with dead pixels. Yeah so, so really it's as simple as, you know, if you're in hash pack and you want to send, you know, each bar you want to send an NFT, you would just type in instead of the address, the header address, you would just type in a domain, whether it's an H bar domain or whether it's an unstoppable domain. And underneath, you know, all the technology, it's going to look up the address for you and get it to the right place. And so it's like typing in a human readable name instead of, you know, a bunch of numbers and dots. So people don't like to do that. Know, it's easy to make a mistake. You know, I can never remember them. And you have special profiles, right, for some of the NFT holders. Yeah and so, so the way that works is this kind of gets back to your digital identity being one of the utilities that we offer with unstoppable domains. So in addition to all of your, you know, your address book of crypto addresses that are attached to your domain, you also have a portable profile that can travel with you. And so that's, you know, includes all the standard type of profile data, you know, your verified social links, you know, contact information, you know, all of that. The unique thing is some of it you can tag any field as public or private. And so we always want to put our user in the driver's seat as far as what they're willing to share publicly and what they're not willing to share publicly, because that's obviously a core tenet of web is, you know, ownership and control. And so on. Your public profile, people are able to observe the things that you've tagged as visible, and you also have private fields as well. And the neat thing about it is when you use a log in with unstoppable to go log in to a dap, it's kind of like a combination of, you know, Web3 domains and Oath where the dap can request pieces of information at a time of log in, like they say. I would like to have your name. I would like to know where you're from. And so you're presented with a confirmation. Are you willing to share this information? And if you are, then we pass back, you know, that private information that not everyone can see, just the dap that's asked for. So we permissioned out the information that you're willing to share. And one of the pieces that I love the most is around your like communication details, like your email address. If the dap wants to know how to contact you via email, we never actually share your real email address with them. We give you a kind of an object ID, email specific to that dap. And so they have this, you know, kind of proxy email address that they're able to send to you and we root it on your behalf, you know, to your real email address. So even if you give them your contact info, you can turn it off at any time. You know, you say I no longer want to hear from them. And you have a kind of a control panel where you can see all the daps that have access to talk to you and you can kind of toggle them on and off at will. Yeah so you're preserving privacy and you're helping reduce the amount of spam that someone gets to their true email account because I think we all experience that, right? I sign up for one thing, and now I'm on your list for 27 years or until I go through multiple steps to undo that. That's right. And we pick the email. You know, it's kind of like a boring communication technology, but it's also like everyone has it. It's like the common denominator of communication. So it was a pretty natural place to start. But, you know, plans are to add additional, you know, more native Web3 wallet to wallet type of communication as well, you know, resolving with the domains. Well, and I think that could be a good bridge, right? I mean, we know people who are going to jump right in to Web3 and who are, you know, very technology forward and want to be the first to do everything. But there's a much larger population who are web to willing to go maybe to web 2.5 right now, but maybe not willing to go all the way because it's still very complicated. But all of them have an email address. That's right. Yeah you've got to provide a bridge for sure. Yeah Yeah. And so as you look ahead, you know, what do you see coming up for unstoppable domains in the next 6 to 12 months? And we won't hold you to any of these predictions. That's fine. Yeah I mean, right now, you know, in this market, you know, the whole market, but us in general, you know, we are building, building, building. You know, we are heads down kind of grinding through this downturn in the market. And some of the things that we're really excited about are adding more and more layers of interesting points of control and communication and, you know, profile ownership. In addition to what we already have. And so, you know, that's one of the things I really like about Hedera is, you know, the really fast transaction times and, you know, very low gas fees, predictable and constant gas fees. They're not like changing all the time like we see on other networks. And so, you know, this isn't something that we're necessarily planning, but one of the things that I was thinking about that would be so cool would be, you know, like with the mobile app that we already have, if we could combine that with some type of, you know, point of ticketing, right? Like, you know, for example, you've gone to an event and you've got your domain and your entry point or access is some type of NFT that you've been granted to, you know, a verified address that's attached to your domain and you need speed in that case, a network like you, you know, I'm just imagining, you know, this queue behind you, you're like, I'm sorry, we're waiting for blockchain confirmations. You know, like, you know, a network that can handle the load would be really cool. You know, I'm picturing like, you know, present your NFT, the person that the door scans that burn the NFT. And now you're airdropped a receipt, you know, or something like that in place. Something like that would be super cool. Yeah Yeah. You never want to be that person fumbling for your phone for something when you're in line, right? I mean, it's not like with ticketmaster, you know, I've got, you know, just to get it up and make sure it's loaded, you know, it's got to be super smooth in order for something. But I think, you know, it's not that far off. I think the technology is ready. So integrations like that in real life. Integrations, I think are going to be really fun. Yeah, we're honestly the end user doesn't care what technology stack or what sets of technology are being used. They just want it to work. Right, exactly. Yep Yeah. Before we wrap up, Aaron, anything else you'd like to share with our community? I'm excited to be. I felt a very warm welcome from the Hedera community, which has been just a really nice breath of fresh air. Yeah just to come in and everyone has been so friendly, so Thank you. And we are excited to be here and working. And we will continue to collaborate. Absolutely well, Aaron, Thank you so much. If folks want to visit you, is it unstoppable domain wsj.com? Yep website is unstoppable domain wsj.com. We're very active on Twitter. You can reach out to us at unstoppable domains. And then my personal Twitter is at 5 works. And so you can find me there anytime. All right. Love it. Thank you so much, Aaron. Take care. All right. Bye bye.