Matt Gould discusses NFT domains and Web3 identities at Unstoppable Domains

0:00I'm Ashton Addison from Block West capital for investment pitch media and today on the crypto coin show we have back with us Matt gold the CEO of Unstoppable domains Matt welcome back to the show and it's a pleasure to have you here I'm glad to be here thanks for having me likewise so much has happened since you last came on the show in the beginning of this year uh and I feel

0:22like specifically in the digital identity space and sort of incorporating our identities into web3 a lot of strides have been made in that sector and it's super important because you know web 2 identities and your identity on the Internet is a mishmash uh in in web 2 and very insecure uh and a lot of things that can happen to your digital identity that you might not want to I

0:43know there's a lot of Solutions in web 3 coming out to make it easier to log in to use your digital identity and I know that Unstoppable domains also has many other benefits to owning an nft domain besides that but I want to touch on all of that if we could start off our conversation by just a little bit about Unstoppable domains and what you guys have done throughout this year and the

1:04initiatives you're currently working on then we'll dive into all the details after that perfect yeah well Unstoppable domains we've been in the crypto space uh since 2017 2018 so we've been here about five years now and uh we from the beginning thought that in order to make crypto easier for everyone to use we needed to create a easy remember ux name the nft

1:28domain name to just associate back to all your data and that includes things like crypto addresses so we're happy to say that we've registered you know we've just crossed two and a half million domains registered uh here recently we're actually seeing in-ft domains being picked up by all sorts of different people in the space coinbase actually recently launched their

1:47identity uh program with with us with nft domains as well and a lot of others in the space are getting interested and domains of the nft market uh are one of the few bright spots if you look around had nfts from last year a lot of the speculation has kind of cooled off in the space and everyone's been impacted by that but domains because they really

2:09are this utility function to improve ux to enable you to have a persistent identity across your applications have continued to see consumer interest even in this really bad bear Market definitely and I see a lot more value in owning uh you know a web domain rather than a profile picture nft because you know that that domain you know in the future could be worth a lot and also

2:35these web3 domains seem to have a lot more value than web 2 domains because you can do a lot of different things with them but from what I remember back in in the web two days when you know websites first came out there was a lot of people that were buying up a lot of great domain names and they're able to live off of those for the rest of their life if they got really good ones

2:55um I and I'm guessing I know out of those 2.5 million they've sold there's a lot of great names you know all the ones that common names that you would think of people buy that up right away but 2.5 million is almost nothing compared to the amount of websites in web 2 that we have right now but from what I understand you guys have been growing uh exponentially as well even though it's

3:17still early it continues to grow right yeah that's true and also one of the big differences between nft domains and the regular domain name because there are different markets it's a new market so it's similar you know but it Rhymes and you know they're for end users and to take their identity with them between websites on the internet so that means

3:38that instead of being for like small business like traditional domains for small business therefore you know you when you're logging in to websites so that you can have your name and your reputation show up there and that means that like it's different types of domains that people are interested in so we've seen some things like you know people want to register their names or

3:54maybe their gamer tag we actually saw people register a lot of numbers so for whatever reason people want to have a very short name to be remembered online so they want to be like one one two three dot X or something so that's been so there's a lot of parallels to domaining it's all about having a thesis on what you think uh how people are going to want to identify themselves in

4:14the future but the difference is really is it's like people versus businesses so yeah I mean it's been super exciting and and also interesting to watch like people get into this space and and try to figure out uh what what calls out to them but we think that we're actually even earlier than you may suspect because as opposed to being like 300 million

4:35websites on the internet we're talking three to four billion individuals who are going to want to have an identifier online so the market size is 10 to 100 x bigger than traditional domain name so it's it's a new market a lot of new things to learn about this but we think the opportunity is there and that's a great point you know not every single person needs a a website but there's a

4:57lot of people that have multiple websites but almost everybody can use a digital identity which could also double as a website if they want to make one there as well but for the digital identity part that's pretty much eventually you'd think uh everybody yeah as the governments and and everything gets on board with digital identity hopefully we come a universal identity

5:16system where you can use your blockchain identity if you're in Canada or if you're in the US you're sort of still using that regardless of what country you're in yeah and we're already seeing this with influencers right and like influencers now are the new small business uh at least that's one way to think about it and every influencer wants to make sure they have a good

5:35handle on Instagram or on Twitter or on Reddit or something like that and we're saying to people you're really going to want to have a good nft domain in the future to represent your personal brand no matter uh where you are and the cool thing about domain names is not only are they visual because you can you know visualize mat.nft or mat.x or mat.crypto

5:53but they're also verbal like I can say that over the phone so yeah Zoom call and you can hear it right uh and it's very hard for you know a picture to really represent you uh unless someone is like interacting with you you know right then so it's actually names are more shareable than you know pictures like we don't use we don't use pictures to find websites or something like that

6:16so I actually think that the name that you have for your web 3 name is going to be even more important than your profile picture and I think a lot of people are catching on to that this year and again domain names are they can be very boring in F2 domains to be boring it's just like it's a name you know it's not a cool picture or something like this but

6:34when you think about the utility over the long run like I can be the same name in every single metaverse I mean I'd be the same name on empty Central land that I'm on uniswap uh that I'm on on meta right so like I can have that persistent name and that's really powerful to build brand behind yeah I completely agree and you know when there's a new social media or a new

6:54metaverse that comes out and you have to be on top of it and make sure you get your name right away now if you own your own domain name and you can use that you already know that you're guaranteed to you know be consistent with your with your digital identity across new systems as they come out and the systems you're currently using and this is part of the web 3 promise

7:12and one of the big things about web3 people talk about is we want users to own more of their digital information and have more control over their data and what happens is right now in web 2 is they they control those username systems uh and so if they kick you off of Twitter or off of YouTube or wherever people if you can't secure that exact same name on a new platform on like Tick

7:37Tock or Instagram or whatever it may be hard for people to find you right and and so what we're trying to say is we think that names is one of the first things that you should own in this new way that the world should work where you have more control over your digital uh your digital assets we think the name is actually one of the first things that we

7:53should pull out of the web 2 model and have that really go in your pocket so that you can control that because as long as they can kick you off their platform and they can basically make it very hard for people to find you on whatever new platform you're on because you have to have a different name that gives these web 2 platforms even more power so when I'm thinking about how we

8:12iterate towards a world that uses blockchain products to give people more ownership over their digital information this is one of the steps that I think is critical to happen early on that's a great Point Matt and it's especially noted in in the most recent years of people that like to speak their mind on social media and there actually is that fear of like you can have your account

8:34banned in in a second and uh you know all the followers you've built up you can lose those in a second as well if it's on a platform you don't really own your own account on you know YouTube or Facebook whatever it is but from what I understand with unstoppable domains you own that and you know no social media platform entity Corporation is going to take that away from you yeah

8:57and that's part of building a brand is you want to be able to stay consistent over your lifetime when you're building out whatever your personal brand is or your business or what have you and so we think a name is just one of those first things that you should have on the flip side of this and this is another thing that I think people may miss is that if

9:13everyone online has a name that they're you know that they control and that they're in charge of making sure that that their information is correct about them and they're building that reputation so if every single individual is atomically creating their own ID make sure the data is correct about them and storing information about themselves so you can

9:32see you know hey uh you know I participated in all these web3 products that were you know here's my education credentials or all this other kind of stuff about me that also enables people to create new communities that are more tailored to their specific interests and I think that's a big thing too so it's not it's not just about being able to protect yourself from these platforms

9:54taking advantage of you it's also about being able to create new platforms where they can use this reputation information to create even richer communities online because people will be bringing their information with them so it's not it is a very protective thing to have to haven't owned your digital property but I think it also opens up new markets

10:13which is I think even more interesting definitely and for that to happen I know that Unstoppable domains is making tons of Partnerships with platforms to start integrating these web through identities into them one of the first use cases I've seen is the login with your Unstoppable domain or your web through identity you know rather than just log in with your email that you've created

10:35on this one specific account that you if you go to another website you have to create another email account and sort of manage them both separately this log in with web3 allows you to unify that but you also need to get the partners on board um how is that going with sort of getting people in web 2 onboarded into the web3 identity space so I think a sample domains has probably

11:0120x more partners with login functionality integrated with on software right now than anybody else and we think that's huge and we're going to just continue to push on that we just crossed 400 partners and we're moving pretty fast and we're on our way to thousands and if you think about it it's a lot like other identity products in the space so you may be familiar with

11:21Facebook sign-on or Google sign-on or if you're in the space you may know xero a couple of these other identity service providers and you have to put in the hard work of building the tools so it's easy for those companies to integrate that data we think that companies are really going to want to talk to you crypto consumers at some point right and so crypto there's a there's 100 million

11:45plus people who own crypto but there's only like less than a million people who are actively engaging with crypto products every day but it is growing super fast I mean that's up from zero ten years ago um and as there are more crypto consumers as there are more people with nft domains as there are more people who are storing information and wanting to

12:03uh share that information with apps there's going to be more apps that want to integrate so if you get this nice positive feedback loop and we've already got a kick start it so like the cold start is the hard problem but you know having a couple million registered domains having a few hundred apps that accept this we're going to continue to build on that flywheel over time and we

12:20think it's just going to end up snowballing at least that's the effort we're putting in yeah and I'm liking it because when I see that login with Google logging with Facebook I'm always uh very cautious and I I tell people you know don't use those because if your Facebook account gets banned all those other websites that you logged in through Facebook you no longer

12:39have access to those and it's just like all of your accounts get deleted at once I feel like it's you know exponentially worse than just having a Facebook account banned boom and with web3 logins you know it's actually yours uh and you hopefully can't get banned uh with that so I think that's a huge Advantage um and I think it goes both ways you know there's a lot of people that are

12:59crypto uh they're crypto native and they're looking to find ways to protect their identity more and they're you know personal identity is very dear to them so they're like I need more ways to be able to log in with this and not have to use Google and then there's the people that are just getting into it which you said is the 99 and they don't have a web

13:20for your identity yet but now on their favorite website they see la log in with Webster identity right below Google and they're like hey what's that you know and that's actually onboarding them into the web through space I feel like that nft domains you know whether it's um it's one of the ways that people can get into web 3 without having to understand finance and and Bitcoin and

13:42day trading they're able to sort of get a wallet with an nft domain as their first blockchain asset yeah and this is goes back to the utility of nft domains and like I agree because we can just focus on very simple things for users we can focus on hey if you use your nft domain we can save you time because it's easier to sign into these places and you're able to share

14:06information with that app um so that you don't have to like refill out these forms or whatever just like a traditional SSO so we could just say save time by using a web 3 product we can also say have increased privacy by selling a web 3 product because now if you don't want that person to have access to your data anymore because you control that identity you can just turn

14:25it off right by going onto by going into your domain name and going the settings but they're not allowed to see my stuff anymore and then and then we can also talk to people about saving them money because a lot of companies that we're talking with and this is emerging are wanting to offer rewards to people who are in the crypto space but one of their

14:44problems with offering rewards is they need to you know you have to have some sort of identity otherwise be people abuse the rewards program and that's we're gonna we're starting to see the first versions of that you'll see that before the end of this year so we could just tell people look we'll save you some time we'll increase your privacy and we'll you know help you get rewards

15:01for the products that you enjoy already notice I didn't mention anything about uh Bitcoin or I didn't I didn't mention anything about defy or complex central banks or any of that I'm just talking to users about saving them some time maybe saving them a little bit of money and increasing their privacy so it's a completely different narrative that would get people to use crypto products

15:23for in their everyday life and I also think that it's a much easier space for us to push into with Regulators because we're not touching Finance we get uh we get a lot more air time and a lot more leeway to experiment with new products because it's not as sensitive as some of the other things in crypto definitely and that's a great point and you know speaking of regulators I've

15:48talked to a few other decentralized identity platforms and I feel like this common Trend as you mentioned you know we're early but like later down the road you really have to be thinking long term about digital identities and how that fits in with The Regulators or the government identities and you know having your driver's license or having your your national ID on the uh on the

16:10web3 ID like how do you how do you look at that now where there's only two million people that have blockchain domains and think we need to build this in a way that hundreds of millions of people will be able to log in with their with their driver's license and make sure that it's protected and make sure that the partners can accept that through the

16:29blockchain and they can revoke access and all these other details so whenever you're trying a brand new technology and trying to build out a new market you have to look at what are the things that I can do immediately to help people solve problems so the first things we're really focused on are some core problems for crypto gas because that's where that's where the users are

16:50right now so just a very simple one and it's actually pretty easy is you know let's say you use a lot of D5 products and there's a hack on one of those they don't really have a way to to send you a message so we just we have a thing with if you logged in with unstoppable with your nft domain then you could actually share a private email address they

17:06actually don't even get your email address they just get a private place so they could actually send you something and say hey we had a hack you need to come and check on your stuff so like that's that's an example of something that is very simple and just something that doesn't exist in dapps and then if we want to get a little bit a little more complex we can talk about D5

17:23regulation and say okay your deep Eye app like uniswap you want to stay legally compliant in the US or you know trading of these products or whatever we can attach kyc information back to an nft domain so we did Humanity check for that as a first one so we think those are going to be kind of some of the first products when we're trying to think like really really long term where

17:41we want to go we think we have to iterate and just trying little small steps on the way to get there and this is actually something that emerges so you build up your identity over time by adding more and more types of data to your domain name and you just solve the problems one at a time so there's no Silver Bullet we can't just say like here's the standard everybody use it you

17:59have to like build each little standard for each little app yeah no and that's a great point and and we are very far away and I think the kyc you know with crypto exit users that are already familiar with web3 that is a great use case for their personal identity is required for some Investments of large amounts you know how do we put that on the blockchain and and not the insecure way

18:22of you know in 2017 none of this was really digitized you're sending your passport or your your National identities over unencrypted picture file or text file well you know and and that's not really you know you're in web three there should be some more secure way to go about giving your personal information to some entity that you may or may not trust

18:43and there's a lot of great companies working on exactly that problem and the cool thing about nft domains is we look forward to working with those companies like I know for instance polygon is it has like a zero knowledge kyc product that they have been developing and that's the type of thing that you can actually plug into your nft domain as just another type of verification on on

19:02top and so you're in a few domain it's just the base layer and then you have these other verifications that you can add onto it to extend that functionality and make your life easier online so we are trying to support as many of those as we can and uh we it's going to be one of those things where it's going to build slowly and slowly and slowly until

19:19all of a sudden you're like wow this thing is everywhere because we're in the background just solving one problem after another and then after you solve enough of those problems it crosses that threshold of utility and then you see rapid adoption and we've seen that um that's just how it works and I think that you know any time in the next three to five years we can really see these

19:38nft domains take off as identities yeah it's incredible to think you know all the people that are getting involved in it now and sort of you know there's still so many different domains and you know most people's full name is probably still available and it's probably you know very easy to get um and uh so people should definitely get interested in it right now rather

19:59than you know when it's already too late and you can't sort of snag your name um or your company name or you know some other cool nickname that you want for your Gamertag when the metaverse becomes more predominant I feel like that's going to be you know it's your username it's your identity and it's everything for sure and I definitely think uh I look forward to seeing you in the

20:19metaverse you know ashton.nft you know and then you can hopefully find me mad dog crypto and that'll also make it easier to just bring in all sorts of information to those apps too and improve those experiences definitely and it's not just like uh you know in in the traditional like just.com or dot net um from what I understand you guys have lots of different top level domain names

20:39we do we uh we currently offer nine top level domain names we're actually adding support for several other nft domain Services out there as well and uh I mean this is a fast ex fast expanding market and there's a lot of interesting things that are happening with the nft domains um I tell people like yeah you should definitely go pick one up we actually

20:59have a couple partners that we work with like blockchain.com for instance and uh where you can even get your first domain for free um as part of their dot blockchain extension with them and you know for as little as five dollars to start and check it out and start playing around with the technology you know use your use your app and play around with your

21:15identity internet actually sign into crypto apps online with your domain name see that show up as your identity on those apps I think it's a great place to learn and explore there's a new narrative in crypto every couple years right we had the D5 narrative we had nfts last year I think that identity is one of those narratives that's sitting in in crypto right now that has a chance

21:34to be a breakout narrative and actually bring in a lot more people as we continue need to find more ways to bring utility to in-consumers for these Weaponry products that's incredible and for the people that want to learn more about what else they can do with Webster identity and nft domains and how they can take advantage of it and be early what's the

21:56best way for them to learn more on this well I would say go to our website unstoppabledebanks.com and we also have a podcast as well that I think you should check out where we talk about these things and you can find us in Discord as well as telegram we have great community events we even have some events where you can uh like have what do we call these like we send you

22:18on Littles hunt and search things online for you to go check out like how to use your identity across these different kinds of applications we have a great Learning and Development team for education on those products as well and we would love to have you in the ud fam to come and learn about nft domains and how we think they're going to change digital reputation on the internet

22:37incredible Matt thank you so much for all the great information I'll leave the Unstoppable domains website and socials links you mentioned in the description box below as well all the best with everything in nft domains and web3 identities I'm really looking forward to seeing you in the metaverse with my Unstoppable domain nft and I'm gonna check out all these other ways that uh

23:00Unstoppable domains is adding value to webview identities because I think the world's changing very quickly and it's good to stay on top of stuff exactly like this so thank you so much for your insights Matt thank you Ashton