So, is over a year since we at Techeconomy broke that news.

The TLD – .9jacom allowed Nigeria to claim a Global Technology First.

We caught up on its founder, John Mc Keown (JMK), an Irish man married to a Nigerian, and with several children with dual nationality.

Since then, we also covered a few of 9ja Cosmos later product launches, including the first ‘NFT’ like digital assets to the FIFA world cup finals in Qatar last year (read more here).

Now we are back to him again, to find he and 9ja Cosmos have done another world first.

Using Blockchain Technology, John has ‘registered’ 9ja Cosmos as a borderless business, belonging everywhere and nowhere, belonging to everyone who owns shares, regardless of where they are.

TE: Where did you get the idea?

JMK – Well I wanted to give something to community. But I’m not a fan of location events, and I’m not a fan of physical ‘merch’ (probably made in poorly paying sweat shops in the global south).

We must make the idea of ‘decentralization driving fairness’ more than just about how the product is made. So, I came to the idea of giving away a % of 9ja Cosmos to early community adopters.

TE: So, how did you do that?

So, I’m now very familiar with how the Handshake Blockchain works. ‘TLDs’ generated off the blockchain are just tokens that have been afforded multiple use cases. I just decided to create loads of ‘names’ with random strings that wouldn’t seem interesting for those typical use cases, and as ‘tokens’ use them to represent shares in 9ja Cosmos instead.

TE: John, will it work?

JMK: Well, Peter, the idea of using blockchain tokens (which is essentially what HNS domains are) as a representative of share allocation isn’t new. Legal firms in Switzerland have been doing it for several years. But the company behind the issuance is still registered with a sovereign authority. The tokenization is just a function of share management. Blockchain is being used by them to execute on shareholder activities more efficiently, but it’s still a company with sovereign limitations – like in Nigeria how you have a CAC certificate, and the company files annual returns, and so on.

In the case of 9ja Cosmos, it isn’t registered anywhere, except the Handshake Blockchain. It is extra-sovereign.

That’s what makes it new, that’s what makes us ‘first’, and it’s already working.

TE: How does that work?

JMK: Embedded text records in the domains update share ownership, and enable things like voting at an AGM, or claiming dividends, and other potential shareholder actions as allowed by the share type.

Currently we only have two types of shares – The celebratory shares are ‘up to’ 500 eligible for 5% of the business, and so worth 0.01% of 9ja Cosmos each.

The ‘ordinary’ shares, which make up the remaining 95% are issued as 950 tokens, and so are worth 0.1% each.

So far, we’ve issued some of the celebratory shares, and 1.5% of the business (15 ordinary shares) have been transferred to a support business in lieu of payment.

Celebratory shares are ‘soulbound’, but ordinary shares are tradeable. Our share register system is trustless, with ZKP (Zero Knowledge Proof). Shares can be traded atomically, or through any marketplace that supports Handshake Domain sales. The register with status of shares will be open source published, so the global public can identify them.

TE: Are we now in a new age of illegal activity hidden behind anonymity?

JMK: Not really, because only the executive can execute on the collective will of shareholders. That executive will still be accountable to ‘the law of the land’.  What it will not be able to do is report on income and other benefits extracted by shareholders.

The executive will know when benefit issue happened and what was issued to what class of share, but it won’t know who owns shares. Income declaration is a decentralized responsibility enforced by the technology and in which executive can play no part. Shareholders have full autonomy over disclosure.

TE: If others follow 9ja Cosmos lead – wouldn’t there be a breakdown of Sovereign control?

JMK: Peter, I don’t think sovereign control need to get panic attacks just yet! Though obviously, if down the line, this form of ‘incorporation’ becomes popular, authorities would need to approach some things differently.

Regulatory control may prove challenging… one of the problems with civil structures is they become lazy and inefficient over time, and expecting the same draconian tools to always work. In some things, Legislation and Regulation are two tools that are well past their sell by date.

They could for example, decide to become ‘ordinary shareholders’ themselves, and get influence through ownership. Not saying that’s an ideal answer, I’m sure lead civil servants and law makers can come up with new ideas to cope with changing methods of business incorporation!

It’s now five months later and we were wondering what was new with this startup? Are they still alive?

We asked the founder, John Mc Keown.

His response shows that 9ja Cosmos has become a force to reckon with in the Web3 domain name system through .9jacom platform:

“We’re very active, Peter and lots we could talk about, but a small team is always very busy and not always that visible!’

“As a secondary business, we sell TLD’s – Top Level Domains. This is just 18th January, and already this year we have sold thirty-nine domains.

“It’s our ‘B’ game, but it’s still very important to us, because it provides us with liquid funds to power our main agenda.

“As an aside, I would like to mention a video by Austin Okere, which left an indelible impression on me about the dangers of ‘selling your seed’ too early.

There is also a very useful post by Raja Skogland.

“Both these contents epitomize our take on organic growth. We would rather work under less ideal conditions resource wise, and get a deal like our peers Unstoppable Domains got from Pantera, a long way down the road, rather than give a large chunk of the business up, and endure a draconian partnership for sums of investment that can’t even outstrip my best career long annual salary!

“We have three brands driving our main agenda – 9ja Cosmos – to build a full ecosystem for Nigeria, not just Web 3 domains; Afri Cosmos, a brand extending the Web 3, and some of the 9ja future features to the wider Africa, and GeoNaymz, which will be global, but focusing on the core business of providing Geo Centric SLD (Second Level Domains) only and not extending the services into other aspects of metaverse or blockchain ecosystems.

“We’ve now got well over one thousand geo centric Web 3 Top Level Domains.

“We operate off the Handshake Ecosystem and there is a lot of rapid change in terms of utilities that are being developed and will be seeing light soon.

“After releasing the second TLD, .9javerse, we thought it prudent to step back from releases to give the products and technologies of imminent partners the time needed to debut.

“Don’t be surprised if you see SLD’s off our domains on OpeanSea sometime soon.

“Selling TLDs directly has also given us the opportunity to gain visibility on an upstream part of our market.

“One of the things I noticed, for instance, has been the rise in secondary market interest in what appears to be random or unintelligible 5 and 6 letter strings. But a different pair of eyes can see strings differently. The way businesses attain legal status differs, and can reflect the last letter(s) thy wish to add to their acronym –  A – association, alliance  C – company, council, confederation, commission. Cl – company limited Plc – public liability company. (Many variations around the world like Pvt, AG etc) U – Union, University.

“Initial sourcing cost on Handshake is nowhere near the cost of ICANN, and is even significantly cheaper than a product off the Ethereum ecosystem, so why operate off for example, innoson.ng or innoson.eth when for a few thousand dollars right now, you can buy .innoson and then organise your group or teams like…  defence.innoson , corporate.innoson, private.innoson  partnerships.innoson, creating SLDs off your own TLD in a way that logically represents how you have organised your company teams, group, or holding entities?”

“A lot of people and businesses that caught on too late will find popular names gone, or at prohibitive rates on secondary markets. Acronyms give real options. Giving examples of what 9ja Cosmos has sold so far in January, TLD’s like ‘ktuni’, ‘krico’, ‘yimbi’, ‘arsio’, ‘brawa’, ‘surce’, ‘auses’, ‘intou’, seili, isofi, inkai, baptu, lrako… I could go on!

“The world is a big place. We have many big string acronyms like COMESA, ECOWAS, UNICEF. We have a lot of diverse cultural names, localized languages, and a lot of small obscure villages beyond the globally known metropolis. No pair of eyes is universally trained. What seems to one as a random 5 or 6 letter string can have value somewhere.

“So, Peter, we have found market, and we have sold thirty seven Top Level Domains in a year that is scarcely two weeks old.

“Polygon is another player that makes Web 3 Top Level Domains available. I’m not sure how many Polygon sold. I think they provided services for 5 or 6 to Unstoppable Domains in 2021, if they have provided more, or to others, it hasn’t come on my radar.

“Polygon have far more resources than 9ja Cosmos has… and yes, they can say they do other things and its not their core business… but hey… It’s not 9ja Cosmos core business either.

Meanwhile, 9ja Cosmos is here…

Get your .9jacom and .9javerse Web 3 domains  for $2 at:

https://www.encirca.com/handshake-9jacom/

https://www.encirca.com/handshake-9javerse/

John said we should expect to see more SLD services soon!