Note: This is not financial advise and should not be treated as such
You might already know that Domain names is a big business, after all Voice.com was sold for $30 Million back in 2019.
There are people that invest in domain names as a speculation and if you had something like casino.com or hotels.com would would have also made your millions.
However, that market have saturated in present times with .com domains losing its popularity to the likes of .io domains.
But even if you had an awesome domain name with you, you will still need to pay annual fees to maintain that ownership (or lease, if you will). The Crypto.com was acquired in 1993 by Matt Blaze and sold in 2018 for $10 Million, that's 25 years of paying annual fees.
If you would have gotten in on the domain game in the early 90s you might not have made any profit for some years, moreover most likely you will not hit that great domain in one go. So imagine paying annual fees for ears on multiple domain names.
Enter Blockchain based Domain names.
As the name suggest they are essentially domain names on the blockchain.
Now as a Non-fungible token (NFT) they exist on a blockchain and can be easily transferred between domain, moreover since they are on the blockchain as a NFT they are decentralized can can't be shut down by censorship.
This is still in very early in development but with risk comes potential for rewards. This could be something that could have potential but never got off the ground or it could be the next big thing.
We all know that Web 3.0 is in development and these domains could potentials be a big part of it.
Currently there are the following domain extensions available:
.crypto
.zil
.eth
While .crypto and .zil are available from unstoppable domains and .eth from ENS
However, it should be noted that for ENS domain you will still be paying annual fees,
But with unstoppable domains you just make an one time payment and transfer it to your wallet as an NFT.
.crypto is on the Ethereum blockchain and .zil is on the Zilliqa
After you have brought your domain you would need to transfer it to your wallet as well, which would incur some fees.
At present there are 2 ways you can transfer these NFT, either by paying for the transfer (or Gas) fees or by buying a credit on the website.
unstoppable domains are working on a scalable solution for reducing this burden on the buyers which could come into affect by August 2021.
However, good domain names are getting snatched away by people quickly but still there could be a good one out there for you.
If you used this link then you will get $10 off their first purchase worth $40 or more.
Further, while not many websites are being build on these domains, there are still some live examples out there.
Currently most people are using them as single easy to remain address for receiving a wide variety if CryptoCurrencies.
Here are some of the live examples of some .crypto websites, that are at the time of writing this article are still working.
A simple pacman game website built by Ania Kubów.
The unstoppable domains also provide templates for simple by which many people set up there NFT gallery like:
Or just simply say "For Sell" with some contact details.
How can you view these websites yourself you will need either Unstoppable Blockchain Browser or the Unstoppable Chrome Extension.
What I recommend is using the Brave browser:
Just simply type in website domain name you want to view and you will be presented with the following screen
Simply click on "Proceed using Cloudflare server" and it will use the IPFS protocol to connect of the site over DNS.
It might not load in the first try just be patient and let it have some time, if nothing happens for some time just refresh and it should be displayed.
By the way IPFS stands for InterPlanetary File System (pretty cool, right)
So while it is hard to predict if this will be the next big thing, in my humble opinion something I would take a risk on since at present you can get fresh domains for $20 or $40
And if you Use this link then you will get $10 off their first purchase worth $40 or more.
