Transcript

(00:01) [Music] so hi everybody uh i’m andrew rosner and uh as jahan uh mentioned i am the ceo and founder of media options uh we are the world’s leading domain name brokerage firm since uh several years and uh are responsible for some of the world’s uh largest and most important domain sales including uh uh like you said zoom.

(00:33) com prime.com to amazonx.com to elon musk uh and just uh last week we sold nft.com which was a domain we owned uh we just brokered the sale of crypto.org uh to crypto.com and uh hundreds of millions of dollars in in additional domain sales i’m also the publisher of domainsherpa.com which is uh the legacy uh domain world’s uh leading educational and entertaining uh video podcast uh and i am very excited to be here with the handshake community uh of which i consider myself a member so i’d like to start out just kind of

(01:15) telling you guys a little bit about my journey in domain names my journey started in the late 90s um despite what jahan said there are there are quite a number of of people who are earlier in the domain game than me um but once i recognized uh what this industry was and could be uh i backed up the truck and i went all in and uh you know in the early days i uh i quickly realized because i i when i when i started to take it really seriously i realized that i was a little bit late i was sort of in the second or third wave

(01:49) and um i started uh media options as a domain name brokerage firm with the sole intent of creating cash flow in order to continuously acquire more domains for our owned and operated portfolio and that sort of continued to be the business plan till this day i you know today our business is a little bit more complex and uh i wear many hats uh you know i have a the domain investor hat where we own let’s say roughly six thousand domain names in uh on the legacy uh root zone uh primarily.

(02:24) com but uh we also uh have invested uh pretty heavily.org and some dot nets and you know at the end of the day i i do consider myself to be tld agnostic i basically am concerned about where can i make money you know and ultimately you can make money where there’s demand and um if you’ve got something that you think is the best thing in the world but nobody knows about it it’s actually worthless and so um i use that as a segue uh into how it came about being interested in handshake um i’ve got millions and millions of dollars

(03:06) invested into legacy domain names and i still consider them to be some of the most valuable investments in the world i think that domain names have a very even legacy tld domain names have a very bright future ahead of them and um i’d like to share with you sort of my thesis around my investments into handshake and other decentralized domain name protocols as well as sort of what i think the future might look like from my perspective um i’d like to start with what makes a domain name valuable and i think that we can we can discuss

(03:44) what’s made domain names valuable up to this point and then sort of theorize what could make decentralized domain names valuable in the future up to this point i think that if you boil down what makes a domain name valuable it ultimately comes down to utility and in the legacy internet the primary utility in my opinion um a fairly well informed opinion but my opinion is that uh the primary function of a domain name in terms of its value proposition is the continued reduction and perpetual discount on customer

(04:20) acquisition cost and so whether that’s for a blog or e-commerce it really doesn’t matter you’re just trying to get eyeballs or or a consumer you know whether that’s a reader whether that’s a consumer doesn’t matter it’s about attracting traffic to your website and ultimately that’s what a domain name is domain names are the first and to this day the only bridge between the physical world and the digital world and uh one of the things that’s been bothering me a lot lately as as the

(04:49) whole nft space has ex you know exploded um which i know very well as i said i just sold nft.com for a quite sizable uh sum and uh but it’s really been chapping my ass so to speak that you know i feel like the overall crypto space and the nft space and and and just the broader let’s say digital asset space isn’t recognizing that domain names are ultimately the original nft and i think we need to as a community turn that into a meme and uh and and just hammer the whole world with that domain names are the

(05:24) original nft um and why that’s so important is that i think one of the greatest problems that the nft space faces uh is this bridge this digital bridge how do you bridge the physical world in the digital world and i think domain names solve that problem that’s a topic for another day that i have a lot of thoughts on but um coming back to value this utility function is again what drives the value of a domain name and in the legacy route as i said that primary value proposition has been reducing the cost of customer

(05:56) acquisition and so what does that mean for the future of decentralized domain names um we don’t yet have a google uh i believe i i couldn’t tell you what offhand what it is but i believe there are there are uh you know um up and coming search functions and and and uh on the handshake blockchain but ultimately a domain name is a way of getting somebody with intent to the best solution for their intent whether that’s again commerce or information or whatever it might be and in one of the things that’s really

(06:36) exciting to me about the future of decentralized internet is the proposition that domain names increase in utility tremendously maybe by an order of magnitude or greater um i don’t know what the exact number is but i believe it’s roughly a billion people that own one or more domain names in the world today and i think that uh over the next 10 to 20 years with the advent of decentralized domain names and all that comes with that potentially i think that we will get close to uh the entire population at least the entire

(07:13) global population is connected to the internet will likely own a domain name and the reason for that is that i think that um the future of domain names and i’m probably telling my grandfather how to make babies here but the future of domain names is going to be far more than just a way of connecting somebody who has search intent with the solution to their intent and um i think that as we move into decentralized identity data storage wallets payments and the like um again we’re adding an order of magnitude

(07:52) increase in the utility of a domain name and thereby potentially the value and so i think um what we as a community need to focus on is that utility and um i think how do we get you know i i always like to ask what does winning look like and i think winning looks like you know burger king is has their you know corporate domain name on a decentralized blockchain be it handshake or any other and in order to get there i think the linchpin is of course browser adoption and then if we ask ourselves what is the greatest hurdle to browser adoption

(08:37) i think it’s perception which i think is something that maybe people miss in in the community from from from listening to other you know conversations and having conversations with people in the community i i think the greatest hurdle that we face and the number one challenge that we need to overcome is being seen um we need to be seen as innovators and not as a nuisance and i think um the key to that is uh self-governance and and and trademark abuse and and the way that we as a community deal with that i think that you know uh

(09:12) as a lot of people uh one of the things i’ve noticed in the in the handshake community is that you have and i i think this is incredible i love that we’re getting an entirely new pool of people into the domain name space because despite i i know that there’s sort of this radical belief in the in in all of the the decentralized domain spaces whether that’s unstoppable or handshake or ens doesn’t matter you have this sense of you know we are the future and um better tech better solution this is what makes sense and i agree

(09:48) with all of that but there are trillions of dollars in marketing advertising and tech spend um in the legacy root zone and with that comes a lot of power and um i think that we need to try and play nice with that community and i think that in the domain investor community or or the domain let’s say enthusiast community um i think we’re all one i think that it’s you know the legacy route demanders handshake demanders unstoppable dimensions i think that you know there’s strength in numbers and um i think that if we as a

(10:28) a more global community you know are focused on innovation and um and we self-govern our community to um let’s say make it easy for the late commerce latecombers are going to be the the incumbents right the late comers are going to be people with a vested interest in the root zone um including myself uh uh but luckily i’ve got an open enough mind to have seen this early on um as a threat and and which brings me sort of to my thesis um so just to sort of finalize that thought i know i’ve gone a little bit on a

(11:04) tangent there um i i do think that we as a community really need to be adamant about helping brands um to protect and obtain their decentralized domain name and not sort of uh use it as blackmail uh i i know obviously that it’s very tempting particularly in a decentralized domain name to say oh i’ve got dot ibm and you know i’m going to hold them over the coals and this is decentralized so the udrp doesn’t work and all these legal mechanisms that they would generally use to you know uh be the arbiter of of of good faith

(11:43) here um they’re useless but that is um that’s a good thing um you know uh which i’ll get to in my thesis in a second but it’s also a bad thing because it will very quickly lead to the powers that be meaning the brands and the lobbying agencies and the government and the regulatory bodies um seeing us as a nuisance and so if we don’t self-govern the community around trademark abuse and trademark infringement um and content to an extent um i i do fear that we will never get the browser adoption

(12:20) that’s required in order to get mainstream adoption and so i i would be very laser focused as a community on that objective i think that you know if browser adoption is the linchpin to mainstream adoption in the future i think if we ask ourselves you know what are the hurdles to achieving that um i think this is the main one and i think that if we can as a community come together to you know overcome that that hurdle uh i think that we have an extremely bright future and that leads me to my thesis and so my thesis is i’ve got

(12:55) a tremendous amount of resources tied up in this legacy domain portfolio which again i believe will continue to appreciate value i think that the future um you know looks like a merger of the the current legacy root zone i’m not going to say that it’s you know low-hanging fruit i’m not saying to say that this is obvious or easy by any stretch of the imagination but i do think that simply because decentralized root zone is better tech it’s a better philosophy um it’s more equitable and it stays off some of the uh you know

(13:31) objections and and um opportunities for corruption that that may exist in the legacy uh route and so um i’m very excited about the future of a decentralized internet i’m very excited about the future of decentralized domain names i look at this so i’m an investor in unstoppable domains i’m a very active investor in in handshake domains i’m sort of placing bets around the decentralized internet and i look at this as an insurance policy for myself personally because of my legacy investments in in domain names i see this as an

(14:13) insurance policy against you know future disruption but i also see it as an opportunity i see it as an opportunity for innovation i see it as an opportunity to sort of fulfill what i’ve always believed to be um the promise of domain names which is that bridge between the real world and the digital world and as more and more of our lives and more and more of global commerce moves to that digital world those bridges become more and more important and i think that people are not necessarily clear about the potential of domain

(14:45) names and i think that when we dig into what can be done with these things you know it it’s pretty remarkable i mean um i think that you know in the future you know every whether it’s digital art you know everything that these nfts represent will be tied to a domain name and the reason for that is that it just increases its utility it increases um you know what how you interact with these things um and so um [Music] i’m investing in handshake domain names um both as an insurance policy um against you know when i say the

(15:30) insurance policy i think you know markets are forward-looking and so the moment that the mainstream the moment that you know the brand lobbies the moment that the the the legal world around intellectual property recognizes that that a decentralized alternative may be the future not will be but but even maybe that uncertainty will immediately impact you know the the the legacy domain system and the value of those domains now where i see a bright future is that i think that at some point in time i can uh or the powers you know it’s meant to

(16:07) be a grassroots you know bottom-up organism organization and when i think the community recognizes how much better this tech stack is um i i do believe that the legacy internet will migrate to a decentralized alternative now that may be handshake that may be on something else but i think that what handshake has going for that is really exciting and the reason i’m here today is its community and it’s incredible i mean the handshake community is just incredible it really is on twitter on the forums you know the conversations

(16:40) i’m having with some of the people in the space you know i had people you know just donating me and saying hey look i got your you know andrew your dad andrew rosner you know your uh your your company names you know people just giving them to me because i said you know we’re so excited to have you in the community and you know people are looking out for each other and that’s awesome um so uh i i i lost my train of thought there um but the the community is ultimately what is going to drive adoption and so it really is very

(17:13) exciting to be a part of this community and um uh you know i i think i wanted to sort of um we’ll go into a q a i actually wanted to i was supposed to mention that at the beginning but we’ll have a minute for uh uh some q a at the end of this but i wanted to make one observation and that observation is um that one of the things i’ve noticed in the community is is a mistake what i perceive to be a mistake and i’m not you know the the final authority on these things and and we don’t know how the future will

(17:46) evolve but i think that a lot of people are making a mistake about you know um left of the dot and right of the dot and what goes to the left of the dot doesn’t necessarily make a great tld meaning what makes a traditional domain name uh the sld the sld is the part that goes to the left of the dot and the tld is the part that goes to the right of the dot and so what makes a great domain name on the left of the dot doesn’t necessarily make a great tld and so when you’re making investments and you’re evaluating

(18:18) you know what handshake domains to buy um i wanted to point out to people that you know you should be thinking about keywords and acronyms and things that lend themselves to um subdivision okay and and so one one of the early domain names that i own that i always loved that i think is a great example of this is mushrooms so i used to own mushrooms.

(18:44) com and i always liked mushrooms because i thought it lended itself great to sub domains and i think that the most valuable domains in the world are the ones that lend themselves to that sub domain and um because each subdomain represents an entirely new category or business and so you know if you take dot mushrooms for example and we say you know let’s say dot mushrooms i was in the auction and i actually missed the end of it so probably one of you owns dot mushrooms dot mushrooms uh if you think about dot mushrooms you can have portobello dot

(19:13) mushrooms oyster dot mushrooms magic dot mushrooms you can have you know an endless number of varieties of mushrooms eat dot mushrooms calls to action all different kinds of things um and that makes a great tld uh dot insurance right you’ve got car dot insurance auto dot insurance health dot insurance buy dot insurance find dot insurance quotes dot insurance lots of things that lend themselves to sub domains if you take like uh i don’t know red apple okay uh for example we own redapple.

(19:50) com red apple does not lend itself to sub domains right dot apple could lend itself to sub domains um you know obviously that’s going to be a brand tld for for apple but let’s ignore that for a second you know dot apple would be like dot mushrooms you could have red dap red dot apple yellow.

(20:08) apple eat dot apple you know whatever maybe not apples is even easier even better in this case but um red apple doesn’t lend itself to being a sub domain it doesn’t lend itself to being a tld you know what do you put to the left of the dot if you have red apple to the right of the dot right and so um i’m not saying that it can’t be done and if you’re a brand called red apple then you could use dot red apple uh as a brand tld you could have home.

(20:39) red apple and shop.red apple and products.red apple and so i’m not saying that it’s you know a horrible thing but you’re relying on somebody being called red apple to come along and say i want to own my brand tld and you know if we evaluate so first and foremost that sort of lends itself to this self-governance you know it sort of butts heads with this idea of self-governance in the community around um you know having people um uh uh let’s say proactively not infringe on trademarks um and then secondly uh you know it’s

(21:16) really a lottery ticket you you’re relying on a company being called red apple wanting to own their decentralized tld and so um you know you can make that bet but it’s a longer bet than something like adopt mushrooms which is going to have universal appeal to anybody that’s in that business and or that just wants to adopt mushrooms as a brand and so i have always focused on you know my investment thesis in in the legacy domain names in this area of domain names um has always been i want broad appeal the broader the

(21:52) appeal the better the more potential use cases the better the more utility the better the more things that lend itself to the left of the dot the better these are all the things that are going to drive value and so i think it’s really important when you’re evaluating your your you know um uh domain investment decisions it’s really important to focus on does this make sense to the right of the dot does this lend itself to lots of alternatives on the left of the dot for example last names um i know you know jahan is is particularly

(22:28) interested in in you know family names and um you know having that to the right of the dot makes a lot of sense there are going to be endless numbers of people with a different first name that lends itself to the left of the dot now i own drew.com and i love having drew.com um but i also really like to own rosener.

(22:51) com and i’ve never been with a guy the guy that owns it just simply won’t sell it to me he’s like a local politician and he uses it and he won’t sell it to me but having dot rosener which i do have in in handshake um is even better because it lends itself to andrew.rosner or drew.rosner or i can have any of my family name you know family members can have their own domain name at dot rosner and they can have their own email address at dot rosner and um and that has far more utility than dot if you have it please contact me if you’d like to sell

(23:24) it uh dot andrew as well but uh actually i might have gotten that one no i don’t think so so um what i’m trying to just explain is is you know a sort of a thought process around you know the evaluation of these things because i am seeing a lot of people spending a lot of money on things that would be awesome to the left of the dot but don’t necessarily lend themselves to being on the right of the dot and so i just want you know the more success everybody in the community has the more successful handshake is going to be have

(23:56) and so it’s i think it’s just really good if if you know people are taking a strategic approach to their investment decisions in the handshake and um yeah with that uh i don’t know do we want to turn it over to a q a yeah sure let’s do it i know i’m a few minutes short of uh um the expected time frame here but i feel like this may be some good questions from the audience yeah i might be my connection um my connection so okay so there was a question here it says does the insurance policy perspective apply to icann tld owners

(24:44) claiming their reserved hms tlds and the alexa top 100 reserved list claims do you think there are any good objections to claiming so um does it i can’t tell the owner is claiming the reserve i shouldn’t steal these so um yeah i mean i think um okay so this brings up a good point so i i think this cannot be over emphasized the idea of name collisions is the single most important concept games in general um at the end of the day the again the entire value proposition the entire utility of a domain name is connecting somebody’s intent with a

(25:37) destination and if you have two namespaces with the same tld then you’re forcing browsers to choose one or the other and there may not be consistency you know you may have you know let’s say the proper incumbent in the legacy name space you know has i don’t know let’s just say x y z um dot x y z and then somebody you know in in an alternative namespace like handshake unstoppable ens doesn’t matter uh has uh xyz as well and somebody goes out in the register abc.

(26:20) xyz which by the way happens to be the the parent company of google alphabet but if you have abc.xyz in uh the legacy space and you have uh you know icann governed tld and you have uh abc.xyz as a handshake domain which currently cannot exist because as you mentioned you know these legacy tlds were all reserved um thankfully um but in the future when icann opens up a new round of tld applications that’s when we are going to be facing potential for uh name collisions and so um i think it is important for uh legacy tld holders to come in and

(27:01) claim their decentralized alternative and i think that forward-thinking tld owners would be well served to do so and open it up to people who want to experiment with some of the um potential opportunities that decentralized alternatives offer that the legacy root zone doesn’t or or is at least more complicated in the legacy root zone such as payments and wallets i mean i think it would be awesome that if i get a you know dot horse uh domain name you know if i you know let’s say i’ve got a you know investment

(27:34) firm it’s called black horse right and i want to have black dot horse and uh uh that’s great and i’ve got my home page at black.horse on the legacy route uh but i want to be able to accept crypto payments and so now i’ve you know dot horse has gone in and they’ve claimed their horse on the handshake tld and so now uh because i own block.black.

(27:54) horse that allows me to get my decentralized you know equivalent and so i’ve got black.horse on the h and s hinge uh h blockchain and now you can send me payments to my uh uh to my you know black dot horse uh wallet and uh that can be my uh uh you know uh online identity and i can use it in ways that i can’t use the sort of legacy domain and so i think that that’s you know a tremendous opportunity for legacy root uh again it’s also a cautionary tale for the community in the handshake space that you know

(28:32) be very careful we need to be very prudent about name collisions going forward and um [Music] you know that could be um you know the greatest threat i think to um the future of any of these alternatives um is is naming collisions so we have to be very prudent about it um but yeah let’s see let’s go on to another um sorry i had some tech issues but i’m trying to help you out with the questions so um so um okay what’s your favorite blockchain domain extension that’s a great great question um let’s see so my favorite one that we own

(29:21) is dot escrow um i think that dot escrow is a really exciting um opportunity for the future of sort of decentralized trade um particularly you know when it comes to digital assets um escrow becomes somewhat irrelevant right you have smart contracts that allow for sort of um you know uh simultaneous swaps of of you know whether it’s uh currency or another digital asset for an equivalent digital asset so um but when you talk about non-digital assets and the ability to create um you know uh decentralized escrow sort of um

(30:02) um uh let’s say touchless escrow so to speak um a decentralized escrow alternative is is pretty exciting so i’m so i’m i think that’s probably the favorite one that i own in terms of the ones that i sort of wish i had gotten dot mushrooms is up there just more you know yeah it’s up there well not because it’s the most valuable just because of as a personal reasons it’s uh it’s um a subject i’m i’m quite uh fond of so uh moving on to another question what are your thoughts on domain names in

(30:41) other languages uh you if you go to domainsherpa.com forward slash sailor s-a-y-l-o-r you’ll see a a three hour or so two two and a half three hour interview that i did with michael saylor who’s become quite infamous in the crypto world because of his um extremely large investment in uh bitcoin and um his extraordinary dedication to bitcoin and uh and the bitcoin community and um uh back before he became a ubiquitous name in the crypto world um he was uh a hardcore domain investor uh to an extent and um i would say

(31:24) understood the value proposition of domain names um better than most or almost anyone and um there is an ex you know the the interview that i gave with him i would say is is sort of my uh crown achievement in terms of conversations that i’ve had in the domain uh space in my entire career and i would encourage everybody to go watch that and one of the points that was discussed at length in that interview was the idea of language and um i don’t remember exactly the numbers that he discussed but it’s in a a shocking amount of the

(31:57) of of the world’s commerce i want to say that it’s like 70 of the world’s commerce is conducted in english um and so um at the end of the day you know my experience you know uh is consistent with that that you know the vast majority of domain name sales that we’ve made in the aftermarket are in the english language um and so i would expect that trend to be the same in the decentralized domain space and um that’s not to say that alternative language domains are not valuable but um they’re not going to be as

(32:33) readily liquid and they’re not likely to be as valuable as uh english language simply because of the amount of commerce and the number of people worldwide who are connected to the internet and speak uh the english language as a first or second language um so andrew thanks for your great talk given how you feel about dot last names how do you feel about dot place name tlds um i like dot place names um you know i think you know having a dot new york adult chicago you know these are these are cool tlds they’re

(33:11) useful um again you know you run into some potential for uh name collisions in the future um but uh as well as you know some some of these tlds are already taken in you know i can legacy tlbs but uh um you know on a more micro level i i really like it i like place names you know i would caution people uh place names you know we call them geos in in the domain space we call them geo domains um they are um very enticing they’re sexy you know people get excited about them one of one of the ways that we um as humans

(33:49) identify ourselves is very much by place um and so place is a very important attribute um and it lends itself to value but one of the cautions that i will um you know uh say uh is that nobody to this day has really found a great way of monetizing um geo domains and so it’s it’s you know even some of the best geo domains in the world they continue to sort of turn over um you know we just sold iowa.

(34:24) com and uh you know i know that arizona.com just sold and california.com just sold and you know the thing is it’s very difficult to get your arms around these things and and monetize them and so um you know i i i like them i do and uh i’ve owned many geo domains um but i always end up sort of just letting them go when it when when a buyer comes along and wants it more than me because they’re ultimately difficult to develop and monetize um into a business but um but they make good domain names and uh they have a purpose particularly

(34:58) in the real estate world or in the in the news media world um okay another question um in between now and full browser adoption can’t handshake partner with common browser extensions like adblock where they can resolve handshake domains in addition to their function so that’s absolutely true um you know we’ve seen things come and go in the past though uh you know and they require people to do those types of integrations you know people just don’t do it you know people aren’t going except for the

(35:33) hardcore enthusiasts the people in the community itself nobody’s going to go and make that adjustment nobody’s going to add you know uh change their their their their their resolution ip be addressing their browser nobody’s gonna you know uh create you know get the add-ons it just it just doesn’t happen i mean just if history is is is um you know gonna dictate the future people just aren’t going to do it and so you know we don’t want to sort of rely on that we don’t want to sort of rest on our laurels of oh we you know

(36:06) all you got to do is use this resolver etc you we really need mainstream browser adoption in order for us to ever be able to sort of put our flag in the ground um and say okay we made it um in order to ever stop looking over your shoulder uh i think we need mainstream browser adoption i don’t think there’s any compromise that will suffice i think that without mainstream browser adoption at some point in the future um you know the project is a failure um what’s your opinion of emoji tlds you know i emojis are an interesting

(36:43) thing i i um i’ve owned a few i actually just recently sold the dot mushroom uh uh um no not dot mushroom sorry the mushroom dot ws uh domain name um for i don’t you know i think actually i wasn’t supposed to announce the price but you know pretty good amount and i was very excited about that it was the first emoji domain sale i’ve ever made not that i’ve i think i’ve only ever owned two emoji domains but um you know i i kind of like the idea of an emoji domain extension i think they’re really useful and

(37:19) cool and let’s say um meme worthy for social media um you know i do not see them as being a good alternative for a company name i don’t see them as being a good alternative for like sort of mainstream use but i do think that they have a place i do think that they can be utilized again in social media in marketing campaigns and so you know um uh advertising i i think that they have a place and they’re cute and they’re fun and they get people to take a thousand words and so if you know a really clever

(37:51) combination of emojis um can be really interesting um you know i saw somebody uh i was in a whatsapp chat group the other day and somebody was talking about you know how do we create um you know uh something about a rabbit hole and and and somebody posted the you know the black hole with a little rabbit and it was like yeah that’s great you know that that says everything it needs to um and so i i like them but uh they lend themselves to a lot of confusion nobody can type them and so it’s really only good to be used as

(38:24) a um a live link a hyperlink that people can click on in order to go you know find something else nobody’s going to type them it’s it’s just it’s too difficult um let’s see uh how many handshake domains do i own uh i think i’ve probably got a few hundred at this point um you know i’ve been um uh i you know i wish in the earlier days um of the auctions um you know just to be clear i’ve been participating um let’s see i’m actually gonna go check uh let’s see what was the first one i ever bought uh

(39:09) just wanna see when i think let’s see if so i started participating um in the auctions back in uh september of 2020. so it’s been you know i don’t know eight months um it seems like much longer than that but uh time flies uh during uh uh during a pandemic um the first domain i bought was uh seafood i think um no that’s not true uh i also lied sorry i’m going even further back so i actually started i knew it was earlier than that i started in may of 2020 um i knew i knew it was earlier than that so it’s been just about a year

(40:00) and i started in may in 2020 and the first handshake domain i got was dot dominios which is uh domain names in spanish so you know back to the point about uh alternative language domain extensions um you know i did buy the dominios extension um which i thought you know was was good for uh potential registrar um you know for handshake domains in the future for the spanish language um or you know who knows but if you’re gonna start somewhere might as well start with uh the word domains in regardless of what language

(40:34) um let’s see what else we got do you think no uh do you think emoji can be the best nft art that also can’t have fake replicates which increases its value um you know again i think unique ways of combining um emojis to say something tell a story um is interesting but you know whether or not that’s art you know i think that’s maybe at the fringe um but you know i don’t think it’s anything to hang your code what do you think needs to be done going forward in order to protect the brands um great question so again i think it

(41:15) just comes down to self-governance you know um we don’t have arbitration mechanisms um you know there’s i it would be very contentious i think for me to even propose that there should be one um i’d probably get chased out of the handshake community but you know i think that there there is a need for something there’s a need for some um governance around trademark abuse you know if you want mainstream adoption you need to have an open door for brands to come in and be able to claim their domain and and utilize it and get their

(41:50) existing customer base into the community right um and if you’re holding you know the dot ibm’s of the world hostage um you know i know ibm is one of the largest companies in the world they’re obviously their.ibm is going to be reserved but you know i’m just using that as a front of mind example but there are thousands of brands and millions of brands or thousands tens of thousands of brands out there whose domain name was not reserved and on the handshake blockchain and whose domain may be owned by

(42:24) some of us in the in this community and you know what i’m saying is i think it would be well served to um you know give it to them whether that’s at cost or as a donation obviously depends on what you’ve got into it but you know we want those people coming into the community we want them to claim their domain and we want them to utilize it we don’t want to be sort of holding them over the calls and saying look you know you got to pay me you know 500 000 handshake you know to get this thing and they’re like well

(42:57) how do i buy handshake you know you don’t want that you want to you want to be as seamless and smooth and easy to transition for anybody with the open mind that says i want to claim my handshake domain i have an existing business i have an existing user base i have an existing fan base in the legacy domain system and i want to come over even if it’s only at the fringe even if it’s only for payments even if it’s only for identity i want to create a little sandbox with my community to come and start utilizing

(43:27) the handshake world um we want to embrace them with open arms we want to do everything we can to roll out the red carpet for anybody that’s willing to make that migration at whatever level um and we don’t want to create hurdles for them we don’t want to create you know um um uh you know any we don’t we don’t want to create any inhibition even even psychological inhibition of like oh what a pain in the butt that is and uh here’s his you know somebody in their mom’s basement that owns my domain name

(43:58) and i’ve spent my career building this business and they think they’re going to rake me over the calls and hold me hostage for my domain name you know forget them we don’t want that right i’ve been there right that’s the story of my career brands have a bad impression of the domain community in general particularly the legacy domain community and so um you know i’ve been fighting that fight for a very long time and uh you know we’re finally starting to make headway where you know we’re not perceived domain

(44:30) investors that is being perceived as um you know the troll in their mom’s basement who’s just holding people hostage um you know to fulfill their dreams by getting the domain names and people are understanding that these things can be um extremely valuable and they have become very valuable and at the end of the day they are the bedrock on which the world’s most valuable economy is being built and the future crypto economy in particular um but hopefully the the sort of legacy economy will move uh to a decentralized uh you know in

(45:05) internet architecture so um we want to just make it our business it’s in all of our best interest to do whatever we can to help make that happen and not inhibit it um i had another thought as i was saying that and now i’ve sort of lost it but it was it was a good point um um let’s see yeah how are you rate the following tld’s in terms of keywords peekaboo cryptify i mean you know again i think this goes back to what i was saying um we’re coming up on time but um this would be a like a great uh last question to wrap up the session

(45:45) this is awesome great so yeah i mean this is kind of what i was saying about the left of the dot and the right of the dot it’s really important to distinguish what makes something great on the left of the dot versus the red of the dot dot peek-a-boo dot crypto phi not sure they make great domain extensions i’m not sure they make great tlds the thing to the left uh to the right of the dot um because what goes in what goes to the left of dot peekaboo right what goes to the left of dot crypto five maybe if you’ve got a

(46:12) company called peekaboo maybe if you’ve got a company called cryptofy maybe they want to use sort of it sort use it as a brand tld but even if you look at the legacy root zone where we’ve got a five year track record of brand tlds we’re not seeing much innovation there we’re not seeing a lot of adoption there we’re not seeing brands embracing um the this brand tld and utilizing it in meaningful ways and so i’m not sure those make great you know uh domain alternatives so anyways thank you to everybody this

(46:45) was awesome i hope that uh uh i added some value here i hope that um you know you guys learned something i hope that you know my perspective coming from the legacy uh domain world you know helps you think about the way you invest in and build because again you know uh value is driven by utility and i think we’re all here to extract and create value and so if we want to do that this community needs to just double down and double down on the ecosystem build more applications build this community even more and you know offer people real

(47:24) utility value by moving or adopting or uh in in in parallel adopting a uh decentralized alternative so thank you and if anybody uh has any further questions reach out to me andrew at mediaoptions.com and uh thank you very much [Music] you