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>> Hello, welcome to theCUBE's presentation
with Unstoppable Domains.
It's a showcase we're featuring all the best content
in Web 3 and with unstoppable showcase,
I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE.
We got a great guest here, Matt Mickiewicz
who's the Chief Revenue Officer of Unstoppable Domains.
Matt, welcome to the showcase, appreciate it.
>> Thank you for having me.
>> So the theme of this segment is the potential of the Web 3
marketplace with Unstoppable Domains.
You're the Chief Revenue Officer,
you guys have a very interesting concept
that's going extremely well, congratulations.
But you're using NFTs for access and domains,
Of course through the metaverse is huge.
People want their own domains,
but it's not just like real estate
in the sense of a website.
It's bigger than that it's a lot going on.
So take us through what is the value proposition
and what is the product?
>> Absolutely, so for the past 20 years,
most of us have been interacting on the internet
using usernames issued to us by big corporations
like Facebook, Google, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, et cetera.
Whenever we get these usernames for free
it's because we and our data are the product.
As some of the recent leaks in the media have shown
incentive individual in companies are not always aligned.
And most importantly individuals are not in control
of their own digital identity and the data,
which means they can economically benefit
from the value they create online.
Think of Twitter as a two-sided marketplace
with 0% revenue share back to its creators.
We're now having in the creator economy
and we believe that individuals
should see the economic rewards
of what they do and create online.
That's what we are trying to do in** support of domains
is provide user own and control identity
to four and a half billion internet users.
>> It's interesting to see change that's happening
with Web3 and just in cultural terms,
users are expecting to be part of the creator
the personality of the company,
there's this almost this intermediation of the middle man
whether it's an ad network or a gatekeeper
of any kind people going direct, right?
So if I'm an artist, I can go direct to my fans.
>> Exactly, so Web3 really shifts
the power away from a aggregators.
Aggregators and marketplaces
have been some of the best business models
for the last 20 years onto the internet.
But Web3 is going to dramatically
change all over the next decade.
Bring more power back in the hands of consumers.
>> What type of companies do you guys
work with and partner with that we see out there?
Give us some examples of the kinds of companies
you're doing business with end partnering with.
>> Yeah, so let's talk about use cases first actually.
Was the big use case that we identified
initially for NFT domain names
was around cryptocurrency transfers.
Anyone who's ever bought cryptocurrency
and tried to transfer it between accounts or wallets
is familiar with these awkwardly long hexa decimal
strings of random numbers and letters,
or even if you make a single type of money is lost forever.
That's a pretty scary experience that exists today.
That 2 trillion asset dollar as a class
with 250 million users.
So the first set of partners
that we worked on integrating with,
we're actually crypto wallets and exchanges.
So we will allow users to do is replace
all their long hexa decimal wallet addresses
with a single human readable name,
like John.NFT or MattMickiewicz.crypto
to allow for simple crypto transfers.
>> And how do the exchange work
with you guys on that is it a plugin,
is it co-locating code together?
What's the relationship between exchanges
and Unstoppable Domains?
>> Yeah, absolutely great question.
So exchanges actually have to do
a little bit of engineering list to work with us
and they can do that by either
using our resolution libraries or using one of our APIs
in order to look up an Unstoppable Domain
and figure out all the wallet addresses
that's associated with that name.
So today we work with dozens of the world's top exchanges
and wallets ranging from OKX to Coinbase wallet,
to Trust wallet, to bread wallet, and many many others.
>> I got to ask you on the wallet side,
is that a requirement in terms of having specific code
and are the wallets that you work well with?
Explain the wallet dynamic
between Unstoppable Domains and wallets.
>> Yeah, so wallets all have this
huge usability problem for their users
because every single cryptocurrency
held by every single one of their users
has a different hexa decimal wallet address.
And once again every user is subject to the same
human fallacies and errors
where if they make a single type
their money can be lost forever.
So what we enable these wallets to do is to make crypto
transfer simple and less scary than the current status quo
by giving the users an installable name
that they can use to attach to all the wallet addresses
on the back end.
So companies like Trust Wallet for example,
which has 10 million user or Coinbase Wallet.
When you go to the crypto transfer fields,
there you can just type in an unstoppable name
It'll correctly route the currency
to the right person, to the right wallet,
without any transfer human error.
>> When these big waves coming out
I got to ask this question,
'cause a lot of people in the mainstream
are getting into it now.
It reminds me of the web wave that hit
the big thing was how many people
are coming online, was one of the key metrics
and how many web pages
are being developed was another metric,
which meant that people were building out webpages.
And it's hard to look back and think, wow,
that was actually a KPI.
So internet users and webpages where the two proxies
'cause then search engines came out
and everything else happened.
So I got to ask you, there are people watching,
they're seeing it on commercials on TV,
they're seeing it everywhere
stadiums are named after crypto companies.
So, the bottom line is people want to know
how NFT domains take the fear out of working with crypto
and sending crypto.
>> Yeah, absolutely, so imagine we had to navigate the web
using IP addresses rather than typing in Google.com.
You'd have to type in a random string of numbers
that you'd had to memorize.
That would be super painful for users and internet
wouldn't have gotten to where it is today
with almost 5 billion people online.
The history of computer networks
we have human readable naming systems built on top
in every single instance, it's almost crazy
that we got to a $2 trillion asset class
with 250 million users worldwide.
13 years after the Satoshi white paper,
without a human readable naming system
other Unstoppable Domains in a few of our competitors,
that's a fundamental problem that we need to solve
in order to go from 250 million crypto users in 2022
to 5 billion crypto users a decade from now.
>> And just to point out, not to look back
and maybe make a correlation but I will,
if you look at the naming system of DNS,
what it did to IP addresses,
that's one major innovation that enabled the web.
Then you look at what keyword navigation has done
on top of DNS, what that did for the industry,
and that basically birthed Google keywords basically ads.
So that's trillions and trillions of dollars.
Again, now shifting to you guys, is that how you see it?
Obviously it's decentralized, so what's different?
Okay, I get, so if you compare here Google was successful,
keyword advertising industry
for the last of 25 years or 20 years.
>> What's different now is? >> yeah
>> Yeah, what's different now
is the technology inflection points.
So Blockchains have evolved to a point where they enable
high throughput high transaction volume
and true decentralized ownership.
The NFTs standard, which is only a couple years old,
has taken off massively around trading of profile pictures
like crypto punks and the Board Apes Yacht Club
where the use cases extend much more than just
a cool JPEG that goes up in value
two or three X year over year.
There is a true use case here around ownership of identity
ownership over data, a decentralized login authentication
and permission data sharing.
One of the sad things that happened on the internet
the last decade really was, that the platforms built out
have now allowed developers to build
on top of them in a trustless comissionless way.
Developers who built applications on top of them,
the early monopolies in the last decade,
got the rules changed on them.
APIs cut off, new fees instituted.
That's not going to happen in Web3
because all permission list.
Once an NST is minted, it's custody in a user's own wallet,
we cannot take the way it will continue to exist
in eternity, regardless of what happens
to Unstoppable Domains, which gives developers
a lot more confidence in building new products
for the Web3 identity standard that we're building out.
>> You know what's amazing is that's a whole
another generational shift.
I've always been a big fan of abstractions when innovation
is needed when there are problems that need to be solved,
messes to be cleaned up, a good abstraction layer
on top of new architecture is really, really phenomenal.
I guess the key question for I have for you is,
theCUBE we have all this video where's our NFT
how should we implement NFTs?
>> There's a couple different ways you could think about it,
you could do proof of attendance protocol NFTs,
which are really interesting way for users to show
that they were at particular event.
So just in the same way that people
collect T-shirts from conferences,
people will be collecting NFTs to show they were attending
in person cultural moments or that they were part
of an event online or offline.
You could do NFTs for our employees to show
that they were at your company during certain periods
of the company's growth.
So think of replacing their resume
with a cryptographically secure resume
like this on the Blockchain and perpetuity.
Now more than half of all resumes contain lies,
which is a pretty gnarly problem as a hiring manager
that we constantly have to sort through.
There's where that this can impact
that side of the market as well.
>> That's awesome, and I think this is a use case
for everything we appreciate that.
And of course we can have the most favorite cube moments,
it can be a cube host NFT at Board Apes out there.
Why not have a board cube host going on and then..
>> We're an auction for charity and OpenSea.
>> All right, great stuff,
now let's get into some of the cool tech nerd stuff,
which is really the login piece
which I think is fascinating.
The having NFTs be a login mechanism
is another great innovation, okay.
So this is cool, 'cause it's like think of it
as one click NFTs, if you will.
What's the response been on this login with Unstoppable
for that product?
What's some of the use cases, can you get some examples
of the momentum intraction?
>> Yeah, absolutely, so we launched a product
less than 90 days ago and we already have 90 committed
or integrated partners live today with a login product.
And this replaces login with Google, login with Facebook
with a way that it's user owned and user controlled.
And over time people will be attaching additional
information back to their NFT domain name,
such as their reputation, their history,
things they've done online and be able to permission
to share that with applications that they interact with
in order to gain rewards.
Once you own all of your data,
and you can choose who you shared with .
Companies will incentivize you to share data.
For example, imagine you just buy a new house
and you have 3000 square feet to furnish.
If you could tell that fact and prove it,
to a company like Wayfair,
would they be incentivized to give you discounts?
We're spending 10, 20, $30,000
and you'll do all of your purchasing there
rather than spread across other e-commerce retailers.
For sure they would, but right now
when you go to that website,
you're just another random email address.
They have no idea who you are, what you've done,
what your credit score is,
whether you're a new house buyer or not.
But if you could permission to share that using
a log and installable product,
I mean the web would just be much much different.
>> And I think one of the things too,
as these, I call them analog old school companies,
old guard companies as referred to in theCUBE talk here.
But we always call that old guard
as the people who aren't innovating.
You could think about companies having more community too,
because if you have more sharing
and you have this marketplace concept
and you have these new dynamics
of how people are working together,
sharing will provide more or transparency
but yet security on identity.
Therefore things are going to be happening organically.
That's a community dynamic what's your view on that?
And what's your reaction.
>> Communities are such an important part
of Web3 and the cryptos ecosystem in general.
People are very tightly knit, they all support each other.
There there's a huge amount of collaboration in this space
because we're all trying to onboard
the next billion users into the ecosystem.
And we know we have some fundamental challenges
and problems to solve,
whether it's complex wallet addresses,
whether it's the lack of portable data sharing,
whether it's just simple education, right?
I'm sure, tens of million of people
have gone to crypto for the first time
during this year's Super Bowl
based on some of those awesome ads they ran.
>> Yeah, love the QR code, that's a direct response.
I remember when the QR codes been around for a long time.
I remember in the late 90's,
it was a device at red QR code
that did navigation to a webpage.
So I mean, QR codes are super cool,
great way to get, and we all using it too with the pandemic
to ordering food.
So I think QR codes are here to stay,
in fact, we should have a QR code on all of our images
here on the screen too.
So we'll work on that,
but I got to ask you on the project side,
now let's get into the devs and kind of the applications,
the users that are adopting unstoppable
and this new way of things.
Why are they gravitating towards this login concept?
Can you give some examples and give some color commentary
to why are these D-application, distributed application,
dApps guys and gals programming with you guys?
>> Yeah, they all believe that the potential
for what we're trying to create around
user own controlled identity.
Where the only company in the market right now
with a product that's live and working today.
There's been a lot of promises made,
and we're the first ones to actually delivered.
So companies like Cook Finance for example,
are seeing the benefit of being able to have their users,
go through a simple process to check in and authenticate
into the application using your NFT domain name
rather than having to create an email address
and password combination as a login,
which inevitably leads to problems such as lost passwords,
password resets, all those fun things
that we used to deal with on a daily basis.
>> Okay, so now I got to ask you the kind of partnerships
you guys are looking at doing.
I can only imagine the old school days
you had a registry and you had registrars,
you had a sales mechanism.
I noticed you guys are selling NFT
kind of like domain names on your website.
Is that a kind of a current situation,
is that going to be ongoing?
How do you envision your business model evolving
and what kind of partnerships do you see coming along?
>> Yeah, absolutely, so we're working
with a lot of different companies from browsers
to exchanges, to wallets, to individual NFT projects,
to more recently even exploring
partnership opportunities with fashion brands for example.
Monetarily, market is moving so so fast.
And what we're trying to essentially do here is create
the standard naming system for Web3.
So a big part of that for us will be working with partners
like blockchain.com and with Circle,
who's behind the USDC coin on creating registry
such as .blockchain and .coin and making those available
to tens of millions and ultimately hundreds of millions
and billions of users worldwide.
We want an Unstoppable domain name to be the first asset
that every user in crypto gets even before they buy
their Bitcoin, Ethereum or Dogecoin.
>> It makes a lot of sense to abstract
the way the long hexa desal stream we all know,
that we all write down, put in a safe,
hopefully we don't forget about it.
I always say, make sure you tell someone
where your address is.
So in case something happens,
you don't lose all that crypto.
All good stuff.
I got to ask this the question around the ecosystem.
Okay, can you share your view and vision
of either yourself or the company
when you have this kind of new market,
you have all kinds of, we meant the web
was a good example, right?
Web pages, you need to web develop and tools.
You had HTML by hand, then you had all these tools.
So you had tools and platforms
and things kind of came well grew together.
How is the Web3 stakeholder ecosystem space evolving?
What are some of the white spaces?
What are some of the clearly defined areas
that are developing?
>> Yeah, I mean, we've seen explosion
in new smart contract blockchains
in the past couple of years, actually going live,
which is really interesting because they support a huge
number of different use cases, different trade offs on each.
We recently partnered and moved over a primary
infrastructure to Polygon,
which is a leading EVM compatible smart chain,
which allows us to provide free gas fees to users
for minting and managing their domain name.
So we're trying to move all obstacles around user adoption.
Here you'll need to have Ethereum in your wallet
in order to be an Unstoppable Domains customer or user,
you don't have to worry about paying transaction fees
every time you want to update the wallet addresses
associated with your domain name.
We want to make this really big and accessible for everybody.
And that means driving down costs as much as possible.
>> Yeah, it's a whole nother wave.
It's a wave that's built on the shoulders of others.
It's a shift in infrastructure,
new capabilities, new applications.
I think it's a great thing
you guys do in the naming system,
makes a lot of sense.
It abstraction layer creates that ease of use,
it simplifies things, makes things easier.
I mean was the promise of these abstraction layer.
Final question, if I want to get involved,
say we want to do a CUBE NFT with Unstoppable,
how do we work with you?
How do we engage?
Can you give a quick plug on what companies can do to engage
with you guys on a business level?
>> Yeah, absolutely, so we're looking to partner
with wallet exchanges, browsers and companies
who are in the crypto space already
and realize they have a huge problem around usability
with crypto transfers and wallet addresses.
Additionally, we're looking to partner
with decentralized applications
as well as Web2 companies who perhaps
want to offer logging with Unstoppable domain functionality.
In addition to, or in replacement of the login with Google
and login with Facebook buttons that we all know and love.
And we're looking to work with fashion brands and companies
in the sports sector who perhaps want to claim
their Unstoppable name, free of charge from us.
I might add in order to use that on Twitter
or in other marketing materials
that they may have out there in the world
to signal that they're not only forward looking,
but that they're supportive of this huge waves
that we're all riding at the moment.
>> Matt, great insight, chief revenue officer,
Unstoppable Domains.
Thanks for coming on the showcase,
theCUBE and Unstoppable Domains share in the insights.
Thanks for coming on.
>> Thank you.
>> Okay, this CUBE's coverage here
with the Unstoppable Domain showcase.
I'm John Furrier, your host,
thanks for watching.
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