Harmony is developing a maketplace, called RADICAL, specialized for domain names as nonfungible tokens (NFT). First examples are Web2 Internet domains like .com and .xyz. Second are Web3 crypto names like Ethereum Name Services or ENS for .eth, Unstoppable Domains or UD for .x, as well as ONE Names or 1N for .1. Third are Web2+Web3 native NFT under Top-Level Domain (TLD) .country such as harmony.country + harmony.1 (or even 🏵️.country + 🏵️.1).
These NFT are abstract for many applications to interpret and interoperate. More examples: Nouns (concept words), Loot (adventure items), emojis, timeslots, and locations (latitude + longitude numbers).
☎️ Web3 stack for Web2 domains
- Onchain marketplace with auctions, trading, analytics
- Anonymous payment, custody, escrow and messaging
- Enriched attributes of chain ID, wallet address, reputation
🥇 Sustainable Economy for Web2+3 domains
- Demand-based fair tax against unused resources
- Open development with onchain and quadratic governance
- Billion domains under .country as nonfungible tokens (NFT)
Soulbound but FAIR price? Radical Rent & Quadratic Tax
Collaborators: Aaron Li, Zi Wang, Ganesha Upadhyaya, Leo Chen, Elaine Wang, Ope. (Liang Wu)
Harmony’s Top-Level Domain .country
Internet & Crypto Names for Web2 & Web3
Key features for all .country domains
- can serve a generic page for all unused domains.
- can impose arbitrarily high renewal fees ($100k) for existing owners.
- can impose arbitrarily short renewal periods (1 week) for new owners.
- can directly connect with crypto wallets for domain auctions.
- can sell and propagate new domain records to root servers within a minute.
- can deploy Vitalik’s demand-based (from open bidders) recurring fees for ENS.
Scale to host 10 billion domains (not subdomains) as NFT
- for all phone numbers.
- for most smart contract addresses.
- for most latitude-longitude location pairs.
Web2 + Web3 native domains
- National ID in islands like Palau (via Metropolis).
- Integrations with other top-level domains: .cv (resume), .hiv.
- Integrations with other vertical domains: country.one, 1.map.com.
Market & Mechanism Designs
/w=640,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
How to sustain an economy of nonfungible resources such as land assets, domain names, or social ranks? What are the optimal parameters with demand-based recurring fees or single land value tax as radical solutions? Can price, tax and rent be FAIR to all 3-body of owner, renter and stakers?
Harmony’s goal is develop economics games that are fully onchain and sustainable for more than 100K users and $100M assets in years. Our focus is building a platform-native marketplace for domain names with .country (Internet Top-Level Domain, TLD, with native Web2 integration), music creator NFT with merchandises, and onchain board games with lands.
Let’s explore Vitalik Buterin’s fee proposal on Ethereum Name Service (ENS), Lars Doucet’s tax proposal on game lands, and Will’s onchain proposal on 18xx board games.
Ethereum Name Service (ENS)
Other Name Protocols
Industry Leaders
Established one of the world’s leading gTLD registry operators with a leadership team of internet visionaries. Launched 10 new international domain endings, .including .xyz, and managed day-to-day business development, marketing, operations, and sales with 100+ international registrars and resellers. In less than 4 years, over 2 million domains were under management across 180+ registrars in 200+ countries and territories. High-profile registrants included Google (ABC.xyz), MIT (Engine.xyz), and HBO (Hooli.xyz). (Shayan Rostam)
.png&w=32&q=90){kind=small}
What’s in a (Domain) Name? The $2 Billion Secondary Market for Dot-Com Domains – BCG
Challenges with Alternative Name Systems - ICANN Office of the Chief Technology Officer
$8.1bn - Web Domain Name Sales in the US Market Size in 2022 2.2% - Web Domain Name Sales in the US Market Size Growth in 2022 4.1% - Web Domain Name Sales in the US Annualized Market Size Growth 2017–2022
Abstract NFT
Market Analysis
Ethereum Name Service (ENS) wraps up the top 10 with its consistent ~$4 million monthly fees from renting customizable address names to Ethereum users.Finally, the 100% take rates used by ENS and MetaMask make them stand out from the rest of the top revenue-producing protocols. As mentioned above, ENS has a stable source of revenue: so long as Ethereum users desire customized Ethereum address mappings, the protocol will generate consistent revenue. Given that each ENS address is a unique NFT, it’s likely that holders will continue paying rent for their desired names to ensure they can always retain access to them.
ENS and MakerDAO represent the two most profitable token-based protocols in the last 30 days. Both protocols enjoy organic demand thanks to their early creation (both launched in 2017) and single-sided business models. Most other protocols employ some form of a two-sided marketplace that require either a supply or demand side to be bootstrapped with token incentives. Instead, ENS and MakerDAO supply naming services and leverage directly to their users, thereby avoiding the cost of incentivizing the supply side of their businesses.
Quarterly NFT Market Report - NonFungible.com
Pantera recently led Unstoppable’s $65M Series A round at a $1B valuation alongside Mayfield, Gaingels, Alchemy Ventures, Redbeard Ventures… Unstoppable has generated over $80M in sales since their launch in late 2019.… creator economy, where proof of identity is important for token-gated communities and artist-fan interactions. In the education sector, universities are beginning to work with Unstoppable for students to store certifications, diplomas, and course completion certifications in their domain names. Domains may also be able to store healthcare data to streamline the doctor-patient relationship and consolidate medical data in one accessible place.
paradigm.eth was the first priciest domain name ever sold. The domain was named after a well-known crypto venture capital firm and was sold for 420 ETH… domains such as Business.com have been sold for $345 million.On April 26, a domain name 914.eth sold for 2 ETH, which marked the beginning of the ENS trading volume explosion. Four-digit names including 0115.eth (0.115 ETH), 0589.eth (0.16 ETH), 7304.eth (0.199 ETH), and 9283.eth (0.2 ETH) rose in transactions much more frequently and further drove up the prices. Then again, April 27 to April 30 saw another two transactions closed with exorbitant prices: 9559.eth (0.99 ETH) and 2049.eth (1 ETH).
This past spring [in 2019], one of our Ecosystem Grant Awardees, Unstoppable Domains, raised $4 million in a Series A funding round. With the team’s emphasis on solving one of the most critical user experience issues in the industry today with their human-readable domain names, we were excited to partner with them again for a $250,000 .zil grant program. Aimed at wallets and exchanges, this grant program will be essential in making blockchain domains a new industry standard, no longer hindering newcomers from entering the space.
Web2 Domains
Sedo has been operating since 2001 and with over 18 million domains listed, Sedo is one of the world’s largest domain marketplaces. The site itself reaches around 2 million visitors per month but they also promote your domain across a large number of partner sites. Listing your domain name for sale with Sedo is free but you pay a commission between 10 and 20% when your domain name sells.Afternic. This platform was founded in 1999 and listing more than five million domain names available for sale and handling more than 75 million domain searches each month – Afternic is a force to be reckoned with. This marketplace is owned by GoDaddy which is where it gets its big advantage over similar sites. When you list your domain name for sale at Afternic it will also show up as a premium domain when people will search for it on the GoDaddy.com website. Listing a domain name on Afternic is free but you pay 20% commission for a successful sale.
Services such as Sci-Hub are constantly changing domains because governing bodies seize and censor them. The FBI famously seized the top three largest poker domains. JotForm had its domain seized for three days in 2012. A hacker took control of all .io domains by registering the domain of a name server that the registry let expire.
There are also numerous examples of individuals losing access to domains for political reasons. Recently, 81,000 UK-owned .eu domains were suspended when the Brexit transition ended, and the Spanish government seized the .cat TLD registry and deleted domains promoting a referendum for Catalina to declare itself independent from Spain.
Finally, there are multiple services around domain names (e.g., escrow services, domain name marketplaces, etc.) in which you need to trust other organizations as middlemen. If any of these middlemen are compromised, you can easily lose control of your domains.
Web3 Names
National Integration
Known as Root Name System (RNS), the sovereign-backed digital residency program is being marketed as a first of its kind in the world and open to anyone anywhere for a modest US$248 per person.According to its developers, once approved, users receive a government-issued ID, both in the form of a physical card and digitally on the blockchain in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT). As an NFT, the RNS ID forms the foundation for legal identity and verification on chain and because it is state-issued, the ID is valid for any identification requirement, such as KYC (Know Your Customer).
/w=32,quality=90,fit=scale-down){kind=logo}
/w=640,quality=90,fit=scale-down){kind=logo}
Internet & Crypto Names for Web2 & Web3
Plural Identity
Domain name marketplaces
godaddy, sedo | ens, unstoppable, namesake
![godaddy.com Website Traffic, Ranking, Analytics [October 2022]](https://images.spr.so/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/j42No7y-dcokJuNgXeA0ig/b78d6b4e-fe8a-4955-9440-0dfdfd57b533/website_og/w=640,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
