One area of tech that has been centralized for a very long time now is domain name services. Web hosting companies have centralized servers used to store domain names and provide other name services for customers. As blockchain technology is disrupting many sectors, one project is trying to decentralize domain name hosting. The project is called Unstoppable domains. Here is why it is a cool thing for Web3 projects.
Domain name services as it is today
As a project owner, one of the first things to do is to put your work online - register a domain name. There are many companies offering domain name registration. In addition to that, they provide a host of other services related to domain management such as domain parking, redirects, etc. While these domain name providers generally do great jobs, you might want to consider the following challenges with their service:
Control: Your domain is completely managed by these companies - a central body. There is a lot of censorship in this style. They determine when your website is online or offline. The government for example can order them to put your website offline, and they dont need your consent to do it. If you default in payments or is found wanting in other areas, your website could be turned off.
Privacy: There is little to no privacy with most domain name services today. It is easy to see that in the way the domains are set up and managed. When a user pays for domain name hosting, they actually rented a space on the server machine. There are hundreds or perhaps thousands of many others using the same server. This exposes your data to intruders. Even if you pay for a special domain protection, your domain is still on a publicly shared server and anything could happen.
Down time: Projects hosted on centralized servers typically experience many technical challenges such as server downtime. When this happens, your web project is put offline. Technical issues from the domain name service force websites to go offline and this could adversely affect the business and all users that depend on it.
With the above and many other challenges, we really need domain name services that are hosted on the blockchain. Unstoppable domains is leading the charge to provide blockchain based domain name hosting and related services. Consider why this is cool.
Exploring Unstoppable domains
Unstoppable domains bring a lot of opportunities to domain name services by offering domain hosting on the blockchain. This unlocks all the benefits of blockchain technology that a web3 project would love to have. Instead of storing domain names on central servers around the world, Unstoppable domains put it on the blockchain on decentralized computers where safety, privacy and absolute control are all but guaranteed.
Web3 domain names are ERC-721 tokens hosted on the Ethereum Mainnet and the Polygon Networksource
As you can see above, Unstoppable domains offer domain name services on two very popular blockchains - Ethereum and Polygon. This makes it possible to enjoy lots of blockchain features and tools that are not popular in centralized domain name services. Consider the following:
Blockchain features of Unstoppable domains
These are some web3 features that come with Unstoppable domains services which any blockchain enthusiast will be proud of:
blockchain name extensions: Unstoppable domains offer crypto and blockchain name extensions so that your web3 projects will have appropriate names that reflect the system. Such extensions include .crypto, .blockchain, .web3, .nft, .dao, and many others. You are free to register your domain names with these extensions.
Blockchain Dapps integration: With one click, you can integrate hundreds on blockchain tools and features into your web project. That includes web3 wallets like trust wallet, Metamask, MyEtherWallet, and many others. The service list 849 blockchain integrations covering wallets, browsers, analytics tools and many others. It also supports crypto tokens/coins mostly across Ethereum and Polygon blockchains.
Crypto address mapping: Your domain name could be your crypto wallet address. This makes it easy to use human readable wallet address instead of the complex alpha-numeric characters that wallet addresses are know for.
Not part of DNS: Your domain hosted by Unstoppable domains is not part of any Domain name System. It is fully decentralized and hosted on the blockchain.
Domain name parking: Register multiple domains and point them to a single domain. This is available with unstoppable domain.
Mint NFTs: You can mint NFTs as one of the services provided by Unstoppable domains. There are tools for that and even a marketplace too on the platform.
Why host domains on the blockchain?
Control and Ownership: Domains hosted on a blockchain does not stay in centralized servers managed by different organizations. Hence, the domain management and ownership is fully in the hands of the person that registered it. Blockchain-hosted domain names are censorship-resistant. No government can stop the domain and no individual has the power to do that. The owner has full control of the domain.
Blockchain integrations: As you have seen above, Unstoppable domains allows close to 1000 integrations of blockchain tools, wallets, browsers and many other features. This makes development of web3 websites easy and less costly.
Human readable wallet addresses: This is a cool feature. Crypto wallet addresses are usually long alpha-numeric text which is difficult to memorize. Unstoppable domains makes it easy by allowing the domains to be mapped with wallet addresses. As such, a user could simply send crypto to that domain name since it doubles as the wallet address too. I see value here for organizations that wish to accept crypto payments on their platform. User could easily send crypto to xyz.crypto instead of to a long wallet address as we know it today.
No downtimes: Have you ever visited a website and you are met with "Server not found" error message? That happens often because the domain service provided could have taken the domain offline due to default in payments, or due to technical challenges with the server. Unstoppable domains and other blockchain domain services are decentralized in nature. Since the services is hosted on distributed systems, it cannot be affected by server downtimes. If one computer is down, several others are up and running.
Conclusion
The benefits of domain names hosted on the blockchain are many. Unstoppable domains are doing a great job. I hope that many other blockchain domain name services will come, improve on already existing features and even offer more. With time, all domain names will be fully blockchain-based.