Paul Webb is going to walk us through how to make the most of your TLD and other considerations.

Transcript

(00:01) [Music] [Applause] [Music] god [Music] um all right so this is paul webb uh he is going to talk about uh best practices prep best practices with your tlds i’m not going to take up his time and he can go ahead and just take it away and uh yeah you can share your screen and everything like that all right let’s see all right

(01:06) can y’all see this yep all good nice well hello everybody in the chat my name is paul webb i am the founder and architect of nunet and beachfront a registry and registrar respectively built upon handshake uh the name of my presentation is registries registrars and you how to make the most of your tods and other considerations you should keep in mind uh to start though i’ll give you some background about myself and why i even put a very interesting project on hold to work on handshake oh i gotta click this so the origin of net operator wibby

(01:57) uh back in high school and this is a picture from my high school days uh i would skip lunch to print guides from gamefaqs.com uh in my school’s library and ask jeeves for things like how to buy an island and uh one day i was thinking like how do i get a dot space or a dot universe like how does that work because i knew what like dot com net org was but i was just like i want a dot space that’ll be amazing so i’m searching um oh wait i can preview my slide sweet uh searching i come across i can’t site and i was just

(02:42) like okay 185k i guess that’s just how it is in the grown-up world that’s what they do oh well i’m only what 14 15 i don’t know anything uh side note on that dot space thing over a decade and some change later and on my birthday dot space the contract for dot space was signed by icann to allow radix registry to operate it so i was looking up how to create dot space back in like 2002 to 2003 it came to fruition it’s 2014 like that’s a long time anywho fast forward to 2020 two years ago as i’m saying this

(03:32) now uh and i come across handshake and what amazed me was how open the tld registration process was you didn’t have to fill out a super long form with confusing questions and have to go back and forth with icann and all that stuff it was just like oh hey uh you want this domain cool so does all so do all these other people you have an auction in the style of auction the victory style auction gives people a more level playing field and the fact that your bids are locked after the auction’s over prevents whales from just gobbling up

(04:14) all the great names uh with auctions expiring around that same time so i thought that was a genius so for me the increased security of dns while also like by tying it to blockchain instead of certificate authorities i thought was just like pretty cool so for me handshake was like come for the security stay for the auctions like it’s is it was pretty awesome uh so after collecting tlds for about a year i wanted to do something with them and i decided to put development of my social network silky on hold because i was just like i can’t

(05:01) keep working on this and thinking about handshake all the time like i need to work on handshake because then i could create the infrastructure for silky and then i could use the soki name to give everybody their own domain instead of like a username and then maybe they can use it across the internet for whatever reason so i was just like that that is that is dope okay cool some people might be upset that i’m putting this on hold but they’ll thank me later which leads me to part one the opportunities that handshake

(05:36) presents so this is kind of going to start on a kind of a downer uh not to dump on i can’t too much because i mean they’re okay uh but in my uh understanding of the internet and uh i can’t over the years there’s a lot of uh dislike distaste around their methods of operation the opaque decision making alleged backroom dealings with like.

(06:13) org antitrust violations uh entire tld delegation process issues uh when i was looking up facts about dot space i saw they sued i can because they were just like they’re being too confusing and they’re like rug pulling us and all this stuff and i was just like yeesh this is great for my presentation sucks for them but for veterans of the domain space uh like it has to be an annoying just frustrating so handshake could also might be seen as an opportunity for all those guys who have like this deep industry knowledge and

(07:00) apply it to some place useful uh to an area where they can actually succeed because trying to change uh how an organization works on the inside can only take you so far and that’s if leadership actually agrees with you that there’s a problem that needs to be changed i don’t think i can seize it that way but all of the you know negative things about icann aside there are some people who are part of the icann side and who also are now in the handshake space who are super helpful and these are just two of the guys tom

(07:45) barrett of in circa joltan frakes i hope i’m pronouncing his name correctly of namescon and a whole bunch of other things this guy he’s everywhere he’s just a domain expert so i’m thankful for these two guys especially because i’ve had uh conversations with both and just be like hey what do you think about this and tom barrett is super um knowledgeable of how i can’t thinks and uh he’s has warned a lot of us it’s like hey don’t don’t do the squatting things not a good look

(08:24) you’re going to get people coming after you so maybe just try not to do that so in addition to these guys they are i can’t accredited registrar’s supporting handshake we’ve got in circa which tom runs we got pork bun we’ve got name cheap everybody knows name chief supports handshake they bought a 51 steak name base not too long ago and they own a couple of handshake names so it’s fair to say uh people from the icann side are like you know what yes let’s uh spread our knowledge around and see how

(09:02) we can experiment with doing domain things old domain things in a new way so uh let’s see oh so for domain enthusiasts with technical know-how like myself handshake represents an opportunity to question and reimagine every aspect of the domain experience so i’ll touch on what nunet and beachfront are doing later but uh what i definitely foresee in the handshake space and then later in the broader excuse me domain space are collaborative business models so let’s look at flyfish.

(09:46) com for example the fly fishing community i’m surprised don’t have this site already but this reign of thought came to mind just like the fly fishing community they let’s let’s say they bought a a better domain for them instead of flybish.com but a major aspect of domains is identity and communities are built around identity flyfish.

(10:14) com is cool but wouldn’t it be great to have dot fly fish now i’m pretty sure whoever owns fly fish.com wants a million dollars at the very least fly fish.com is peanuts in comparison like it’s ridiculous so what the fly fishing community could do is come together get dot fly fish and then create all these domains just for them app.

(10:47) flyfish chat mail video they they have their own ecosystem and it’s interesting that no i can tlds end in ing or ed it’s they’re all just like nouns uh but that doesn’t mean that those names don’t hold some kind of value for action domains it’s like experience fly fishing when you think of fly fishing you’re just like oh what are we doing we’re fly fishing well what about it oh we’re learning we’re watching so yeah uh furthermore uh the fly fishing community is probably not going to convince icann that they

(11:28) deserve dot fly fish because like the economic potential of that is probably not going to be high so for i can it’s just like what’s the point another collaborative business model could develop around related words comprising a vertical so let’s say a real estate working group or co-op is just like oh we want to come together to like combine a bunch of different tlds but like we all kind of i guess maybe give each other discounts on these names or make sure like if i have a real estate company web builds

(12:12) uh i have an architecture firm i have a construction company i have an electrical team i have a team of excellent landscapers and then i have an r d lab who’s constantly trying to figure out sustainability and new ways of harnessing the earth’s energy to make my buildings like um i forget what all of these certifications are called but it’s like lead certified and all these things that would be perfect uh so who knows a community better than his constituents decisive action and swift resolution to problems are what communities need not

(12:54) years of bureaucracy and red tape which i can i can’t believe you’ve got to deal with this uh so uh the last opportunity i’ll touch on is experimentation with payment structures and operating models but in this in the forms of questions so why not make domain renewals happen annually oh no why make them happen annually they don’t have to but we’re just so used to it because it’s all we’ve ever done that’s all we’ve ever seen temporary domains could be interesting but you got to keep in mind seo will be

(13:36) in shambles like there’s i don’t know of any search engine that’s going to like keep up with that uh particular tld because they’re just going to think oh these domains are temporary they don’t matter they don’t mean anything and also that might open you up to spam and then your tld will just be looked at as like no we’re not going to pay attention to that but that’s a consideration i’ll come to later uh instead of selling domains on your tods the traditional way you can hold auctions that might

(14:10) generate some uh some fomo like that was mentioned earlier or might otherwise generate some very interesting engagement depending on the tld that you want to do auctions on and the last point uh or question is what if you make domains free now this is a bad idea i’m just gonna put that out there but like again consideration uh which leads me to the next part potential pitfalls and certain considerations so you have to keep in mind for your name is your name suitable for a personal project or for the greater public

(14:57) and if you have no idea really just open up your favorite search engine and see how many results come back well not how many results how many quality results come back uh like zero seven d zero eb that means nothing to anyone i own the dot com but that’s because i have this particular hex code memorized for the past ten years i i just entered it into photoshop one day and i was like wow i love this color i used it for everything uh beachfront without vowels that might be useful to somebody probably not genius with

(15:44) the with some vowels changed with numbers no enaco i don’t most people wouldn’t know what that would be so it’s just like nah we’re not going to use this that doesn’t really make sense but for personal projects it’s perfect because it’s just like no one is going to bother me no one is going to try and mess up my name because it’s just it’s mine now i’ll keep using my arrow keys now the names that are useful for most people bald applies to me like it applies to so many people

(16:24) editor i love sublime text it’s amazing other people like um visual studio code like that’s perfect postseason people love sports there’s always the there’s always a postseason monochrome an interesting tagline could be like the world isn’t in black and white but your design could be aha i don’t know whatever zaddy maybe some people in the audience this applies to i don’t know alien everyone loves aliens who doesn’t love aliens the super popular meme of this guy on the history channel his hair is just like all wild

(17:08) he’s just like aliens like people love that it’s brilliant makes sense uh let’s see where was i oh uh just a quick mention uh if your tod or the tod you have is a brand name that’s not owned by you or controlled by you your economic potential is severely limited uh i’ve mentioned tom barrett earlier he’s like no stop trying to do this stuff and there are certain people in the community that are just like i’m gonna do it anyway because whatever but look nobody likes squatters and at this point in

(17:53) handshakes existence squatting paints us in a bad light thankfully though the spirit of gifting in the community is strong just yesterday as i was uh putting together this slide quite late uh encrypted gifted pkb to pork bun like he didn’t have to do that at all but the spirit of gifting is just like so strong is just like why not i like handshake you should like handshake that’s awesome so uh with that in mind here are a collection of names that i have sniped the name based community hates snipers but for some of these i was just like yeah

(18:42) uh i’m going to get airwick and i’m going to place a super high price to make sure nobody else tries to buy it so if i snipe this and then i put the buy now price at a thousand someone could afford that and then resell it or or have a higher price of like well 100 million uh but no any time i had enough h in my account and i saw things like this i was like no i’m taking airwick i’m taking all deaf which is a great youtube channel i’m taking beyonce that’s that that doesn’t sound great i

(19:21) am acquiring beyonce’s name uh yeah with the accent butterball acquired that one deus ex this is my one of my favorite gaming franchises i i had to acquire that for them uh let’s see emmy i don’t care about the emmys but whatever httpi i keep forgetting to reach out to them but i will lunchable and lunchables the singular and the plural uh hopefully they’ll reach out to me pool sweet uh previously known as poolside fm i’ve reached out to them and they’re they are aware of pool suite uh the graycraft nft

(20:06) um project i reached out to them for theirs as well uh let’s see oh and beyonce i have acquired this which is the which is beyonce’s rap alias uh pretty badass so for each of these um names that i have sniped or bought off the secondary market i created a d-link page for them as well as like hey dm me for this to like show that one this is being reserved for this person too it’s customized with their photo all their links and whatnot in case a fan finds it or or their team finds it and that little note at the bottom is just

(20:50) like hey i’m not squatting i’m not trying to like impersonate you it’s just like here when you are ready reach out to me i will give this to you free um so yeah and this has definitely been inspired by of course the gifting community that we have in handshake so now let’s talk about free and it’s in quotes because it’ll cost you uh if you want to try free uh when thinking about well not when thinking about when new technologies come out there are two things that happen the first thing is people are like wow this tech is

(21:37) incredible this should be free or some aspects of it should be free but then criminals are just like oh nice would be a shame if someone were to on it oops thanks for the free and that just that just ruins your like you release this thing into the world and you’re just like yeah you go to sleep happy you’re just like your heart’s full and you wake up and you realize that someone’s using your your things or for criminal activity to like hurt kids or traffic people and it’s just like oh that’s a lot of mental

(22:17) anguish uh just a few weeks ago the ceo of uh skynet labs had to deal with saya being effectively shadow banned from the internet because of the free tier on saya so i mean criminals are unfazed by takedown take down requests they doesn’t cost them anything to make a new account or resource using your free system so protect your mental health don’t do free unless you find a way to increa to introduce friction into the process so the solution for saya was to create additional portals that require accounts

(23:01) to use and disabling signups with the original portal and that was enough to drastically cut down scammers spammers and other worse type types of criminals [Music] so for your tod if you want to offer things or offer domains for free and you make people record a video of themselves holding today’s paper spinning around in a circle and exclaimed um you will have people sign up but criminals are going to be like nah i don’t have time for all that that’s that’s not it for me so that leads us to part three

(23:46) of this presentation what our new net and beachfront doing first of all i want everybody to steal these ideas because the beautiful thing about handshake is everybody’s domains or tods or or uh nfts whatever you want to call them they’re one of one no one else can have your name you have your name that’s incredible so if we all use the same ideas it doesn’t matter because it just looks it just makes all of us look good period uh but i mean i’m not saying my ideas are the best but i think they’re pretty good so

(24:31) the first thing is uh embracing the tldr act now this was something passed in the house of representatives earlier this year and that’s basically like stop having all this long legal text that people are not going to read it is like nobody cares they just scroll scroll scroll hit the check box okay sign in like it’s that doesn’t help people at all uh to have such obtuse text and if there’s a wall of text people will not look at it but then when you know data leaks come out they’re upset at you

(25:14) but it’s just like well you didn’t read the fine prints like well i didn’t want to read the fight print that wasn’t fine print that was a fine wall so yeah uh if you’ve looked at registry contracts and registrar contracts they are written in ye owed english and nobody wears white wigs anymore except cosplayers like there there is no need for all this obtuse text relax it’s oh my gosh it’s so frustrating to think about uh um another thing that uh nunet is doing is i think we’re going to be experimenting

(26:01) experimenting with vickery style auctions for second level domains on some tods like handy name and the alien emoji i’m thinking that would be perfect because for the alien emoji like it’s one i had no idea what emoji were going to do in the handshake space until like a half a year after and then people like oh my god you have the alien emoji oh my god when’d you get it oh my god that’s awesome can i have one can i have a sod so yeah i want to do it right because like it’ll be so cool um now anyways enough with nunet on to

(26:45) beachfront what is beachfront doing the registrar well we’ve got some features never before seen elsewhere first up is the default registration time that i’ve mentioned before uh instead of being one year we’re gonna make it two years it may sound weird like oh this is like a cool feature but personally when like i’ve registered so many domains because i thought oh this is a great idea i should register the domain i register it a year later i get a renewal reminder and i’m just like i huh i did register that i was going to work

(27:25) on this but then i forgot because i was working on something else i guess i’ll renew it maybe i’ll work on it again uh so the way i see it giving customers an extra year to develop an idea will make them feel like you know what yeah i’m still going to work on that thing and plus it’s just like you’re not very they don’t have to spend money again now that might seem weird in terms of like a um like a revenue or income thing because ideally you want people to keep spending more money but what i am interested in

(28:04) more is uh people building what like like what was mentioned earlier in one of the talks i want people to build cool on tods that i own like that would be awesome i want to see the internet look like it did back when we had geocities back when we had like all these other just like i do you call them web 1.0 sites i i don’t know but like the internet was interesting design was not like all fisher-price tonka trunk looking designs like we have right now everything is so homogeneous the internet doesn’t have to look like

(28:48) milk it can look like fruity pebbles that is a very good analogy wow i came up with that on the spot that was not written down okay the second uh feature of beachfront we have is beachfront hammock now for a hammock like typically you’re in a hammock by yourself but hammocks are much more fun when you have more people in them so here’s how this works depending on the tld you choose for a domain you may be you may be presented with additional options at a discount so for some extensions it makes sense why we do this we have the singular

(29:34) version and then we have the plural version for other extensions like the pairings just make sense so for example acapella and acapella apparently both of these spellings are valid i don’t know why but they are so just like okay i’ll get both of them uh let’s see doom scroll and good scroll i don’t know if good scroll is a good alternative to this but back when i mean the pandemic first started i was just doom scrolling all the time and it made me feel bad so i’ll just like you know what uh yeah i want to do

(30:14) something else touch grass in so much in as much i say i i use these phrases every now and then but this is very much like a language nerd type of like combo uh jargon and technobabble jargon is what everybody in an industry will just say back and forth like oh you know dns tod sod technobabble is what the normies here so i’ll just like oh this is a perfect pairing uh if you are into fashion you definitely know serbian looks and what that means is like you just have a nice outfit you got you know nice haircut you know you’re trimmed up your

(31:05) servant looks uh lefty righty could be used for politics could be used for the hands you write with i’m a lefty one of my favorite quotes oh you like the quotes aha i got one for you everyone was born a righty the gifted ones get over it so we have lunch and dinner i am amazed i was able to get both of these uh whoever has breakfast let me know i would love to have that complete the whole set in addition to dinner i have din din because that’s what my kids say sometimes so like you know i might as well pick that up that that might be

(31:45) a popular thing uh param and params makes sense for api documentation it would be great if you had something like um yeah just like a collection of params which i guess would be your like main documentation site and then when you want to highlight a particular param you know you just use this although that sounds like a lot of domains to buy i don’t know maybe that’s not the best idea uh this next one is fun for people who are fans of fist of the north star so you might know the quote from what he’s doing right now oma mo

(32:29) shinderu if i pronounce that correctly there’s two ways of spelling this so again have to get both uh and especially nani exactly web browser web browser this is a very weird word or two words see you don’t know if you are a browser bender you got to get both otherwise you’re just going to look foolish so uh i also have hieroglyph hieroglyphs hieroglyphic and hieroglyphics but that was too much for one slide but that is a large combo so in terms of like the percentage of like pricing you’ll get off i was thinking maybe half

(33:21) off and then that would also extend to renewals too so if you were to get get a premium name in one sld tld combo and it just so happened to not be premium on some other combo you could search in the reverse and then just go like oh hey i get myself a little discount because i work the system so yeah uh that is pretty much the gist of my talk oh i have more slides i forgot so the new net team is currently myself and one of my homeboys jamar and he is very much into like product management and all this stuff and yeah

(34:15) it would be nice to have someone to keep my mind on track while i’m doing a whole bunch of stuff and uh here are the links you could download this presentation as well uh our icann domain is super basic because i can the registry i mean uh the handshake domain is much more fancy it’s very is it’s interactive it looks pretty there’s like flowing water it’s like a brand new frontier breath of fresh air type of thing so uh yeah that’s it for me all right we got a couple of questions here for you too

(35:00) uh do you think the prevalence of renting culture in day-to-day life for an average internet user will make the concept of owning a tld seem intimidating example someone who prefers to rent a house versus owning a house to avoid having certain responsibilities um so that is an interesting question because what nunet is going to do is uh well one after it’s launched and and everything is um like in production and there’s an audit because i don’t want to give people access to crappy code uh it will be open sourced and on

(35:39) top of being open sourced there will be a hosted version so anyone can just bring over their own tods and they can just say hey i just want a fancy interface that’s easy to use so i can like sell domains or my tods but i don’t want to deal with setting up a name server i don’t want to deal with anything that’s like too much that’s too scary so yeah uh i feel like that will that will depth this uh owning a tod will seem intimidating but using a service on top of that might make it easier all right and then another one

(36:19) what are the prospects for tld slash slds related to segments of education example virtual virtual reality education it would be vr edu i mean if you can um promote to the virtual reality education community and you have uh very compelling arguments they will definitely jump in you just gotta make it seem like oh i need this and as soon as you make people feel like they need it you got it yeah and i think this next question kind of ties into that a little bit what are your thoughts about building a brand to strengthen the values and desirability

(37:07) of a particular tld so uh tom barrett actually talked about this well we do we had a personal chat about a year ago and he said something to me that made me go oh every tld you have to think of it as its own brand so dot com is a brand and it’s been successful throughout the years because it’s like well one i mean it kind of helped by being the oldest tld but like there’s there’s an actual like well yeah i guess it’s kind of become its own brand so when people think.com they think oh trustworthiness

(37:52) and uh the default and all that stuff so yeah you definitely need to develop a brand to make people care just like what um uh noel is doing with dot tx this guy is all over twitter just like repping texas reppin bitcoin and it’s just like yeah i if you are a texan you need tx so now when i see tx i immediately think texas like i don’t think transaction i think texas because he’s done such a great job at creating that brand yeah yeah i i cannot give that dude enough props every time like his name is mentioned i’m like dude texas domains

(38:45) he’s killing it getting all those subdomains out and what what you said about transaction and now i think of texas now because of him it’s very uh relatable right he just totally saw bitcoins tx i’m just like um mine now yeah yeah he’s done a great job building a community uh around his tld oh and here’s here’s a good one or i wanna do did you ever get the space domain no no i don’t think so like yo you you know what i just see steve steve webb just said no we’ll be talking friday

(39:28) steve and i were caught in a battle for dot web like i i put all of the hds i had at the time at that and he was just like i got more and i was like no but then once i learned that he is the one who has the web i’m like all right cool i’m not mad anymore but dot space i don’t know if i was asleep because i’ve done that a lot in the first two years of me being in the handshake i everyone slept on good morning literally oh yeah so uh wait actually you can’t get dot space because it’s reserved on icann

(40:12) is it one of the like alex 100k or i can yeah yeah yeah no oh okay well yeah it’s actually uh like as i’m saying this i’m like wait a minute i have william.space like i have a have a icann.space uh domain but yeah if i could get dot space i don’t think the registry that runs it is going to get rid of anytime soon they’re just like well nah they don’t claim it on on handshake in what two more years uh i get i guess it’s up for grabs um and then here we got another question here too uh maybe the free name slash sld option

(40:54) could be an interesting marketing angle for larger brands i definitely think it will because imagine.nike like however i feel like nike would do something more like an airdrop or like a nft type thing like kind of like an in-club yeah like our biggest fans dot nike and yeah people would go bananas over that because bots already buy up all the nike sneakers try doing that in the domain space not going to happen or maybe it will i don’t know these these people who run these spots are quite clever so yeah yeah uh will there be any outreach program

(41:46) slash marketing in developing countries such as african nations to enable mass adoption that would be dope hmm i think so absolutely um there are names that i didn’t um uh present and well i didn’t show in my my presentation that are non-english i i have a bunch of them um but i definitely think that uh reaching out to other countries who are as wealthy as say america would be perfect because like i can is not going to give them a tod because they don’t have money however individuals like myself and and

(42:37) other people in the handshake community is just like we we aren’t necessarily motivated by that so yeah most definitely if i can well not if when i can find a way to make it make sense and do it in a way that’s not like a uh patronizing type of thing like oh here’s here’s mr rich american coming to save you more more like uh here’s how like we can help each other type of thing i i think that would be a great way to uh to to get in there with some outreach programs yeah and i think um what sajan is doing with agamin with his

(43:18) uh his sub or what what what is it i i’m having a brain fart uh it’s like oh micro registry or micro registrar uh and what he’s doing with uh his indian tlds is is kind of like the starting point for that i think and he will actually be speaking uh tomorrow i believe if i have that correct so i’m excited to hear what he has to say about kind of the global adoption of handshake because you know we we already have our chinese community but going out even farther uh to you know because icann is based in the

(43:55) us but handshake is global and and that’s what we need to do is reach out to those global communities so they can be empowered uh to take control take back control of their names on the internet absolutely we are running on time here uh any kind of last words uh paul um keep doing it keep doing what to do like this community is like this is the second oh so that’s all i gotta say wow i can’t wait to see what happens next you kind of cut out there you went from second to wow yeah i think your connection broke up a little bit there

(44:46) yep oh uh this is the second auction so i mean oh okay it’s it’s it’s all i have to say is wow yeah gotcha all right uh i well i think we can take one more question we got oh no we got like one more minute left sorry sorry for people in the q a that i didn’t get to uh but we’re gonna cut it here and then we’re gonna be taking a little break and then uh rithvik is gonna be doing a deep dive into bob wallet so claiming your handshake coins claiming alexa top 100k domains uh and a lot of

(45:23) other stuff so definitely tune in if you want to be a bob wallet super user and really take control of your domains um and i’ll see you then guys [Music] [Applause] [Music] kinetic is a blockchain crypto investment firm based in hong kong and puerto rico founded in 2016 they were the first fund

(46:26) in hong kong and one of the earliest in asia with a portfolio of over 220 companies they were seed investors in such projects as ethereum parity and polka dot solana ftx and of course handshake in name base [Music] founder johan chu was an active investor and supporter of the handshake ecosystem over one hundred thousand domains co-founder of d-web foundation co-founder of handicon and sponsor of the handshake house at miami hack week 2022 [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

(47:28) [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause]