The news was broken by a Discord member popularly known as ‘dis0wned’ on his e-publication/blog ‘HNSLIST’.

Unstoppable Domains made history earlier this year, getting Series A funding from Pantera Capital – $68m for a fraction of one %, valuing the whole business at close to $1Bn

As with some other Web 3 service vendors, Unstoppable Domains claim to offer token-based domain names that not only can be linked to crypto wallets but can also be used to create a decentralized website.

‘The significance of a decentralized web or internet is that it is based on blockchain technology. Like cryptocurrency, it is meant to be autonomous, secure, anonymous, and free from the control of any central entity. It is intended to provide a system that operates outside the central governance of ICANN and in a different way from them’

Emersion in this decentralized, container like, ecosystem is the core criteria for virtual products to carry the ‘Web 3’ tag. Without it, they are simply a disparate set of blockchain assets, sometimes referred to as ‘Blockchain of Things’ (BoT).

According to Unstoppable Domains, the reason for the discontinuation of its .coin domain was to avoid domain collisions with another Web 3 SLD (Second Level Domain) provider ‘Emercoin’.

Apparently Emercoin, had been issuing .coin domains since 2014, but had been an obscure operator making no promotional effort and so, didn’t reach Web 3 industry’s radar. Unstoppable Domains claim they released .coin in good faith.

Recall last month, John Mc Keown’s ‘9ja Cosmos’ made its own history, by releasing the first country centric Web 3 domain in the world. 

‘.9jacom’ was released through 9ja Cosmos retail partner EnCirca, resulting in Nigeria being the first country to have such a domain.

Asked about the collision issue, John said the product strategies of Unstoppable Domains and 9ja Cosmos are very different.

9ja Cosmos is marketing a collection of geo centric domains. They are priced extremely affordably ($2) to empower youth, though they are available at the same low price to everybody to encourage mass adoption.  

“We are targeting EMDE (Emerging Market & Developing Economy) countries and have started with Nigeria first, with .9jacom and followed up shortly after with .9javerse.

“‘9ja’ is local slang for Nigeria.

“Unstoppable Domains are building on TLDs (Top Level Domains) that are ‘cult speak’ with ‘Blockchain Communities’, example:  .crypto, .blockchain, .nft .dao  and of course, the .coin they have now withdrawn.

“As both 9ja Cosmos and Unstoppable Domains build out on their TLD choices, maintaining a fit with existing offerings creates two very different themed product stables, so it’s almost impossible for them to collide in the future.

‘We would also prefer not to build off Ethereum layers and EVMs’ said John. ‘They scale well, and speed things up, because only a piece of the key, called ‘meta data’ is on the blockchain, while the scaling solution or EVM holds the majority of the data.

But this makes them vulnerable to hacking, interference from US authorities since the SEC decision.’(See reference here) or simply the scaling solution or EVM’s commercial owner going bankrupt.

Once one piece of the key is lost, the piece on the blockchain is useless, and the customer’s assets are beyond reach forever.

John said: ‘9ja Cosmos TLDs are minted off the Handshake project. At the start, the blockchain founders exercised a cooling off period for existing domains to express their interests. Node activity to the blockchain has the ICANN and Alexa libraries integrated to avoid conflicts with backward compatibility…’

‘Still.  we take the identity and data freedom and security of our ‘9jammers’ (a phrase for the 9ja Cosmos community) very seriously. We still don’t take the superior security of the Handshake Blockchain for granted, and we will invest revenue in ‘redundancy’ technologies.

Back to Unstoppable Domains, and their decision to ditch .coin represents a policy U turn. After noticing a previous conflict on the ‘.wallet’ TLD with a Handshake TLD owner, Scott Florcsk, they litigated against him, despite he being the one to own it on Handshake first.

This new .coin decision has left a bitter taste in customers mouths. The only compensation they have been offered is a credit for their online store.

Secure your own Nigerian Web 3 Domains  ($2) here or visit here.

For a company which previously boasted no renewal fees ever, Unstoppable Domains product .coin has shown ‘forever’ to be a very short time indeed. Perhaps they have met the immovable object.

The post .9jacom Promises Stability as Unstoppable Domains Dumps .coin Barely a Year after ‘No renewal fees ever’ Campaign appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

Earlier than expected, 9jacom gets its first hosting provider and SLD (Second Level Domain) retailer, Encirca.

The progenitor, John Mc Keown, disclosed the cheering news thus: “I’m really happy they offered the first year registration at the same low price I did, $2. This means they are not getting any revenue at all for the first year on registration. Their renewal at $9 is still affordable.

Mr. Keown is the Country Manager of 8M, Elite, Guidepoint, LLC, providing a broad spectrum of Business Services being delivered through key agents servicing the Nigerian Market. The key sectors are Edible FMCG – food, dairy, beverages; plastics and packaging; ingredients and raw materials; telecommunications, data transport and storage infrastructure solutions; and off grid power solutions – renewable energy.

John Keown is a transformational business leader with exceptional business repositioning and sales growth skills – experience drawn from five continents. He has been present in West Africa / Nigeria since 1997.

The concept of web3 has taken the minds of digital entrepreneurs and venture capitalists by storm. The idea behind this technology is to build a new version of the web that incorporates concepts such as decentralization, smart contracts, and blockchain technologies.

Web3 and blockchain technologies have also enabled the new blockchain domain naming services and a new type of domain name – a blockchain domain name.

Although, Vasily Agateev and Kseniya Karchenko would write: “Blockchain domains have spurred a legal tightrope as these domain names are outside of ICANN’s jurisdiction and are not directly subject to any DNS-related laws and regulations that are in place to protect brand owners”, John Keown has an idea on how to get the job done.

“As sales come in, each $2 that reaches me, goes towards staking another .9ja domain and giving Nigeria extra choices as the first country to have Web 3 cc TLDs (country domains) available.

Mr. Keown explained that the holding entity, 9ja Cosmos, will not be raising the prices at their end.

“Our cut is the same $2 to start and $4.50 per year renewal whether you are a struggling local in Ebute Meta or Aliko Dangote”, he promised, stressing “All funds from ‘9ja’ themed domains become reinvested to make service and choice better. All are Kings and Queens at this table”.

Hope you took note of the low prices?

He added that through the intermediary, this will pass down to some domain management and hosting providers. “They will be available to offer SLDs (Second Level Domains) to the public.

“I expect there to be a few integration challenges. Once the model is perfected, more formal promotion will begin and other Nigeria centric products will follow. A new journey is beginning. Let’s enter Web 3 together”, John said, cheerfully.

WAIT! I still have something to tell you:

This development is coming at the time Ethereum is going through ‘transformation’. Many are still at lost at what Ethereum Merger means for the industry.

ALSO READ: ETHEREUM MERGE: What You Need to Know and Opportunities Around It

Mr. Keown shared his view about the whole thing, this way: “The lower the number of entities with control of the staking side of Eth, and how easy they can be found, the easier it is for some central authority, nation, or the other, to force down some directive or the other, because they have decided it is in some nations interest, and they don’t give a hoot about the eth community.

“We’ve now got a case where just 4 entities own 60% of staking capacity and 78% are known and can easily be found. Call that decentralisation?

“We’ve all seen the SEC decision in US ‘deciding’ the Ethereum Chain falls under Federal US jurisdiction. There would be no point in just ‘declaring’ such if acting upon it wasn’t feasible.

“Moreover, Ethereum has now become a potential political tool.

“The Chinese ‘Binance’ has a dependency on the eth-chain. So, welcome to Huawei part 2.

“If I was Unstoppable Domains, with that $68m from Panthera, I’d be business as usual on Polygon (L2 off Eth) for now, but I’d be seriously looking around for migration options or planning to do something on my own.

“Though in any case, everything that surrounds Polygon reeks of ConsenSys which is heavily invested in by Microsoft.

“Decentralization is very quickly becoming a mirage!”

Well, time is a revealer of all intents and the Ethereum Merger will not be any different.

For now, welcome .9jacom!

The post Nigeria, First Country to Have Web3 ccTLDs as .9jacom Goes Live appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.