(upbeat music) >> Hello, and welcome to theCUBE special presentation of Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We've got a great conversation talking about the future of the infrastructure of Web3, all around domains, non fungible tokens and more. Two great guests, Charlie Brooks with Business Development of Unstoppable Domains, and Michael Williams, Product Leader and Advisor with Unstoppable Domains. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on theCUBE, Partner Showcase with Unstoppable Domains. >> Thanks John, excited to be here. >> So I love what you guys are doing. Congratulations on all your success. You guys are on the leading edge of what is a major infrastructure. Shift to Web3 is being called, but people who have been doing this for a while know that you see the blockchain, you see decentralization, you see immutability all these future smart contracts. All the decentralized applications are now hitting the scene and NFTs are super hot as you can imagine, you guys in the middle of it. So you guys are in the sweet spot of what I call the Pragmatic pioneers. You guys are the building solutions that are making a difference, like single sign-on you have the login product, let's get into it. What is the path to a digital identity beyond the web? 'Cause we know what web identity is. But now that the web is being abstracted a away by this new Web3 layer, what is digital identity? >> I can take that one. So I think what we're really seeing is this transition away from a purely physical identity. Where your online identity is really just a reflection of the parts of your physical identity. Where you live, where you go to school, all of these things. And we're really seeing this world emerge where your online identity becomes much more of a primary. So if you have a way that you represent yourself in the online world, whether that's an Instagram account, or TikTok, or email address or username, all of these things together make up your digital identity. So congrats, if you have any of those things, you already have one. >> We see that all the time with Linktree, people put their Linktree out there and it's got the zillion handles. We all get up to Instagram. Everyone's got like zillion identities. Is that a problem or an opportunity? >> I think it's just a reality. The fact is our identities are spread across all of these different services and platforms that we use. The problem with something like Linktree is that it is owned by Linktree. If I won the lottery, purchased Linktree and decided I wanted to change your personal website, John, I could easily do that. Moving to the architecture that we have and NFT architecture, changes that significantly. It puts a lot of power back in the hands of the people who actually own those identities. I do a lot of CUBE showcases with folks around talking about machine learning and AI, and the number one conversation that they bring up, the number one issue, is data. And they say, when data's siloed and protected and owned, it is not optimized for machine learning. So I can almost imagine, as you bring NFTs to the digital identity, you mentioned you don't own your identity if someone else is managing the service like Linktree. This is a cultural shift, and infrastructure software shift at the same time. Can you guys expand more about what you guys are doing with the NFT and unstoppable domains with respect to that digital identity, because is that power shifting to the users now? And how does that compare to what's out there today? >> Sure, I think so. Our domains are NFTs, so they are ERC 721 tokens. And if you think about in the past Web2 identities are controlled by the platforms that we use. Twitter, Facebook, whatnot. There's really a lack of data portability there. Our accounts and data live on their servers, they can be deleted any time. So using an NFT to anchor your data identity, really gives you full control over your identity. It can't be deleted, it can't be revoked or edited, or changed without your permission. And really even better, the information you store on your entity domain can be plugged into the services you use, so that you never have to enter the same data twice. So when you go from platform to platform, everything can be tied to your existing domain. You're not going to a new site, entering their ecosystem and providing all this information time and time again, and not really having a clear understanding of how your data's being used and where it's being stored. >> So the innovation here is the NFT is your identity. And a non fungible token NFT is different than say a fungible token. So for the folks out there that's trying to follow the bouncing ball, Michael, what's the difference between an NFT and a fungible token? And why is that important for identity? >> My favorite metaphor here is baseball cards versus dollar bills. So a dollar bill is fungible. If I have a dollar and you have a dollar, we can trade dollars and none of us is richer or poorer. If I have a Babe Ruth and you have a Hank Aaron, and we swap baseball cards, we have changed something fundamental. So the important thing about NFTs is that they are non fungible. So if I have a domain and you have a domain, like I have that identity and you have that identity, they are unique, they're independent, they're owned by each one of us, and then we can't swap them interchangeably. >> And that's why you're seeing NFTs hot with art and artists, because it's like a property. It's a property issue, not so much- >> Absolutely >> Interchangeable or divisible kind of asset. >> Yep, it is ownership rights in digital form, yes. >> All right, so now let's get into what the identity piece. I think find that interesting because if I have something that's an NFT, it's non fungible, it's unique to me, it's property, my property my login, this sounds compelling. So how does login work with the NFT? Can you guys take us through that architecture, what does it do? How does it work? And what's the benefit? >> Good, so the way our login product works is it effectively uses your NFT domain. So Michael.crypto, for example, as the authentication piece of a login session. So basically when I go and I try to log in with my domain, I type in Michael.crypto, I sign it with my wallet which cryptographically proves that I am this human, this is me, I have the rights to log in. And then when I do so, I have the ability to share certain parts of my identity information with the applications that I use. So it really blends the ease of use from Web2 of just a standard like login with Gmail, SSO experience, with all of the security and privacy benefits of Web3. >> How important is single sign-on? Because right now people are used to seeing things like log with your GitHub handle or LinkedIn, or Google, Apple. You seeing people offering login. What's the difference here from those solutions and why does it make sense for the user? >> Sure, the big difference is what we're building is really user first. So if you think about traditional SSOs, you are the product. When you use their product, they're selling your data, they're tracking everything you do. Login with unstoppable handles not only authentication, but data sharing as well. So when you log in a domain owner can choose to share aspects of their online identities, such as first name, preferred language, profile picture, location. So this is a user controlled way of using a sign-on where their permissioning these different of their identity. And really apps can use this information to enable new experiences, such as, for example, website might automatically enable high contrast mode for someone visually impaired. It could pre-populate your friends from a decentralized social graph. So, what we're doing is taking the best parts of Web2 SSO and combining them with the best of Web3. So, no more losing your password, entering in the same data hundreds of times depending on other services to keep your information safe. Login with unstoppable really puts you in complete control of your data. And a big part of that is you're not going to have 80 plus usernames and passwords anymore. We have these tools like password managers that exist to put a bandaid on this issue, but it's not really a long term solution. So what we're building is really seamless onboarding where everything can be tied to your domains so that you can navigate to different apps in a much more seamless way. >> Michael, I got to get your thoughts on this because in the product side, it's interesting, my mind's connecting some dots. If I have first of all, great convenience to reduce all those logins. So, check their little pain reduction. But when you just think about what's different, I can now broker my data as well as login. So let's just say, hypothetically, I'm cruising around some dApps and I'm doing things in earning reputation, or attention, or points, or whatever utility tokens. There could be a way for me to control what I own. I'm the product, I own the data. Is that where this is going? >> I think it's definitely a direction it could go, say, for example, if I'm a e-commerce platform and I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to place a new billboard. One of the things that I could request from a user, is their address. I can figure out where they live, what city they're in, that will help inform me the decision that I need to make as a business. And in return, maybe I give that person a dollar off their purchase. We can start to build a stronger relationship between the applications that people use, and the people that use them. And try to optimize that whole experience, and try to just transfer information back and forth to make everyone's lives better. >> What's the roadmap on the business side Charlie, when you see companies adopting it, they're probably taking babies steps they're crawling before they walk, they're walking before they run. I can see decentralized applications in the future where there's FinTech or whatever, having new kinds of marketplaces that take advantage of the paradigm where the script flips to the user first. Okay, so I see that. How do people get started now? What are some of the success momentum points that you're seeing companies do now with unstoppable? >> Sure, so a lot of Web3 apps are very sensitive about respecting the information that their users are providing. So, what we're doing is offering different ways for apps can touch with their users in a way that is user controlled. So, an example there is that a lot of Web3 companies will use WalletConnect to allow users to log in using a wallet address. An issue there is that one person can have hundreds of wallet addresses, and it's impossible for the app to understand that. So, what we do is we use login, we attach an email address, some other pieces to a wallet address so that we can identify who our unique user is. And the app is able to collect that information, they don't have to deal with passwords or PII storage. They have access to a huge amount of new data for an improved UX. It's really simple to maintain as well. So one example there is if you are a DeFi platform and you want to reward your users for coming to their site for the first time, now that they can identify unique user, they can drop a token into that user's wallet. All because they're able to identify that user as unique. So they have a better way of understanding their customers. They enable their customers to share data. A lot of these companies will ask users to follow them on Twitter or Discord when they need to provide updates or bug bounties, all these different things. And login if unstoppable lets them permission email addresses so they can collect emails if they want to do a newsletter. And instead of harvesting data from elsewhere and forcing people to join this newsletter program, it's all user controlled. So each user saying, yes, you can use my email for your newsletter. I'm supporting your project, I want to be kept up to date with bugs or bounties or rewards programs. So really it's just a better way for users to share the data that they're willing to with dAPPs, and dAPPs can use it to create all sorts of incentives and really just understand their users on a different level. >> How is the development Michael, going on the smart contract side of the business? Ethereum has always been heralded as being very developer focused. There's been created innovations, you still got gas fees out there. You still got to do some things. How is the development environment? How are the applications coming? 'Cause I can see the flywheel kicking in as the developer front gets more streamlined, more efficient. And now you got the identity piece nailed down. I just see a lot of dominoes falling at the same time. What's the status on the DEV side. What you're doing. >> Good. The fascinating thing about crypto is how quickly it changes. When I joined Ethereum there was pretty reasonable still for transactions. It was very cheap to get things done very fast. With a look at last summer that things went completely out of control. This is a big reason that unstoppable for a long time has been working on a layer two. And we've moved over to the polygon as our primary source of record, which is built on top of Ethereum. Of course, I think saved well over a hundred million in gas fees for our users. We're constantly keeping an eye on new technologies that are emerging, weighing how we can incorporate those things. And really where of this industry is going to take us. In many ways we are just as much passengers as the other people floating around the ecosystem as well. >> It's certainly getting faster every day, I'm seeing a huge uptake on Ethereum. I heard a stat that most people at the university of California, Berkeley, 30% of the computer science students are dropping out to join Web3 companies. This goes to show you this cultural shift and you're going to see a lot more companies getting involved. So I got to ask you Charlie, on the BizDev front, how are companies getting started? What's the playbook? Are they putting their toe in the water? They jumping in full throttle? What's the roadmap? What's the best practice for people to get started with unstoppable? >> Absolutely. We're lucky that we get a lot of inbound interest from companies Web2 and Web3, because they first want to secure their domains. And we do a ton of work on the back end to protect trademark domains. We want to avoid squatting as much as possible. We don't think that's the spirit of Web3 at all. And certainly not what the original tension of the internet was. So, fair amount of companies will reach out to us to get their domain. And then we can have a longer conversation about some of the other integrations and ways we can collaborate. So certainly visiting our website, unstoppabledomains.com is a great starting point. We have an app submission page where apps can reach out to us, even request a grant. We have a grant program to help developers get started, provide them some resources to work with us and integrate some of our technology. We have great documentation as well on the site. So you can read all about what it takes to resolve domains, if you're a wallet and an exchange, as well as what it takes to integrate login with unstoppable, which is actually a super easy integration as well, which we're really excited about. So yeah, I'd say check out the website, apply for a grant if you think you're a fit there, then of course, people can always reach out to me directly on Twitter, on Telegram, email. We're very reachable and we're always happy to chat with projects and learn more about what they're doing. >> What's the coolest thing you see going on Charlie, with your partners right now? What's the number one use case that's cool that people are jumping on right now to get in and get some success out of the gate? >> Maybe GameFi play to earn is huge. It's blowing up and the gaming community is really passionate, vibrant, just expanding like crazy. Same with DeFi, there's all this cool new stuff you can do with DeFi where no matter how big your portfolio is, you're able to stake and use all these interesting tools to grow your book. So it's super exciting to see and talk to all these projects. And, there's certainly an energy in the community where everyone wants to onboard the general public to Web3. So we're all working on these school projects, but we need everyone to come over from Web2, understand the advantages of DeFi, of GameFi of having an entity domain. So, I'm lucky that I'm one of the first layers there of meeting new projects and helping get access to more users so that they can grow along with us. >> I remember the early days of Bitcoin and Ethereum, we were giving it away. The community mantra was, give a Bitcoin to someone. That was like, >> Right. >> When you can actually give a Bitcoin to someone. What's the word of mouth or organic viral? I won't say growth hack 'cause that's got negative connotations. But what's the community's way of putting forth the mission for unstoppable? Is it just more domains? You guys have any programs got going on? Is it give it away? Obviously you can get domains on your site, but what's the way to get people ingratiated in and getting comfortable? >> So much of what we do is really to solve that question, answer that question. We spend a ton of time and energy just on education and whether that's specifically around domains or just general Web3. We have a podcast which is pretty exceptional, which talks to Web3 leaders from across the space and makes the project that they're working on more accessible. I think we passed over a hundred episodes, not too long ago. There's a ton of stuff that we do that other people do. If anyone has questions, I'm happy to talk about our resources, of course. >> The pod, I think you guys are up to 117, but that's a deep dive. You guys go deep on the podcast. So that's where you go in. What else is new on digital identity? Where do you guys see the future going? Now that you get the baseline identity with the NFT. Makes a lot of sense, create innovation. Good logic, makes sense. Solid technically, what's next? >> I think this really boils down to the way that the internet has grown. Doesn't really feel like the way that the internet should be. Like our data shouldn't live in these wild gardens, controlled by these large companies. Ultimately people should be responsible for their own identities. They should have control over of things that they do online. The data that's shared, the benefit of that data. It's about the world that we are working towards, is very much that. Where we are giving people the ability to be paid for sharing their data with companies. We're giving applications the ability to request information from the people that use those applications to improve their experience. We're really just trying to make connections across the ecosystem through these products, to enable a better experience for everyone. So whether that's the use cases that I mentioned already, or maybe viewing reviews on something like Yelp or Amazon, that just confirm that the person that you are you're looking at is actually a real person, not some bot that's been paid to load a review. The interesting thing about these products is they're so universally applicable. There are so many different ways that we can try to plug them in. So we are- >> A bots is a great example, double-edged sword. You can have a metaverse image and have pre-programmed conversations with liquid audio and the video application. Or it's a real person. How do you know the difference? These are going to be questions around who solves that problem. Now there's time for bots and there's a time not for bots. We all know what happens when you get into the game of manipulation, but also it can be helpful. This is where you got to be smart. And identity's critical in this future. Charlie, what's your reaction to the future of digital identity? So much to look at here on the trajectory. >> I think a big part of it is data portability. If you go to a site like Instagram, you're giving them all this content that's very personal to you, and you can't just pack up and leave Instagram. So we want a future where most of these apps are just a front end and you can navigate from one to the other and bring your data with you. And not be beholden to the companies that operate centralized servers. So, I think data portability is huge and it's going to open up a lot of doors. And just going back to that thought on cleaning up Web2 for a better web three. When I think about the Amazons, the Yelps of the world, there are all these bots, there are all these awful fake reviews. There's a lot of gamification happening that is really just creating a lot of noise. And I want to bring transparency back to the internet where when you see a review, you should know that that's a real human. And blockchain technology is enabling us to do that. And certainly FT domains are going to play a huge part of that. So I think that having an experience where you know and trust the people that you're interacting with is going to be really powerful and just a better experience for everyone. And there's a lot of ramifications with that. politically speaking, we've all seen all the issues with attacking communities and using bots and fake accounts to hit people's pain points, it's sad and certainly not something that we want to see continue happening. So, whatever we can do to give people their digital identity and help people understand that this is a real person on the other end, I think is huge for the future of the internet and really for society as well. >> That's a great call out there Charlie. Cleaning up the mess of Web 2.0, Web2, actually it was 2.0 technically, now Web3 is no point zero in it. But I saw on or listened to the podcast with Matt. This recent one, he had a great metaphor that went back to when I was growing up in the internet, you had IP addresses. And the mess there was, you couldn't find what you want to look. And no one could remember what to type in, 'cause you could type in IP address in the browser back then. And then DNS came out and then keywords that's web. Now that mess, now is fraud, misinformation, bot manipulation, deep fakes, many other kind of unwanted time to innovate. And every year, every time you had these inflection points, there'd be an abstraction on top of it. So, similar thing happening here, is that how you guys see it too? >> I think we're going back to some of the foundational architecture of the internet, DNS. And really bringing that forward about 30, 40 years in terms of technology. So loading in some more cryptography and some other fancy things to help patch some of those issues from the previous versions of the web. >> Awesome. Well guys, thanks so much for coming on and the spirit of TikTok, Emily summarizes asking, can you guys give us a quick TikTok moment, short comment on where this is all going, where is login, single sign-on mean and what should people do to steps to secure their digital identity? >> Sure, I'll jump in here. So, it's time for people to secure their digital identity. The great first step is going to sample domains and getting an NFT domain. You can control your data. You can do a lot of cool different things with your domain, including posting your own website that you will own forever, no one can take it away from you. I would certainly recommend that people join our Discord, Telegram communities, check out our podcasts. It's really great especially if you're new to crypto Web3. We do a great job of explaining all the basic concepts and expanding on them. So yeah, I would say, the time is now to get your digital identity and start embracing Web3 because it's really exploding right now. And there's just so many incredible advantages, especially for the user. >> Michael, what's your take? >> But not, have said it better myself. >> Like we always say, if you're not on the next wave, you're driftwood. And this is a big wave that's happening. It's pretty clear guys, it's there, it's happening now. And again, very pragmatic implementations of solving problems. The sign-on, the app integration. Congratulations and we got our CUBE domain too, by the way. So I think we're good. >> Excellent. >> So, we got to put it to use. Appreciate it, Charlie, Michael, thanks for coming on and sharing the update. >> It's pleasure. >> Welcome. >> Okay, this is theCUBE, with Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase I'm John for your host, got a lot of other great interviews. Check them out. We're going to continue our coverage and continue on with this great showcase. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(bright upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome to this CUBE Unstoppable Domain Showcase. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We've been showcasing all the great content about Web3 and what's going around the corner for Web4. Of course, Unstoppable Domains is one of the big growth stories in the business. Brad Kam, the Co-founder is here with me, of Unstoppable Domains, Brad, great to see you, thanks for coming on this showcase. >> Thanks, pleasure for having me. >> So you have a lot of history in the Web3. They're calling it now, but it's basically crypto and blockchain. You know, the white paper came out and then, you know how it developed was organically. We saw how that happened. Now you're the co-founder of Unstoppable Domains. You're seeing the mainstream, I would say mainstream scene, Superbowl commercials, okay? You're seeing it everywhere. So it is here. Stadiums are named after cryptos, companies. It's here. Hey, it's no longer a fringe, it is reality. You guys are in the middle of it. What's going on with the trend, and where does Unstoppable fit in and where do you guys tie in here? >> I mean, I think that what's been happening in general, this whole revolution around cryptocurrencies and then NFTs and what Unstoppable Domain is doing. It's all around creating this idea that people can own something that's digital. And this hasn't really been possible before Bitcoin. Bitcoin was the first case. You could own money. You don't need a bank, no one else. You know, you can completely control it. No one else can turn you off. Then there was this next phase of the revolution, which is, assets beyond just currencies. So NFTs, digital art. What we're working on is like a decentralized identity, like a username for Web3 and each individual domain name is an NFT. But yeah, it's been a crazy ride over the past 10 years. >> It's fun because, you know, on siliconangle.com, which we founded, we were covering early days of crypto. In fact, our first website, the developer want to be paid in crypto. It's interesting. Price of Bitcoin, I won't say that how low it was. But then you saw the ICO Wave, the token started coming in. You started seeing much more engineering focus, a lot of white papers coming out, a lot of cool ideas. And then now you got this mainstream of this. So I got to ask you, what are the coolest things you guys are working on, because Unstoppable has a solution that solves a problem today, and that people are facing at the same time, it is part of this new architecture. What problem do you guys solve right now that's in market that you're seeing the most traction on? >> Yeah, so it's really about, so whenever you interact with a blockchain, you wind up having to deal with one of these really, really crazy public keys, public addresses. And they're like anywhere from 20 to 40 characters long, they're random, they're impossible to memorize. And going back to even early days in crypto, I think people knew that this tech was not going to go mainstream if you have to copy and paste these things around. If I'm getting ready to send you like a million dollars, I'm going to copy and paste some random string of numbers and letters. I'm going to have no confirmations about who I'm sending it to, and I'm going to hope that it works out. It's just not practical. People have kind of always known there was going to be a solution. And one of the more popular ideas was, doing kind of like what DNS did, which is, instead of having to deal with these crazy IP addresses, this long random string of numbers to find a website, you have a name like a keyword, something that's easy to remember. You know, like a hotels.com or something like that. And so what NFT domains are, is basically the same thing, but for blockchain addresses. And yeah, it's just better and easier. There's this joke that everybody, you know, if you want to send me money, you're going to send me a test transaction of, you know, like a dollar first, just to make sure that I get it. Call me up and make sure that I get it before you go and send the big amount. Just not the way of moving billions of dollars of value is going to work in the future. >> Yeah, and I think one of the things you just point out, make it easier. When you have these new waves, these shifts, we saw it with the web pages. More and more web pages were coming on, more online users. They called it the online populations growing. Here, the same thing's happening. And if the focus is on ease of use, making things simpler to understand, and reducing the step it takes to do things, right? This is kind of what's going on and with the developer community, and what Ethereum has done really well is, brought in the developers. So that's the convergence of all the action. And so, when you (John chuckles) so that's where you're at right now. How do you go forward from here? Obviously, there's business development deals to do, you guys are partnering a lot. What's the strategy? What are some of the things that you can share about some of your business activity that points to how mainstream it is and where it's going? >> So I think the way to think about an NFT domain name is that it's meant to be like your identity on Web3. So, it's going to have a lot of different context. So it's kind of like your Venmo account, where you could send me money to brad.crypto, can be your decentralized website, where you can check out my content at brad.crypto. It can also be my like login kind of like a decentralized Facebook O oth, where I can log into DApps and share information about myself and bring my data along with me. So it's got all of these different things that it can do, but where it's starting is inside of crypto wallets and crypto apps, and they are adopting it for this identity idea. And it's the same form of identity across all your apps. That's the thing that's new here. So, yeah, that's the really big and profound shift that's happening. And the reason why this is going to be maybe even more important than a lot of, you know, your listeners think is that, everyone's going to have a crypto wallet. Every person in the world is going to have a crypto wallet. Every app, every consumer app that you use is going to build one in. Twitter just launched, just built one. Reddit is building one. You're seeing it across all the consumer finance apps. So it's not just the crypto companies that you're thinking of, every app's going to have a wallet. And it's going to really change the way that we use the internet. >> I think there's a couple things you pointed. I want to get your reaction to and thoughts more on this concept of DApps or decentralized applications, DApps or depending on what you call it. This is applications. And that take advantage of the architecture, and then this idea of users owning their own data. And this absolutely reverses the script today. Today, you see Facebook, you see LinkedIn, all these silos, they own the data that you are the product. Here, the users are in control. They have their data, but the apps are being built for it for the paradigm shift here, right? That's what's happening. Is that right? >> Totally, totally. And so, it all starts. I mean, DApp is just this crazy term. It feels like it's this, like really foreign, weird thing. All it means is that you sign in with your wallet instead of signing in with a username and password, where the data is stored inside of that app. Like inside of Facebook. So that's the only real, like, core underneath difference to keep in mind, signing in with the wallet. But that is like a complete sea change in the way the internet works. Because I have this key, this private key, it's on my phone or my device or whatever. And I'm the only one that has it. So, if somebody wanted to hack me, they need to go get access to my device. Two years ago, when Twitter got hacked, Barack Obama and Elon Musk were tweeting the same stuff. That's because Twitter had all the data. And so, you needed to hack Twitter instead of each individual person. It's a completely different security model. It's way better for users to have that. But, if you're thinking from the user perspective, what's going to happen is, is that instead of Facebook storing all of my data, and then me being trapped inside of Facebook, I'm going to store it, and I'm going to move around on the internet, logging in with my Web3 username, my NFT domain name, and I'm going to have all my data with me. And then I could use 100 different Facebooks all in one day. And it would be effortless for me to go and move from one to the other. So, the monopoly situation that we exist in as a society is because of the way data storage works and- >> So that's a huge point. So let's double down on that for one more second. This is a huge point. I want to get your thoughts. So I think people don't understand that in the mainstream having that horizontal traversal or ability to move around with your identity in this case, your Unstoppable Domain and your data allows the user to take it from place to place. It's like going to other apps that could be like Facebook, where the user's in charge. And they're either deciding whether to share their data or not, or they're certainly continuate their data. And this allows for more of a horizontal scalability for the user, not for a company. >> Yeah, and what's going to happen is, as users are building up their reputation. They're building up their identity in Web3. So you have your username and you have your profile and you have certain badges of activities that you've done. And you're building up this reputation. And now apps are looking at that, and they're starting to create social networks and other things to provide me services because it started with the user. And so, the user is starting to collect all this valuable data, and then apps are saying, well, hey, let me give you a special experience based on that. But the real thing, and this is like the core, I mean, this is just like a core capitalist idea, in general. If you have more competition, you get a better experience for users. We have not had competition in Web2 for decades because these companies have become monopolies. And what Web3 is really allowing is, this wide open competition. And that's the core thing. Like, it's not like, you know, it's going to take time for Web3 to get better than Web2. You know, it's very, very early days. But the reason why it's going to work is because of the competitive aspect here. Like it's just so much better for consumers when this happens. >> I would also add to that, first of all, great point, great insight. I would also add that the web presence technology based upon DNS specifically is, first of all, it's asking, so it's not foreign characters, it's not Unicode for the geeks out there. But that's limiting too, it limits you to be on a site. And so, I think the combination of kind of inadequate or antiquated DNS has limitations. So if... And that doesn't help communities, right? So when you're in the communities, you have potentially marketplaces that could be anywhere. So if you have ID, I'm just kind of thinking it forward here. But if you have your own data and your own ID, you can jump into a marketplace, two-sided marketplace anywhere. An app can provide that, if the community's robust, this is kind of where I see the use case going. How do you guys, do you guys agree with that statement and how do you see that ability for the user to take advantage of other competitive or new emerging communities or marketplaces? >> So I think it all comes down. So identity is just this huge problem in Web2. And part of the reason why it's very, very hard for new marketplaces and new communities to emerge is 'cause you need all kinds of trust and reputation. And it's very hard to get real information about the users that you're interacting with. If you're in the Web3 paradigm, then what happens is, is you can go and check certain things on the blockchain to see if they're true. And you can know that they're true 100%. You can know that I have used Uniswap in the past 30 days, and OpenSea in the past 30 days. You can know for sure that this wallet is mine. The same owner of this wallet also owns this other wallet, owns this asset. So having the ability to know certain things about a stranger is really what's going to change behavior. And one of the things that we're really excited about is being able to prove information about yourself without sharing it. So I can tell you, hey, I'm a unique person. I'm an American, I'm not an American, but I don't have to tell you who I am. And you can still know that it's true. And that concept is going to be what enables what you're talking about. I'm going to be able to show up in some new community that was created two hours ago, and we can all trust each other that a certain set of facts are true. And that's possible because- >> And exchange value with smart contracts and other with no middle men involved activities, which is the promise of the new decentralized web. All right, so let me ask you a question on that. Because I think this is key. The anonymous point is huge. If you look at any kind of abstraction layers or any evolution in technology over the years, it's always been about cleaning up the mess or extending capabilities of something that was inadequate. We mentioned DNS, now you got this. There's a lot of problems with Web2, 2.0, social bots. You mentioned bots. Bots are anonymous and they don't have a lot of time in market. So it's easy to start bots, and everyone who does either scraping bots, everyone knows this. What you just pointed out was, in an ops environment that was user choice, but has all the data that could be verified. So it's almost like a blue check mark on Twitter without having your name, kind of- >> It's going to be 100s of check marks, but exactly. 'Cause there's so many different things that you're going to want to communicate to strangers, but that's exactly the right mental model. It's going to be these check marks for all kinds of different contexts. And that's what's going to enable people to trust that they're, you know, you're talking to a real person or you're talking to the type of person you thought you were talking to, et cetera. But yeah, it's, you know, I think that the issues that we have with bots today are because Web2 has failed at solving identity. I think Facebook at one point was deleting half a billion fake accounts per quarter. Something like the entire number of user profiles they were deleting per year. So it's just a total- >> And they spring up like mushrooms. They just pop up, to think that's the problem. I mean, the data that you acquire in these siloed platforms is used by them, the company. So you don't own the data, so you become the product as the cliche goes. But what you guys are saying is, if you have an identity and you pop around to multiple sites, you also have your digital footprints and your exhaust that you own. Okay, that's time, that's reputation data. I mean, you can cut it any way you want, but the point is, it's your stuff over time, that's yours. And that's immutables on the blockchain, you can store it and then make that permanent and add to it. >> Exactly. >> That's a time based thing versus today, bots that are spreading misinformation can get popped up when they get killed. They just start another one. So time actually is a metric for quality here. >> Absolutely. And people already use it in the crypto world to say like, hey, this wallet was created greater than two years ago. This wallet has had transactions for at least three or four years. Like this is probably a real, you know, this is probably a legitimate user. And anybody can look that up. I mean, we can we go look it up together right now on Etherscan, it would take a minute. >> Yeah, (indistinct). Yeah, I'm a big fan, I can tell, I love this product. I think you guys are going to do really well. Congratulations, I'm a big fan. I think this is needed. What are some of the deals you've done? blockchain.com is one and Opera. Can you take us through those deals and why they're working with you? Let's start with blockchain.com. >> Yeah, so the whole thing here is that, this identity standard for Web3 apps need to choose to support it. So, you know, we spent several years as a company working to get as many crypto wallets and browsers and crypto exchanges to support this identity standard. Some of the largest and probably most popular companies to have done this are, blockchain.com, for example, blockchain.com, one of the largest crypto wallets in the world. And you can use your domain names instead of crypto addresses. And this is super cool because blockchain.com in particular focuses on onboarding new users. So they're very focused on how we're going to get the next 4 billion internet users to use this tech. And they said, usernames are going to be essential. Like, how can we onboard this next several billion people if we have to explain to them about all these crazy addresses. And it's not just one, like we want to give you 10, 40 character addresses for all these different contexts. Like, it's just no way people are going to be able to do that without having a user name. So, that's why we're really excited about what blockchain.com's doing. They want to train users that this is the way you should use the tech. >> Yeah, and certainly no one wants to remember. I remember how writing down all my... You know, I was never a big wallet fan 'cause of all the hacks I used to write it down and store it in my safe. But if the house burns down or I kick the can who's going to find it, right? So again, these are all important things. Your key storing it, securing it, super important. Talk about Opera. That's an interesting partnership because it's got a browser that people know what it is. What are they doing different? Almost imagine they're innovating around the identity and what people's experiences with what they touch. >> Yeah, so this is one of those things that's a little bit easier and I strongly encourage everybody to go and try DApps after this. 'Cause this is going to be one of those concepts, it can be a little easier if you try it than if you hear about it. But the concept of a wallet and a browser are kind of merging. So it makes sense to have a wallet inside of your browser. Because when you go to a website, the website's going to want you to sign in with your wallet. So having that be in one app is quite convenient for users. And so Opera was one of the trailblazers, a traditional browser that added a crypto wallet so that you can store money in there. And then also added support for domain names for payments and for websites. So, you can type in brad.crypto and you can send me money, or you can type in brad.crypto into the browser and you can check out my website. I've got a little NFT gallery. You can see my collection up there right now. So that's the idea is that, browsers have this kind of superpower in Web3. And what I think is going to happen, Opera and Brave have been kind of the trailblazers here. What I think is going to happen is that, these traditional browsers are going to wake up and they're going to see that integrating a wallet is critical for them to be able to provide services to consumers. >> I mean, it is an app. I mean, why not make it a DApps as well? Because why wouldn't I want to just send you crypto, like Venmo, you mentioned earlier, which people can understand that concept. Venmo, let me make my cash. Same concept here. But built in to the browser, which is not a browser anymore it's a reader, a DApp reader, basically with a wallet. All right, so what does this mean for you guys and the marketplace? You got Opera pushing the envelope on browsing, changing the experience, enabling the applications to be discovered and navigated and consumed. You got blockchain.com with the wallets and being embedded there. Good distribution. Who are you looking for for partners? How do people partner? Let's just say theCUBE wants to do NFTs, and we want to have a login for our communities, which are all open. How do we partner with you? Or do we? We have to wait or is there a... I mean, take us through the partnership strategy. How do people engage with Unstoppable Domains? >> Yeah, so, I mean, I think that if you're a wallet or a crypto exchange, it's super easy, we would love to have you support being able to send money using domains. We also have all sorts of different kind of marketing activities we can do together. We can give out free stuff to your communities. We have a bunch of education that we do. We're really trying to be this onboarding point to Web3. So there's, I think a lot of cool stuff we can do together on the commercial side and on the marketing side. And then the other category that we didn't talk about was DApps. And we now have this login with ensemble domains, which you kind of alluded to there. And so you can log in with your domain name and then you can give the app permission to get certain information about you or proof of information about you, not the actual information, if you don't want to share it, because it's your choice and you're in control. And so, that would be another thing. Like, if you all launch a DApps, we should absolutely have login with Unstoppable there. >> Yeah, there's so much headroom here. You got a short term solution with exchange. Get that distribution, I get that, that's early days of the foundation, push the distribution, get you guys everywhere. But the real success comes in for the login. I mean, the sign in single sign in concept. I think that's going to be powerful, great stuff. Okay, future, tell us something we don't know about Unstoppable Domains that people might be interested in. >> I think the thing that you're going to hear about a lot from us in the future is going to be around this idea of identity, of being able to prove that you're a human and be able to tell apps that. And apps are going to give you all kinds of special access and rewards and all kinds of other things, because you gave 'em that information. So that's probably, that's the hint I'm going to drop. >> You know, it's interesting, Brad. You bring trust, you bring quality verified data, choose intelligence software and machine learning, AI and access to distributed communities and distributed applications. Interesting to see what the software does with that. Cause it traditionally didn't have that before. I mean, just in mind blowing. I mean, it's pretty crazy. Great stuff. Brad, thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing the insight. The Co-founder of Unstoppable Domains, Brad Kam. Thanks for stopping by theCUBE's Showcase with Unstoppable Domains. >> Thanks for having me. (bright upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome to theCUBE's special showcase with Unstoppable Domains. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE here in Palo Alto, California. And Matt Gould who's the founder and CEO of Unstoppable Domains. Matt, great to come on. Congratulations on the success of your company, Unstoppable Domains. Thanks for kicking off this showcase. >> Well, thank you, happy to be here. >> So first of all, love the story you've got going on here. Love the approach, very innovative, but you're also on the big Web3 wave, which we know that leads into, metaverse unlimited new ways, people are consuming information, content, applications are being built differently. This is a major wave and it's happening. Some people are trying to squint through the hype versus reality, but you don't have to be a rocket science to realize that it's a cultural shift and a technical shift going on with Web3. So this is kind of what's happening in the market. So give us your take. What's your reaction? You're in the middle of it. You're on this wave. >> Yeah, well, I would say it's a torrent of change that got unleashed just over a decade ago with Bitcoin coming out and giving people the ability to have digital items that they could actually own themselves online. And this is a new thing. And people coming, especially from my generation of millennials, they spend their time online in these digital spaces and they've wanted to be able to own these items and you see it from, you know Gaming and Fortnite and Skins and Warcraft and all these other places. But this is really being enabled by this new crypto technology to just extend to a whole lot more applications, from money, which everyone's familiar with, to NFT projects like Board Apes or CryptoBucks. >> You know, I was listening to your podcast. You guys got a great pod. I think you're on 117 episodes now and growing. You guys do a deep dive, so people watching check out the Unstoppable Podcast. But on the last podcast, Matt, you mentioned some of the older generations like me, I grew up with IP addresses and before the web, they called it information super highway. It wasn't even called the web yet, but IP was generated by the United States Department of Commerce and R&D, that became the internet, the internet became the web. Back then it was just get some web pages up and find what you're looking for. Very analog compared to what's now today, now you mentioned gaming. You mentioned how people are changing. Can you talk about your view of this cultural shift? And we've been talking about the queue for many, many years now, but it's at actually happening now where the expectation of the audience and the users and the people consuming and communicating and bonding in groups, whether it's gaming or communities are expecting new behaviors, new applications, and it's a forcing function. This shift is having now, what's your reaction to that? What's your explanation? >> Yeah, well, I think it just goes back to the shift of people's where are they spending their time? And if you look today, most people spend 50% plus of their time in front of a screen. And that's just a tremendous amount of effort. But if you look at how much of their assets are digital, it's like less than 1% of their portfolio would be some sort of digital asset compared to literally 50% of every day sitting in front of a screen. And simultaneously what's happening is these new technologies are emerging around cryptocurrencies, blockchain systems, ways for you to track digital ownership of things, and then kind of bring that into your different applications. So one of the big things that's happening with Web3 is this concept of data portability, meaning that I can own something on one application and then I could potentially take that with me to several other applications across the internet. And so this is like the emerging digital property rights that are happening right now as we transition from a model in Web2, where you are on a hosted service like Facebook, it's a walled garden, they own and control everything. You are the product, they're mining you for data and they're just selling ads, right? To a system where it's much more open. You can go into these worlds and experiences. You can take things with you and you can leave with them. And most people are doing this with cryptocurrency. Maybe you earn an end-game currency, you can leave and take that to a different game, and you can spend it somewhere else. So the user is now enable to bring their data to the party. Whereas before now, you couldn't really do that. And that data includes their money or that includes their digital items. And so I think that's the big shift that we're seeing and that changes a lot in how applications serve up to users. It's going to change their user experiences for instance. >> I think the script has flipped and you're right on. I agree with you. I think you guys are smart to see it. And I think everyone who's on this wave will see it. Let's get into that because this is happening. People are saying, "I'm done with being mined "and being manipulated by the big Facebook "and the LinkedIns of the world who are using the user." Now, the contract was a free product and you gave up your data, but then it got too far. Now people want to be in charge of their data. They want to broker their data. They want to collect their digital exhaust, maybe collect some things in a game, or maybe do some commerce in an application or marketplace. So these are the new use cases. How does a digital identity architecture work with Unstoppable? How would you guys enabling that? Can you take us through the vision of where you guys came on this because it's unique, you had an NFT and kind of the domain name concept coming together, can you explain? >> Yeah, so we think we approach the problem for if we're going to rebuild the way that people interact online, what are kind of the first primitives that they're going to need in order to make that possible? And we thought that one of the things that you have on every network, like when you log on Twitter, you have a Twitter handle, when you log on Instagram, you have an Instagram handle. It's your name, right? You have that name that's on those applications. And right now what happens is if users get kicked off the platform, they lose a 100% of their followers, right? And they also, in some cases, they can't even directly contact their followers on some of these platforms. There's no way for them to retain this social network. So you have all these influencers, who are today's small businesses, who build up these large, you know profitable, small businesses online, being key opinion leaders to their demographic. And then they could be deplatformed, or they're unable to take this data and move to another platform if that platform raises their fees. You've seen several platforms increase their take rates. You have 10, 20, 30, 40%, and they're getting locked in and they're getting squeezed, right? So we just said, "You know what, "the first thing you're going to want to own "that this is going to be your piece of digital property "is going to be your name across these applications." If you look at every computing network in the history of computing networks, they end up with a naming system. And when we looked back at DNS, you know which came out in the 90s, it was just a way for people to find these webpages much easier instead of mapping these IP addresses. And then we said to ourselves, "What's going to happen in the future?" Is just like everyone has an email address that they use in their Web2 world in order to identify themselves as they log into all these applications. They're going to have an NFT domain in the Web3 world in order to authenticate and bring their data with them across these applications. So we saw a direct correlation there between DNS and what we're doing with NFT domain name systems. And the bigger breakthrough here is that NFT domain systems all of these NFT assets that live on a blockchain. They are owned by users. They're built on these open systems so that multiple applications could read data off of them and that makes them portable. So we were looking for an infrastructure play like a picks and shovels play for the emerging Web3 metaverse. And we thought that names were just something that if we wanted a future to happen, where all 3.5 billion people with cell phones are sending crypto and digital assets back and forth, they're going to need to have a name to make this a lot easier instead of these long IP addresses or hex addresses in the case of crypto. >> Yeah, and also people have multiple wallets too. It's not like there's all kinds of wallet, variations, name verification, you see the link tree is everywhere. You know, that's essentially just an app. I mean, doesn't really do anything. I mean, so you're seeing people trying to figure it out. I got a github handle. I got a LinkedIn handle. I mean, what do you do with it? >> Yeah, and then specific to crypto, there was a very hair on fire use case for people who buy their first Bitcoin. And for those in the audience who haven't done this yet, when you go in and you go into an app and you buy your first Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever cryptocurrency, and then the first time you try to send it, there's this field where you want to send it and it's this very long hex address. And it looks like an IP address from the 1980s, right? And it's like a bank number and no one's going to use that to send money back and forth to each other. And so just like domain names and the D apps system replace IP addresses, NFT domains on blockchain systems replace hex addresses for sending and receiving cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever. And that's its first use case is it really plugs in there. So when you want to send money to someone, you can just instead of sending money to a large hex address that you have to copy and paste, you could have an error, or you could send it to the wrong place, it's pretty scary. You could send it to johnfurrier.nft. And so we thought that you're just not going to get global adoption without better UX, same thing it worked with .com domains. And this is the same thing for Bitcoin and other crypto. >> It's interesting, look at the Web2 or trend one to two, Web1 went to two, it was all about use, ease of use, right? And making things simpler, clutter, more pages can't find things that was search, that was Google. Since then, has there actually been an advancement? >> Hmm. >> Facebook certainly is not an advancement, they're hoarding all the data. So I think we're broken between that step of a free search to all the resources in the world, to which by the way, they're mining a lot of data too, with the Toolbar and Chrome. But now where's that Web3 crossover? So take us through your vision on digital identity on Web2, Google searching, Facebook's broken, democracy's broken, users aren't in charge to Web3? >> Got it. Well, we can start at Web1. So the way that I think about it is if you go to Web1, it was very simple, just text web pages. So it was just a way for someone to like put up a billboard and here's a piece of information and here's some things that you could read about it, right? And then what happened with Web2, was you started having applications being built that had backend infrastructure to provide services. So if you think about Web2, these are all websites or web portals that have services attached to them, whether that's a social network service or a search engine or whatever. And then as we move to Web3, the new thing that's happening here, is the user is coming onto that experience and they're able to connect in their wallet or their Web3 identity to that app and they can bring their data to the party. So it's kind of like Web1, you just have a static web page, Web2, you have a static webpage with a service, like a server back here, and then Web3, the user can come in and bring their database with them in order to have much better app experiences. So how does that change things? Well, for one, that means that you want data to be portable across apps. So we touched on gaming earlier and maybe if I have an in-game item for one game that I'm playing for a certain company, I can take it across two or three different games. It also impacts money. Money is just digital information. So now I can connect to a bunch of different apps and I can just use cryptocurrency to make those payments across those things instead of having to use a credit card. But then another thing that happens is I can bring unlimited amount of additional information about myself when I plug in my wallet. And as an example, when I plug into Google search, for instance, they could take a look at my wallet that I've connected and they could pull information about me that I enable that I share with them. And this means that I'm going to get a much more personalized experience on these websites and I'm also going to have much more control over my data. There's a lot of people out there right now who are worried about data privacy, especially in places like Europe. And one of the ways to solve that is simply to not store the data and instead have the user bring it with them. >> You know, I've always thought about this and always debated it with Dave a lot and my co-host, does top down governance privacy laws outweigh the organic bottoms up innovation? So what you're getting at here is, "Hey, if you can actually have that solved "(laughing) before it even starts." It was almost as if those services were built for the problem of Web2. >> Yes. >> Not three. >> Right. >> What's your reaction to that? >> I think that is right on the money. And if you look at it as a security, like if I put my security researcher hat on, I think the biggest problem we have with security and privacy on the web today is that we have these large organizations that are collecting so much data on us and they just become these honeypots and there have been huge breaches. Like Equifax, you know a few years back is a big one and this all your credit card data got leaked, right? And all your credit information got leaked. And we just have this model where these big companies silo your data, they create a giant database, which is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, to be attack. And then someone eventually is going to hack that in order to pull that information. Well, if instead, and you can look at this at Web3. So for those in the audience who have used, a Web3 application, one of these D app, to trade cryptocurrencies or something, you'll know that when you go there, you actually connect your wall. So when you're working with these web, you connect, you bring your information with you and you connect it. That means that the app has none of that stored, right? So these apps that people are using for crypto trading cryptocurrency on apps or whatever, they have no stored information. So if someone hacks one of these defi exchanges, for instance, there's nothing to steal. And that's because the only time the information is being accessed is when the user is actively using the site. And so as someone who cares about security and privacy, I go, "Wow, that's a much better or data model." And that gives so much more control of user 'cause the user just permissions access to the data only during the time period in which they're interacting with the application. And so I think you're right and like we are very excited to be building these tools, right? Because I see it like if you look at Europe, they basically pass GDPR and then all the companies are going, "We can't comply with that." They keep postponing it or like changing it a little bit and trying to make it easier to comply with. But honestly we just need to switch the data models. So the companies aren't even taking the data and then they're going to be in a much better spot. >> And GDPR is again a nightmare. I think it's the wrong approach. I always said it was screwed up because most companies don't even know where stuff is stored and nevermind how they delete someone's entry in a database. They don't even know what they're collecting. Some at some level they become so complicated. So right on the money there good, good call out. There question for you. Is this then? Okay, so do you decouple the wallet from the ID or are they together and is it going to be a universal wallet? Do you guys see yourselves as universal domains? Take me through the thinking around how you're looking at the wallet and the actual identity of the user, which obviously is important on the identity side, wallet is that just universal or is that going to be coming together? >> Well, I think so. The way that we kind of think about it is that wallets are where people have their financial interactions online. And then identity is much more about, it's kind of like being your passport. So it's like your driver's license for the internet. So these are two kind of separate products we see longer term and actually work together. So, if you have a domain name, it actually is easier to make deposits into your wallet because it's easier to remember to send money to mattgloud.crypto. And that way it's easier for me to receive payments or whatever. And then inside my wallet, I'm going to be doing defi trades or whatever. And that doesn't really have an interaction with names necessarily in order to do those transactions. But then if I want to sign into a website or something, I could connect that with my NFT domain. And I do think that these two things are kind of separate. I think we're going to... Still early, so figuring out exactly how the industry is going to shake out over like a five to 10 year time horizon and maybe a little bit more difficult and we could see some other emerging... What you would consider like cornerstones of the crypto ecosystem. But I do think identity and reputation is one of those. And I also think that your financial applications of defi are going to be another. So those are the two areas where I see it. And just a note on this, when you have a wallet that usually has multiple cryptocurrency addresses, so you're going to have like 50 cryptocurrency addresses in a wallet. You're going to want to have one domain name that links back to all those, because you're just not going to remember those 50 different addresses. So that's how I think that they collaborate and we collaborate with several large wallets as well, like blockchain.com and another 30 plus of these to make it easier for sending out and receiving cryptocurrency. >> So the wallet basically is a D app, the way you look at it, the integrated. >> Yeah. >> Whatever you want, just integrate in. How do I log into decentralized application with my NFT domain name? Because this becomes okay. I got to love the idea, love my identity. I'm an my own NFT. I mean, how this video's going to be an NFT soon. We get on board with the program here, but how do I log into my app? I'm going to have a D app and I got my domain name. Do I have to submit is there benchmarking? Is there approval process? Is there APIs and SDK kind of thinking around it? How are you thinking about dealing with the apps? >> Yeah, so all of the above. And what we're trying to do here is build like an SSO solution, but it's consumer based. So what we've done is adapted some SSO protocols that other people have used, the standard ones, in order to connect that back to an NFT domain in this case. And that way you GET the best of both worlds. So you can use these authorization protocols for data permissioning that are, you know, standard Web2 APIs, but then the permissioning system is actually based on the user-controlled NFT. So they're assigning it that with their private public key pair in order to make those updates. So that allows you to connect into both of these systems. We think that that's how technology typically impacts the world is it's not like you have something that just replaces something overnight. You have an integration of these technologies over time. And we really see these Web3 components and net two domains integrating nicely into regular apps. So as an example in the future, when you log in right now, you see Google off, Facebook off, or you can type in an email address, you could see NFT, Unstoppable Domains or NFT authorization. And you can SSO in to that website. When you go to a website like an e-commerce website, you could share information about yourself, 'cause you've connected your wallet now. So you could say, "Yes, I am a unique individual. "I do live in New York and I just bought a new house." And then when you permission all that information about yourself to that application, you can serve up a new user experience for you. And we think it's going to be very interesting for doing rewards and discounts online for e-commerce specifically in the future because that opens up a whole new market. 'Cause they can ask you questions about yourself and you can deliver that information directly to the app. >> I really think that the gaming market has totally nailed the future use case, which is in game currency, in game end engagement, in game data. And now bringing that to kind of a horizontally scalable like surface areas is huge, right? So, you know, I think that's a huge success on the concept. The question I have to ask you is you getting any pushback from, ICANN, the International Corporation of Naming and Numbers, they got dot everything now.club, 'cause the clubhouse, they got dot, party.live. I mean the real domain name people are over here, Web2, you guys are coming out with the Web3. Where is that connect for people who are not following along the Web3 trend? How do you rationalize the domain angle here? >> Yeah, well, so I would say that NFT domains are what domains on DNS were always meant to be 30 plus years ago. And they just didn't have blockchain systems back in the nineties when they were building these things. So there's no way to make them for individuals. So what happened was for DNS, it actually ended up being business. So if you look at DNS names, there's about 350 million registrations. They're basically all small business. And it's like, 20 to 50 million small businesses who own the majority of these.com or these regular DNS domain names. And that's their focus. NFT domains, because all of a sudden you have the wallet, you have them in your wallet and your crypto wallet, they're actually for individuals. So that market, instead of being for small businesses is actually end users. So instead of being for 20 to 50 million small businesses, we're talking about being useful for three to four billion people who have an internet connection. And so we actually think that the market size for NFT domains is somewhere 50 to a hundred X, the market size for traditional domain names. And then the use cases are going to be much more for individuals on a day to day basis. So it's like people are going to want you on a use them for receiving cryptocurrency or receiving dollars or payments or USCC coin, where they're going to want to use them as identifiers on social networks, where they're going to want to use them for SSO. And they're not going to want to use them as much for things like websites, which is what Web2 is. And if I'm being perfectly honest, if I'm looking out 10 years from now, I think that these traditional domain name systems are going to want to work with and adopt this new NFT technology, 'cause they're going to want to have these features for the domain names. So like in short, I think NFT domain names are domain names with superpowers. This is the next generation of naming systems. And naming systems were always meant to be identity networks. >> Yeah, they hit a glass ceiling. I mean they just can't, they're not built for that. And having people, having their own names, is essentially what decentralization is all about. 'Cause we, what is a company? It's a collection of humans that aren't working in one place, they're decentralized. So then you decentralize the identity and everything's been changed. So completely love it. I think you guys are onto something really huge here. You pretty much laid out what's next for Web3, but you guys are in this state of growth. You've seen people signing up for names. That's great. What are the best practices? What are the steps are people taking? What's the common use case for folks who are putting this to work right now for you guys? Why do you see, what's the progression? >> Yeah, so the thing that we want to solve for people most immediately, is we want to make it easier for sending and receiving crypto payments. And I know that sounds like a niche market, but there's over 200 million people right now who have some form of cryptocurrency, right? And 99.9% of them are still sending crypto using these really long hex addresses. And that market is growing at 60 to 100% year over year. So first we need to get crypto into everybody's pocket and that's going to happen over the next three to five years. Let's call it, if it doubles every year for the next five years, we'll be there. And then we want to make it easier for all those people to send crypto back and forth. And I will admit I'm a big fan of these stable coins and these like... I would say utility focused tokens that are coming out just to make it easier for transferring money from here to Turkey and back or whatever. And that's the really the first step for NFT domain names. But what happens is when you have an NFT domain and that's what you're using to receive payments, and then you realize, oh, I can also use this to log into my favorite apps. It starts building that identity piece. And so we're also building products and services to make it more like your identity. And we think that it's going to build up over time. So instead of like doing an identity network top down where you're like a government or corporation, you say, oh, you have to have ID, here's your password, you have to have it. We're going to do it, bottoms up. We're going to give everyone on the planet and up to you domain name, it's going to give them some utility to make it easier to send, receive cryptocurrency. And we're going to say, "Hey, do you want to verify your Twitter profile?" Yes. Okay, great. You just attach that back. Hey, you want to verify your Reddit? Yes, Instagram? Yes, TikTok, yes. You want to verify your driver's license? Okay, yeah, we can attach that back. And then what happens is you end up building up organically digital identifiers for people using these blockchain naming systems. And once they have that, they're going to just... They're going to be able to share that information and that's going to lead to better experiences online for both commerce, but also just better user experiences in general. >> Every company when they web came along first, everyone pro proved the web once. Oh, it's terrible. A bad idea. Oh, it's so, unreliable, so slow. Hard to find things. Web2, everyone bought a domain name for their company, but then as they added webpages, these premalinks became so long, the webpage address fully qualified, permalink string, they bought keywords. And then that's another layer on top. So you started to see that evolution in the web. Now it's kind of hit ceiling. Here, everyone gets their NFT, they start doing more things. Then it becomes much more of a use case where it's more usable, not just for one thing. So we saw that movie before, so it's like a permalink, permanent. >> Yeah. >> Excellent. >> Yes indeed. I mean, if we're lucky it will be a decentralized bottoms up global identity that appreciates user privacy and allows people to opt in. And that's what we want to build. >> And the gas prices thing that's always come out always an objection here that, I mean, blockchain's perfect for this 'cause it's, imitable, it's written on the chain. All good, totally secure. What about the efficiency? How do you see that evolving real quick? >> Well, so a couple comments on efficiency. First of all, we picked domains as first product to market. 'Cause you need to take a look and see if the technology is capable of handling what you're trying to do and for domain names, you're not updating that every day. So like, if you look at traditional domain names, you only update it a couple times per year. So, the usage for that to set this up and configure it, most people set it up and configure it and then they only have a few changes per year. First of all, the overall you, it's not like a game. >> An IO problem. >> Right, right, right. So that part's good. So we picked a good place to start for going to market. And then the second piece is like, you're really just asking, are computer systems going to get more efficient over time? And if you know, the history of that has always been yes. And I remember the 90s, I had a modem and it was 14 kilobits and then it was 28 and then 56 and then 100. And now I have a hundred megabits up and down. And I look at blockchain systems and I don't know if anyone has a law for this yet, but throughput of blockchains is going up over time and there's going to be continued improvements over this over the next decade. We need them. We're going to use all of it. And you just need to make sure you're planning a business makes sense for the current environment. Just as an example, if you would try to launch Netflix for online streaming in 1990, you would've had a bad time because no one had bandwidth. So yeah, some applications are going to be wait to be a little bit later on in the cycle, but I actually think identity is perfectly fine to go ahead and get off the ground now. >> Yeah, the motivated parties for innovations here, I mean a point cast failed miserably that was like, they tried to stream video over T1 lines, but back in the days, nothing. So again, we've seen those speeds, double, triple in homes right now. Matt, congratulations, great stuff. Final, TikTok moment here. How would you summarize in a short clip, the difference between digital identity and Web2 and Web3. >> In Web2, you don't get to own your own online presidence, and in Web3 you do get to own it. So I think if you were going to simplify it, really Web3 is about ownership and we're excited to give everyone on the planet a chance to own their name and choose when and where and how they want to share information about themselves. >> So now users are in charge. >> Exactly, you got it. >> They're not the product anymore. If you got to be the product you might as well monetize the product, and that's the data. Real quick thoughts just to close out the roll of data and all this, your view. >> We haven't enabled users to own their data online since the beginning of the internet. And we're now starting to do that. It's going to have profound changes for how every application on the planet interacts with their users. >> Awesome stuff, Matt, take a minute to give a plug for the company. How many employees you got? What are you guys looking for for hiring, fundraising? Give a quick commercial for what's going on Unstoppable Domains. >> Yeah, so if you haven't already, check us out at unstoppabledomains.com, we're also on Twitter at Unstoppable web. And we have a wonderful podcast as well that you should check out if you haven't already. And we are just crossed a hundred people. We're growing, three to five hundred percent year over year. We're basically hiring every position across the company right now. So if you're interested in getting into Web3, even if you're coming from a traditional to background, please reach out. We love teaching people about this new world and how you can be a part of it. >> And you're a virtual company. You have a little headquarters or is it all virtual? What's the situation there? >> Yeah, I actually just assumed we are 100% remote and asynchronous and we're currently in five countries across the planet in mostly concentrated in the US and the EU areas. >> I heard a rumor too. Maybe you can confirm or admit or deny this rumor. I heard a rumor that you have mandatory vacation policy. >> This is true. And that's because we are a team of people who like to get things done. But we also know that recovery is an important part of any organization. So if you push too hard, we want to remind people we're on a marathon, right? This is not a sprint. And so we want people to be with us long term, and we do think that this is a 10 year move. And so yeah, do force people. We'll unplug you at the end of the year, if you- >> That's what I was going to ask you. So what's the consequence of, I don't take vacation. >> Yeah, we literally unplug you. (both laughing) >> You won't be able to get into slack. Right, and that's (indistinct). >> Well, when people start having their avatars be their bought and you don't even know what you're unplugging at some point, that's where you guys come in with the NFT saying that that's not the real person, it's not the real human. >> Yeah, exactly. We'll be able to check. >> NFT is great innovation, great use case, Matt congratulations. Thanks for coming on and sharing the story to kick off this showcase with theCUBE. Thanks for sharing all that great insight. Appreciate it. >> Yeah, John had a wonderful time. >> All right, this is theCUBE Unstoppable Domains showcasing. We've got 10 great pieces of content we're dropping all today. Check them out. Stay with us for more coverage. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome to theCUBE's presentation with Unstoppable Domains. It's a showcase we're featuring all the best content in Web 3 and with unstoppable showcase, I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We got a great guest here, Matt Mickiewicz who's the Chief Revenue Officer of Unstoppable Domains. Matt, welcome to the showcase, appreciate it. >> Thank you for having me. >> So the theme of this segment is the potential of the Web 3 marketplace with Unstoppable Domains. You're the Chief Revenue Officer, you guys have a very interesting concept that's going extremely well, congratulations. But you're using NFTs for access and domains, Of course through the metaverse is huge. People want their own domains, but it's not just like real estate in the sense of a website. It's bigger than that it's a lot going on. So take us through what is the value proposition and what is the product? >> Absolutely, so for the past 20 years, most of us have been interacting on the internet using usernames issued to us by big corporations like Facebook, Google, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, et cetera. Whenever we get these usernames for free it's because we and our data are the product. As some of the recent leaks in the media have shown incentive individual in companies are not always aligned. And most importantly individuals are not in control of their own digital identity and the data, which means they can economically benefit from the value they create online. Think of Twitter as a two-sided marketplace with 0% revenue share back to its creators. We're now having in the creator economy and we believe that individuals should see the economic rewards of what they do and create online. That's what we are trying to do in** support of domains is provide user own and control identity to four and a half billion internet users. >> It's interesting to see change that's happening with Web3 and just in cultural terms, users are expecting to be part of the creator the personality of the company, there's this almost this intermediation of the middle man whether it's an ad network or a gatekeeper of any kind people going direct, right? So if I'm an artist, I can go direct to my fans. >> Exactly, so Web3 really shifts the power away from a aggregators. Aggregators and marketplaces have been some of the best business models for the last 20 years onto the internet. But Web3 is going to dramatically change all over the next decade. Bring more power back in the hands of consumers. >> What type of companies do you guys work with and partner with that we see out there? Give us some examples of the kinds of companies you're doing business with end partnering with. >> Yeah, so let's talk about use cases first actually. Was the big use case that we identified initially for NFT domain names was around cryptocurrency transfers. Anyone who's ever bought cryptocurrency and tried to transfer it between accounts or wallets is familiar with these awkwardly long hexa decimal strings of random numbers and letters, or even if you make a single type of money is lost forever. That's a pretty scary experience that exists today. That 2 trillion asset dollar as a class with 250 million users. So the first set of partners that we worked on integrating with, we're actually crypto wallets and exchanges. So we will allow users to do is replace all their long hexa decimal wallet addresses with a single human readable name, like John.NFT or MattMickiewicz.crypto to allow for simple crypto transfers. >> And how do the exchange work with you guys on that is it a plugin, is it co-locating code together? What's the relationship between exchanges and Unstoppable Domains? >> Yeah, absolutely great question. So exchanges actually have to do a little bit of engineering list to work with us and they can do that by either using our resolution libraries or using one of our APIs in order to look up an Unstoppable Domain and figure out all the wallet addresses that's associated with that name. So today we work with dozens of the world's top exchanges and wallets ranging from OKX to Coinbase wallet, to Trust wallet, to bread wallet, and many many others. >> I got to ask you on the wallet side, is that a requirement in terms of having specific code and are the wallets that you work well with? Explain the wallet dynamic between Unstoppable Domains and wallets. >> Yeah, so wallets all have this huge usability problem for their users because every single cryptocurrency held by every single one of their users has a different hexadecimal wallet address. And once again every user is subject to the same human fallacies and errors where if they make a single type their money can be lost forever. So what we enable these wallets to do is to make crypto transfer simple and less scary than the current status quo by giving the users an Unstoppable name that they can use to attach to all the wallet addresses on the back end. So companies like Trust Wallet for example, which has 10 million user or Coinbase Wallet. When you go to the crypto transfer fields, there you can just type in an unstoppable name It'll correctly route the currency to the right person, to the right wallet, without any chance for human error. >> When these big waves coming out I got to ask this question, 'cause a lot of people in the mainstream are getting into it now. It reminds me of the web wave that hit the big thing was how many people are coming online, was one of the key metrics and how many web pages are being developed was another metric, which meant that people were building out webpages. And it's hard to look back and think, wow, that was actually a KPI. So internet users and webpages where the two proxies 'cause then search engines came out and everything else happened. So I got to ask you, there are people watching, they're seeing it on commercials on TV, they're seeing it everywhere stadiums are named after crypto companies. So, the bottom line is people want to know how NFT domains take the fear out of working with crypto and sending crypto. >> Yeah, absolutely, so imagine we had to navigate the web using IP addresses rather than typing in Google.com. You'd have to type in a random string of numbers that you'd had to memorize. That would be super painful for users and internet wouldn't have gotten to where it is today with almost 5 billion people online. The history of computer networks we have human readable naming systems built on top in every single instance, it's almost crazy that we got to a $2 trillion asset class with 250 million users worldwide. 13 years after the Satoshi white paper, without a human readable naming system other Unstoppable Domains in a few of our competitors, that's a fundamental problem that we need to solve in order to go from 250 million crypto users in 2022 to 5 billion crypto users a decade from now. >> And just to point out, not to look back and maybe make a correlation but I will, if you look at the naming system of DNS, what it did to IP addresses, that's one major innovation that enabled the web. Then you look at what keyword navigation has done on top of DNS, what that did for the industry, and that basically birthed Google keywords basically ads. So that's trillions and trillions of dollars. Again, now shifting to you guys, is that how you see it? Obviously it's decentralized, so what's different? Okay, I get, so if you compare here Google was successful, keyword advertising industry for the last of 25 years or 20 years. >> What's different now is? >> yeah >> Yeah, what's different now is the technology inflection points. So Blockchains have evolved to a point where they enable high throughput high transaction volume and true decentralized ownership. The NFTs standard, which is only a couple years old, has taken off massively around trading of profile pictures like CryptoPunks and the Bored Apes Yacht Club where the use cases extend much more than just a cool JPEG that goes up in value two or three X year over year. There is a true use case here around ownership of identity ownership over data, a decentralized login authentication and permission data sharing. One of the sad things that happened on the internet the last decade really was, that the platforms built out have now allowed developers to build on top of them in a trustless comissionless way. Developers who built applications on top of them, the early monopolies in the last decade, got the rules changed on them. APIs cut off, new fees instituted. That's not going to happen in Web3 because all permission list. Once an NFT is minted, it's custody in a user's own wallet, we cannot take the way it will continue to exist in eternity, regardless of what happens to Unstoppable Domains, which gives developers a lot more confidence in building new products for the Web3 identity standard that we're building out. >> You know what's amazing is that's a whole another generational shift. I've always been a big fan of abstractions when innovation is needed when there are problems that need to be solved, messes to be cleaned up, a good abstraction layer on top of new architecture is really, really phenomenal. I guess the key question for I have for you is, theCUBE we have all this video where's our NFT how should we implement NFTs? >> There's a couple different ways you could think about it, you could do proof of attendance protocol NFTs, which are really interesting way for users to show that they were at particular event. So just in the same way that people collect T-shirts from conferences, people will be collecting NFTs to show they were attending in person cultural moments or that they were part of an event online or offline. You could do NFTs for our employees to show that they were at your company during certain periods of the company's growth. So think of replacing their resume with a cryptographically secure resume like this on the Blockchain and perpetuity. Now more than half of all resumes contain lies, which is a pretty gnarly problem as a hiring manager that we constantly have to sort through. There's where that this can impact that side of the market as well. >> That's awesome, and I think this is a use case for everything we appreciate that. And of course we can have the most favorite cube moments, it can be a cube host NFT at Board Apes out there. Why not have a board cube host going on and then.. >> We're an auction for charity and OpenSea. >> All right, great stuff, now let's get into some of the cool tech nerd stuff, which is really the login piece which I think is fascinating. The having NFTs be a login mechanism is another great innovation, okay. So this is cool, 'cause it's like think of it as one click NFTs, if you will. What's the response been on this login with Unstoppable for that product? What's some of the use cases, can you get some examples of the momentum intraction? >> Yeah, absolutely, so we launched a product less than 90 days ago and we already have 90 committed or integrated partners live today with a login product. And this replaces login with Google, login with Facebook with a way that it's user owned and user controlled. And over time people will be attaching additional information back to their NFT domain name, such as their reputation, their history, things they've done online and be able to permission to share that with applications that they interact with in order to gain rewards. Once you own all of your data, and you can choose who you shared with . Companies will incentivize you to share data. For example, imagine you just buy a new house and you have 3000 square feet to furnish. If you could tell that fact and prove it, to a company like Wayfair, would they be incentivized to give you discounts? We're spending 10, 20, $30,000 and you'll do all of your purchasing there rather than spread across other e-commerce retailers. For sure they would, but right now when you go to that website, you're just another random email address. They have no idea who you are, what you've done, what your credit score is, whether you're a new house buyer or not. But if you could permission to share that using a log and installable product, I mean the web would just be much much different. >> And I think one of the things too, as these, I call them analog old school companies, old guard companies as referred to in theCUBE talk here. But we always call that old guard as the people who aren't innovating. You could think about companies having more community too, because if you have more sharing and you have this marketplace concept and you have these new dynamics of how people are working together, sharing will provide more or transparency but yet security on identity. Therefore things are going to be happening organically. That's a community dynamic what's your view on that? And what's your reaction. >> Communities are such an important part of Web3 and the cryptos ecosystem in general. People are very tightly knit, they all support each other. There there's a huge amount of collaboration in this space because we're all trying to onboard the next billion users into the ecosystem. And we know we have some fundamental challenges and problems to solve, whether it's complex wallet addresses, whether it's the lack of portable data sharing, whether it's just simple education, right? I'm sure, tens of million of people have gone to crypto for the first time during this year's Super Bowl based on some of those awesome ads they ran. >> Yeah, love the QR code, that's a direct response. I remember when the QR codes been around for a long time. I remember in the late 90's, it was a device at red QR code that did navigation to a webpage. So I mean, QR codes are super cool, great way to get, and we all using it too with the pandemic to ordering food. So I think QR codes are here to stay, in fact, we should have a QR code on all of our images here on the screen too. So we'll work on that, but I got to ask you on the project side, now let's get into the devs and kind of the applications, the users that are adopting unstoppable and this new way of things. Why are they gravitating towards this login concept? Can you give some examples and give some color commentary to why are these D-application, distributed application, dApps guys and gals programming with you guys? >> Yeah, they all believe that the potential for what we're trying to create around user own controlled identity. Where the only company in the market right now with a product that's live and working today. There's been a lot of promises made, and we're the first ones to actually delivered. So companies like Cook Finance for example, are seeing the benefit of being able to have their users, go through a simple process to check in and authenticate into the application using your NFT domain name rather than having to create an email address and password combination as a login, which inevitably leads to problems such as lost passwords, password resets, all those fun things that we used to deal with on a daily basis. >> Okay, so now I got to ask you the kind of partnerships you guys are looking at doing. I can only imagine the old school days you had a registry and you had registrars, you had a sales mechanism. I noticed you guys are selling NFT kind of like domain names on your website. Is that a kind of a current situation, is that going to be ongoing? How do you envision your business model evolving and what kind of partnerships do you see coming along? >> Yeah, absolutely, so we're working with a lot of different companies from browsers to exchanges, to wallets, to individual NFT projects, to more recently even exploring partnership opportunities with fashion brands for example. Monetarily, market is moving so so fast. And what we're trying to essentially do here is create the standard naming system for Web3. So a big part of that for us will be working with partners like blockchain.com and with Circle, who's behind the USDC coin on creating registry such as .blockchain and .coin and making those available to tens of millions and ultimately hundreds of millions and billions of users worldwide. We want an Unstoppable domain name to be the first asset that every user in crypto gets even before they buy their Bitcoin, Ethereum or Dogecoin. >> It makes a lot of sense to abstract the way the long hexa desal stream we all know, that we all write down, put in a safe, hopefully we don't forget about it. I always say, make sure you tell someone where your address is. So in case something happens, you don't lose all that crypto. All good stuff. I got to ask this the question around the ecosystem. Okay, can you share your view and vision of either yourself or the company when you have this kind of new market, you have all kinds of, we meant the web was a good example, right? Web pages, you need to web develop and tools. You had HTML by hand, then you had all these tools. So you had tools and platforms and things kind of came well grew together. How is the Web3 stakeholder ecosystem space evolving? What are some of the white spaces? What are some of the clearly defined areas that are developing? >> Yeah, I mean, we've seen explosion in new smart contract blockchains in the past couple of years, actually going live, which is really interesting because they support a huge number of different use cases, different trade offs on each. We recently partnered and moved over a primary infrastructure to Polygon, which is a leading EVM compatible smart chain, which allows us to provide free gas fees to users for minting and managing their domain name. So we're trying to move all obstacles around user adoption. Here you'll need to have Ethereum in your wallet in order to be an Unstoppable Domains customer or user, you don't have to worry about paying transaction fees every time you want to update the wallet addresses associated with your domain name. We want to make this really big and accessible for everybody. And that means driving down costs as much as possible. >> Yeah, it's a whole nother wave. It's a wave that's built on the shoulders of others. It's a shift in infrastructure, new capabilities, new applications. I think it's a great thing you guys do in the naming system, makes a lot of sense. It abstraction layer creates that ease of use, it simplifies things, makes things easier. I mean was the promise of these abstraction layer. Final question, if I want to get involved, say we want to do a CUBE NFT with Unstoppable, how do we work with you? How do we engage? Can you give a quick plug on what companies can do to engage with you guys on a business level? >> Yeah, absolutely, so we're looking to partner with wallet exchanges, browsers and companies who are in the crypto space already and realize they have a huge problem around usability with crypto transfers and wallet addresses. Additionally, we're looking to partner with decentralized applications as well as Web2 companies who perhaps want to offer logging with Unstoppable domain functionality. In addition to, or in replacement of the login with Google and login with Facebook buttons that we all know and love. And we're looking to work with fashion brands and companies in the sports sector who perhaps want to claim their Unstoppable name, free of charge from us. I might add in order to use that on Twitter or in other marketing materials that they may have out there in the world to signal that they're not only forward looking, but that they're supportive of this huge waves that we're all riding at the moment. >> Matt, great insight, chief revenue officer, Unstoppable Domains. Thanks for coming on the showcase, theCUBE and Unstoppable Domains share in the insights. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you. >> Okay, this CUBE's coverage here with the Unstoppable Domain showcase. I'm John Furrier, your host, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome to theCUBE's presentation of Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE here in Palo Alto. Got some great guests here on this panel to talk about DeFi, the relevance of it, the importance, and all the major things happening in the changing world of finance and decentralized web, which is Web 3. Great wave here going on. We got Jaime Rogozinski, founder of WallStreetBets and strategic advisor of WallStreetBets app. Great to have you on. We've got Michael So, Partner, Head of Business Development, Cook Finance, and Mike Morhulets, CEO of DeHive. Gentlemen, thank you for coming. I'm super excited about this panel conversation here in the Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase. Thanks for coming on. >> Yeah, thanks for having us on. >> Thanks for having us. >> So, first of all, it's been a crazy ride. Even just go back from... Just go back eight years ago now, and then go to you had the big ICO craze, you had now the operationalizing of crypto, applications, blockchain. I see the price of Bitcoin has been going great. Everyone's been making a lot of money. But it's really about the fundamental change of users and DeFi, decentralized finance has been one of the tip of the spears here from terms of change 'cause money's involved. and that's the shift here. So before we get into it, I want to get you guys to help me define what is DeFi? If someone says, "Hey, what's DeFi?" And everyone wants to know, "What's DeFi? What does it mean?" What is DeFi? >> Well, I think it's still being defined to be quite honest with you, right? Like it stands for decentralized finance, but for the most part, it's figuring out a way to use these crypto coins, tokens assets, Dallas Dap, this, that, the other to try and integrate this worldwide transactional parallel ecosystem to traditional finance, right? So I'd say for the most part, you're able to transact, send money, buy things, invest it, generating interest rates, et cetera. >> So is it a new money system, is it an architecture? How should people think about this 'cause, you know, to me it seems like a whole another stack, if you will, I had to use the word stack, tech stack, but it's really more of a different thing. People still scratch their heads. Does it help me, does it hurt me? How would you explain it to someone who's like saying, "Hey, I got a bank, got my app on my phone." What's the difference? >> Yeah. To me, there are three things that define DeFi. You know, one is the fact that it is non-custodial, meaning there is no counterparties who take hold of your money and decide when they want to release it back to you. You own it, you hold assets, you know, on your own wallet. You know, that's one clear, you know, defining moment of DeFi. Second is the fact that, you know, where the value of transfer happens. And TraFi, traditional finance. You know, you would see how the actual transfer may not even happen, actually outside of a particular location, such as for example, a centralized exchange. However, on DeFi, you can clearly see how the value of transfer happens on chain, on Ethereum, on other lines, you know, on other chain as well. And third and last, you know, to me is how the organizations define what decisions, what setups are to be made within, right? For example, you know, DAO, you know, the centralized autonomous organization, they will actually use the communities to define how things can be decided. So that's one way to see it. >> Yeah. It's interesting. I saw these protocols and the tokens and infrastructure, Mike, there's a complex system going on here. It's the plumbing, right? I mean, it's a money system. You know, how decisions are made, you got communities involved in there, you got actually mechanisms for immutability and security. You got application developers. So you got to kind of think of like an operating system here to make it all work. What's your take on this whole impact of what is DeFi relative to what people see on their phones as just an app or just some finance app. There's a lot of stuff going on under the covers. >> Yeah. I want to totally agree with Michael because it's all about one point of entering to Web 3, yeah? I have just my personal key, and can use all my wallets, get access to my funds from different point in the world. And I just have enter to all these applications, all these huge amount of services and monies. Second general part for me that is all about smart contracts and not intermediate here. Then people want to cooperate on many ways to each other on stable coins, yeah. And this is just smart contract. And one person from another side and another person from other side, that's it. It's all about DeFi ecosystem, you know, into words. >> I mean, this idea of disintermediating the middle man is a huge part of this. I mean, smart contracts is critical to this. You got to have the infrastructure, you got to have the user behavior. This is why it's important. Can you guys weigh in on some of the things on the importance of DeFi and where we are right now relative to progress? Because even just in the past two years, the cultural shift of DeFi has changed a lot. Where are we right now in DeFi? Can you guys share your perspectives on kind of, you know, progress compared to the evolution of where it will go? >> No, I think that DeFi has DeFinitely made a lot of progress with regards to adoption. Not only by retail participants, but also by institutional ones, right? They're warming up the idea of these first stops from Bitcoin or whatever these larger ones that have more proven track record. And they're starting to experiment more and more from taking crypto transactions, et cetera. But from the retail standpoint, it's also made a lot of progress. I'd say the biggest benefit to the DeFi world is community, right? It works because it's decentralized, which means one of the requirements is a lot of participants. But one of the hindrances, which is one of the biggest ones that's kind of been in the way is the usability, which although it's improved a lot, it's still not ready for the mainstream user that's used to just one click, buy it, whatever, don't care to understand how things work. But those two worlds are starting to bridge, right? People getting comfortable, institutions getting comfortable, as well as retail participants not being scared away by the process. >> Yeah. I mean that... I will just ask you to follow up on that Jaime, if you don't mind. Is that that community user piece is huge. A lot of people in the old guard will dismiss things as meme stocks, if you will. You know, we've seen a lot of the traction. But when you have communities moving at massive forces, that's in a way infrastructure, right? So you have behavior changes, whether you got some peer to peer community happening, it can't be dismissed. I mean, yeah, this is my arbitrage and a little bit of a, you know, I won't say crypto vandalism or kind of fun, but at the end of the day, that's a behavior. That is specific change. That points to... It can't be dismissed. What do you guys react to that? What's your reaction to that? >> Right. Actually, at my firm, Cook Finance, we are actually at the forefront of seeing that movement. So at Cook, you know, we label ourselves as compostable finance. And one thing that we've seen is that our communities, consistently we propose very interesting strategies, connecting different DeFi protocols together to basically execute on a portfolio execution that allows them to achieve a certain objectives. And we have to say, you know, if you were to define Web 2 as read and write and Web 3 as read, write, and create, you know, then this is really, you know, where the difference lies. We are now at this point where we are simply providing an infrastructure, as you said before, but allowing, you know, the creativities, you know, from everybody to come together and let the crowd wisdom everywhere, you know, to decide exactly, you know, what should take home from a product perspective. So we're very excited about that. >> Yeah. And these are new protocols that need to built. I mean, what does that mean, right? So how does software adapt to that? This comes into the question, I think, why it can't be dismissed. Jaime, what's your reaction to that? Because you're in the middle of it, you see all these behaviors, and Wall Street certainly is an environment where there's a lot of activity 'cause there's finance all this money there, right? And then again, a lot of that is old money, old systems. Now moving to the new, now, global, et cetera. What's your take? >> Well, I mean, first of all, I don't think that one is going to move over to the other one. I believe there's going to be elements where they coexist, right? Traditional finance still has a lot of merits to it and it has a lot of use of practical applications, but they can feed off of each other. There's a lot of things that DeFi can learn from traditional finance and vice versa. So I think that we're just going to start seeing this convergence of these two different worlds. And I think it's extremely powerful, right? Because the way that you think about sequential and transactional systems that are centralized, right? Like it requires all sorts of mechanisms. For example, I know I'm speaking arbitrary, but like you have a market with an exchange in an order book with limit orders and then you have the guy come in there and push market buy or sell, pushes the price, right? That's the mechanism by which you see something flash on your screen. In the world of DeFi, there's additional mechanisms that have previously been impossible, like automated market makers, right? They don't have order books and there's no counterparty. I mean, there is, but they're distributed. So the risk profile is really different. So like it's just a matter of rethinking and looking at all the advantages and all the benefits that DeFi has to offer. >> I love that whole point there. 'Cause that's basically refactoring existing markets in the new way. And this becomes the next question is, is that okay, if you have like say Unstoppable, where they got this access through an NFT, which is super cool with kind of like an identity, the development environment is really key in all these big ways. Because if you think about what needs to happen next, does you need more software developers or developers in general on this new paradigm, right? So with that in mind, how do you guys see the market of more innovation being developed on top of where we are now? 'cause that's the next key flywheel in this equation, which is, I need simplicity, I got to make ease of use, and reduce the time it takes to do things. And that's just going to come from development. So what's you guys reaction to with the wave coming in from a development standpoint? You mentioned smart contracts earlier, Mike, what do you guys think? >> Yeah. At that moment, I'm thinking about Web 3.0 identity. It's very close to Unstoppable Domains doing, because they're doing that you can connect by your domain to different apps, to different projects and so on. And the next step after that will be Web 3.0 identity. I think there will be some custodial service when you will put your passport or verification service and we will get NFT identifying you. And then with this NFT, you will go to every service which should be identified. For example, tomorrow SEC will create new law that all users for U-Swap should be identifying and you'll use this identity NFT for using this UniSwap. And I think it will be huge amount of works for all Web 3 applications and always that. >> Michael, what is Unstoppable matter? Why does Unstoppable matter to DeFi? What's your take on that? >> Yeah. Yeah. First of all, you know, I have been a big fan of Unstoppable both since day one, you know, from the NFT domain, you know, rollout. But one thing that I'm super excited about Unstoppable is the fact that it provides a digital identity, exactly like what Mike said. And the fact that, you know, you can leverage Unstoppable. And the fact that the digital identity can be use in a different way than where we see the traditional finance data such as owning all your PII, you know, all the personal identifiable informations, you know. The NFT aspect allows, you know, only certain informations to be transferred, but at the same time, allow all the participants in the ecosystem, DeFi or even TraFi institutional alike, you know, to only pick certain pieces such that they can still live within, you know, the existing framework. So I think that really is powerful in a way, it bridges in a way, the existing money or value transfer happens, to a way in the future, how people can use the different infrastructure to perform the very same actions. >> Jaime, what's your take on the Unstoppable position here relative to DeFi? >> Look, I think Unstoppable is in a really great position, right? The whole spirit of DeFi is to removing bottlenecks, right? Removing kind of choke points, which can either be, you know, by some people choose to label that as the government, but I choose to think of it as more as a technological, right? Like you have this distributed naming system and this idea of identifying yourself has uncalculable benefits, right? I don't think we're at the point yet where we can just imagine it. Right now we start off by associating it with, I'm going to sign into a website with my username and password. And this is the new version of that. That doesn't have any huge feel to it, right? But what's under the hood is what actually allows people to do a lot more things such as like being able to port these things across and into connectivity on different websites. And being able to have control over your data, right? Like to actually be able to open up markets for even being able to monetize your own data, right? So that when you sign into a thing, you can just decide what things to share and whatnot. Like there's so many ways that we can't quite yet imagine the use for this, and I think that Unstoppable's in an incredible position to take advantage of that. >> That's awesome insight. That's a great way to talk about it. I mean, you look at distributed naming system, first of all, it really has not been done at large scale. I mean, the traditional naming systems have been centralized. So if you look at that as an enabling platform, I mean, it's limitless possibilities. Again, you start initially with some problems, but there's real technical enablement here. So in the last few minutes, I'd love to pivot on that point, and go, what's possible with this DeFi going forward? Because if you take that premise that you have this enabling system, that people are going to kind of align with defacto and then ultimately maybe standard, what does that enable? 'Cause you're now in a growth mode for the sector. Okay. Which is innovation coders. And when you start seeing protocols start to become defacto, that's a good thing. So let's talk about in the last few minutes, what's next for DeFi? Jaime, will start with you. What's your take on what's next? 'Cause you kind of teed it up. Take us through the... Walk down that path. In hypothetical of course, but you know, let's take a road. >> So, you know, I think that for starters, DeFi gets more powerful the more that people use it, right? So we're going to just start by saying there's going to be more adoption, so this thing is going to be more robust. And more things can actually live on this decentralized platform. One of the biggest benefits of decentralization is its robustness. You think about like the worldwide web, it's really not a web, it's more like just like a pipe of data that's owned by a handful of companies and the internet and the servers that host it and all these different things. We're already starting to see decentralized storage or servers. We're already starting to see decentralized networks, right? So that you're actually able to slowly start reducing those choke points. You're going to have this entire system where the world is interconnected, where people can communicate without these choke points, without being able to worry about censorship. You'll be able to have... The world that's able to transact, interact, and where you live is no longer going to be as much of a factor as it is today. >> Awesome. Michael, what's your take? What's possible? Where's it going? >> Yeah, I would take what Jaime said earlier. You know, I mean using the AMM example, the automated market making example. From our end, you know, I think one of the defining moment was, you know, when UniSwap first roll out, you know, in the big way, it allowed many individuals to become market makers for the first time in their lives. And I think that's very powerful, you know. It changes the dynamic as to where the, I guess, you know, the forces and the power of finance, you know, lies. In addition to that, you know, like I said before, I think many people would start to come up with their own ideas as to how things, you know, can be executed from a finance perspective to achieve many different risk reward profiles. So from that sense, you know, I think it is only the beginning that now we are seeing how, you know, digital identities, you know, can be linked, you know, to an individual. And at the same time, also the value creation side of the story. >> All right. Mike, your take. What's next? >> Yeah. I believe in two things. First, this is cross-chain and will it chain liquidity? Because right now it's not simple way for transferring, for example, USDC or stablecoin from polygon to cosmos network. But I believe in common liquidity for cross-chain. And the second one is more user friendly interfaces like hybrid interfaces and connecting DeFi and traditional financial startups like near ecosystem building now. Then you have layer one, blockchain solution, and then layer two, application with who are connected to our one application. More user friendly and more common useless applications. >> Great stuff, guys. Amazing content. Great panel. You guys are awesome. Great on the front front range of this whole wave. We got one minute left. So quick lightning questions. So in one quick statement, what one thing should people pay attention to in DeFi as we look at the next, you know, year or two as we go forward? What are the key innovations? What should people look at? It could be an area that's obvious, it could be an area that's not obvious that people should look at, pay attention, that's super important. That is the most important area. Mike, we'll start with you and we'll go across. >> Sure. I would say one thing is composability. I really am excited about the fact that everyone are starting to generate ideas on their own and simply leveraging the existing DeFi infrastructure to allow that to happen. So that's one thing I would say. >> Jaime? >> Sorry. I think NFTs, right? NFTs, I'm not talking about the JPEGs or the pictures. I'm talking about the use of these technologies in much the same way that we were talking about being able to identify yourself online or buying actual real estate or whatever it might be. I think that we're unable to imagine what's going to be some of the biggest uses and I'm very, very excited about seeing what's going to happen. >> Okay. Mike, final statement. What one thing should people pay attention to? >> To my mind, we don't know what market will be next year. And I will recommend to pay attention for stable strategies, for stable core and projects, for stable rates, and always stable coin farming sphere for DeFi market. >> Guys, thanks so much for sharing your insight on this topic. Really appreciate your time for coming into theCUBE here in Palo Alto for the Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase. Really thankful. Thanks for sharing. >> Thank you very much. >> Okay. This is theCUBE conversation here. I'm John Furrier with theCube. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(bright upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome to theCUBE, "Unstoppable Domains Showcase." I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We got a great discussion here called the influencers around what's going on Web 3.0. And also this new sea change, cultural change around this next generation, internet, web, cloud, all happening, Jeremiah Owyang, Industry Analyst and Founding Part of Kaleido Insights. Jeremiah, great to see you thanks for coming on I appreciate it. Ren Besnard, Vice President of Marketing and Unstoppable Domains in the middle of all the action. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on on theCUBE for this showcase. >> Wow, my pleasure. >> Thanks for having us, John. >> Jeremiah, I want to start with you. You've seen many ways refer in all of your work for over a decade now. You've seen the Web 2.0 wave now the Web 3.0 is here. And it's not, I wouldn't say hyped up it's really just ramping up. And you're seeing real practical examples. You're in the middle of all the action. What is this Web 3.0, can you frame for us? I mean, you've seen many webs. What is Web 3.0 mean, what is it all about? >> Well John, you and I worked in the Web 2.0 space and essentially that enabled peer-to-peer media where people could upload their thoughts and ideas and videos without having to rely on centralized media. Unfortunately, that distributed and decentralized movement actually became centralized on the platform which are the big social networks and big tech companies. And this has caused an uproar because the people who are creating the content did not have control, could not control their identities, and could not really monetize or make decisions. So Web 3.0 which is a moniker of a lot of different trends, including crypto, blockchain and sometimes the metaverse. Is to undo the controlling that has become centralized. And the power is now shifting back into the hands of the participants again. And in this movement, they want to have more control over their identities, their governance, the content that they're creating, how they're actually building it, and then how they're monetizing it. So in many ways it's changing the power and it's a new economic model. So that's Web 3.0. Without really even mentioning the technologies. Is that helpful? >> Yeah, it's great. And Ren, we're talking about on theCUBE many times and one notable stat I don't think it's been reported, but it's been more kind of a rumor. I hear that 30% of the Berkeley computer science students are dropping out and going into to crypto or blockchain or decentralized startups. Which means that there's a big wave coming in of talent. You're seeing startups, you're seeing a lot more formation, you're seeing a lot more, I would say it's kind of ramping up of real people, not just people with dream is actual builders out here doing stuff. What's your take on the Web 3.0 movement with all this kind of change happening from people and also the new ideas being refactored? >> I think that the competition for talent is extremely real. And we start looking at the stats, we see that there is an enormous draft of people that are moving into this space. People that are fascinated by technology and are embracing the ethos of Web 3.0. And at this stage I think it's not only engineers and developers, but we have moved into a second phase where we see that a lot of supporting functions, you know, marketing being one of them, sales, business development are being built up quite rapidly. It's not without actually reminding me of the mid 2000s, you know. When I started working with Google, at that point in time the walled gardens rightly absorbing vast, vast cohorts of young graduates and more experienced professionals that were passionate and moving into the web environment. And I think we are seeing a movement right now, which is not entirely similar except faster. >> Yeah, Jeremiah, you've seen the conversations of the cloud, I call the cloud kind of revolution. You had mobile in 2007. But you got Amazon Web Services changed the application space on how people developed in the cloud. And again, that created a lot of value. Now you're seeing the role of data as a huge part of how people are scaling and the decentralized movements. So you've got cloud which is kind of classic today, state of the art enterprise and or app developers. And you've got now decentralized wave coming, okay. You're seeing apps being developed on that architecture. Data is central in all this, right. So how, how do you view this as someone who's watching the landscape, you know, these walled gardens are hoarding all the data I mean, LinkedIn, Facebook. They're not sharing that data with anyone they're using it for themselves. So as- >> That's right. >> They can control back comes to the forefront. How do you see this market with the applications and what comes out of that? >> So the thing that we seen out of the five things that I had mentioned that are decentralizing. (Jeremiah coughing) Are the ones that have been easier to move across. Have been the ability to monetize and to build. But the data aspect has actually stayed pretty much central, frankly. What has decentralized is that the contracts, the blockchain ledgers, those have decentralized. But the funny thing is often a big portion of these blockchain networks are on Amazon 63 to 70%, same thing with (indistinct). So they're still using the Web 2.0 architectures. However, we're also seeing other forms like IPFS where the data could be spread across a wider range of folks. But right now we're still dependent on what Web 2.0. So the vision and the promise Web 3.0 when it to full decentralization is not here by any means. I'd say we're at a Web 2.25. >> Pre-Web 3.0 no, but actions there. How do you guys see the dangers, 'cause there's a lot of negative press but also there's a lot of positive press. You're seeing a lot of fraud, we've seen a lot of the crypto fraud over the past years. You've seen a lot of now positive. It's almost a self-governance thing and environment, the way the culture is. But what are the dangers, how do you guys educate people, what should people pay attention to, what should people look for to understand, you know, where to position themselves? >> Yes, so we've learned a lot from Web 1.0, Web 2.0, the sharing economy. And we are walking into Web 3.0 with eyes wide open. So people have rightfully put forth a number of challenges, the sustainability issues with excess using of computing and mining the excessive amount of scams that are happening in part due to unknown identities. Also the architecture breaks DAOn in some periods and there's a lack of regulation. This is something different though. In the last periods that we've gone through, we didn't really know what was going to happen. And we walked and think this is going to be great. The sharing economy, the gig economy, the social media's going to change the world around. It's very different now. People are a little bit jaded. So I think that's a change. And so I think we're going to see that sorted out in suss out just like we've seen with other trends. It's still very much in the early years. >> Ren, I got to get your take on this whole should influencers and should people be anonymous or should they be docs out there? You saw the board, eight guys that did that were kind of docs a little bit there. And that went viral. This is an issue, right? Because we just had a problem of fake news, fake people, fake information. And now you have a much more secure environment imutability is a wonderful thing. It's a feature, not a bug, right? So how is this all coming down? And I know you guys are in the middle of it with NFTs as authentication. Take us, what's your take on this because this is a big issue. >> Look, I think first I am extremely optimistic about technology in general. So I'm super, super bullish about this. And yet, you know, I think that while crypto has so many upsides, it's important to be super conscious and aware of the downsides that come with it to, you know. If you think about every Fortune 500 company there is always training required by all employees on internet safety, reporting of potential attacks and so on. In Web 3.0, we don't have that kind of standard reporting mechanisms yet for bad actors in that space. And so when you think about influencers in particular, they do have a responsibility to educate people about the potential, but also the dangers of the technology of Web 3.0 of crypto basically. Whether you're talking about hacks or online safety, the need for hardware, wallet, impersonators on discord, you know, security storing your seed phrase. So every actor influencer or else has got a role to play. I think that in that context to your point, it's very hard to tell whether influencers should be anonymous, oxydemous or fully docked. The decentralized nature of Web 3.0 will probably lead us to see a combination of those anonymity levels so to speak. And the movements that we've seen around some influencers identities become public are particularly interesting. I think there's probably a convergence of Web 2.O and Web 3.0 at play here, you know. Maybe occurring on the notion of 2.5. But for now I think in Web 2.0, all business founders and employees are known and they held accountable for their public comments and their actions. If Web 3.0 enables us to be anonymous, if DAOs have voting control, you know. What happens if people make comments and there is no way to know who they are, basically. What if the DAO doesn't take appropriate action? I think eventually there will be an element of community self-regulation where influencers will be acting in the best interest of their reputation. And I believe that the communities will self-regulate themselves and will create natural boundaries around what can be said or not said. >> I think that's a really good point about influencers and reputation because. Jeremiah, does it matter that you're anonymous have an icon that could be a NFT or a picture. But if I have an ongoing reputation I have trust, to this trust there. It's not like just a bot that was created just to spam someone. You know I'm starting to getting into this new way. >> You're right, and that word you said trust, that's what really this is about. But we've seen that public docs, people with their full identities have made mistakes. They have pulled the hood over people's faces and really scammed them out of a lot of money. We've seen that in the, that doesn't change anything in human behavior. So I think over time that we will see a new form of a reputation system emerge even for pseudonym and perhaps for people that are just anonymous that only show their potential wallet, address a series of numbers and letters. That form might take a new form of a Web 3.0 FICO Score. And you could look at their behaviors. Did they transact, you know, how did they behave? Were they involved in projects that were not healthy? And because all of that information is public on the chain and you can go back in time and see that. We might see a new form of a scoring emerge, of course. Who controls that scoring? That's a whole nother topic gone on controling and trust. So right now, John we do see that there's a number of projects, new NFT projects, where the founders will claim and use this as a point of differentiation that they are fully docs. So you know who they are and in their names. Secondly, we're seeing a number of products or platforms that require KYC, you know, your customers. So that's self-identification often with a government ID or credit card in order to bridge out your coins and turn that into fiat. In some cases that's required in some of these marketplaces. So we're seeing a collision here between our full names and pseudonyms and being anonymous. >> That's awesome. And I think this is the new, again, a whole new form of governance. Ren, you mentioned some comments about DAO. I want to get your thoughts again. You know, Jeremiah we've become historians over the years. We're getting old I'm a little bit older than you. (Jeremiah laughs) But we've seen the- >> You're young men. You know, I remember breaking in the business when the computer standards bodies were built to be more organic and then they became much more of a, kind of an anti-innovation environment where people, the companies would get involved, the standards organization just to slow things DAO and mark things up a little bit. So, you know, you look at DAOs like, hmm, is DAO a good thing or a bad thing. The answer is from people I talk to is, it depends. So I'd love to get your thoughts on getting momentum and becoming defacto with value, a value proposition, vis-a-vis just a DAO for the sake of having a DAO. This has been a conversation that's been kind of in the inside the baseball here, inside the ropes of the industry, but there's trade offs. Can you guys share your thoughts on when to do a DAO and when not to do a DAO and the benefits and trade offs of that? >> Sure, maybe I'll start off with a definition and then we'll go to, Ren. So a DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization, the best way to think about this It's a digital cooperative. and we've heard of worker cooperatives before. The difference is that they're using blockchain technologies in order to do three things, identity, governance, and rewards and mechanisms. They're relying on Web 2.0 tools and technologies like discord and Telegram and social networks to communicate. And as a cooperative they're trying to come up with a common goal. Ren, what's your take, that's the setup. >> So, you know for me when I started my journey into crypto and Web 3.0, I had no idea about what DAO actually meant. And an easy way for me to think of it and to grasp the nature of it was about the comparison between a DAO and perhaps a more traditional company structure, you know. In the traditional company structure, you have (indistinct), the company's led by a CEO and other executives. The DAO is a flat structure, and it's very much led by a group of core contributors. So to Jeremiah's point, you know, you get that notion of a cooperative type of structure. The decision making is very different, you know. We're talking about a super high level of transparency proposals getting submitted and voting systems using (indistinct) as opposed to, you know, management, making decisions behind closed doors. I think that speaks to a totally new form of governance. And I think we have hardly, hardly scratched the surface. We have seen recently very interesting moments in Web 3.0 culture. And we have seen how DAO suddenly have to make certain decisions and come to moments of claiming responsibility in order to police behavior of some of the members. I think that's important. I think it's going to redefine how we're thinking about that particularly new governance models. And I think it's going to pave the way for a lot of super interesting structure in the near future. >> Yeah and that's a great point. >> Go ahead, Jeremiah. >> That's a great point, Ren. Around the transparency for governance. So, John you post the question, does this make things faster or slower? And right now in the most doubts are actually pretty slow because they're set up as a flat organization. So as a response to that they're actually shifting to become representative democracies. Does that sound familiar? Or you can appoint delegates and use tokens to vote for them and they have a decision power. Almost like a committee and they can function. And so we've seen actually there sometimes are hierarchy except the person at the top is voted by those that have the tokens. In some cases, the people at the top had the most tokens. But that's a whole nother topic. So we're seeing a wide variety of governance structures. >> You know, Ren I was talking with Matt G, the Founder of Unstoppable. And I was telling him about the Domain Name System. And one little trivia note that many people don't know about is that the US government 'cause the internet was started by the US. The Department of Commerce kept that on tight leash because the international telecommunications wanted to get their hands on it because of ccTLDs and other things. So at that time, 'cause the innovation yet was isn't yet baked out. It was organically growing the governance, the rules of the road, keeping it very stable versus melding with it. So there's certain technologies that require, Jeremiah that let's keep an eye on as a community let's not formalize anything. Like the government did with the Domain Name System. Let's keep it tight and then finally released it. I think multiple years after 2004, I think it went over to the ITU. But this is a big point. I mean, if you get too structured, organic innovation can't go. What's you guys reaction to that? >> So I think, you know to take the stab at it. We have as a business, you know, thinking of Unstoppable Domains, a strong incentive to innovate. And this is what is going to be determining long-term value growth for the organization, for partners, for users, for customers. So you know the degree of formalization actually gives us a sense of purpose and a sense of action. And if you compare that to DAO, for instance, you can see how some of the upsides and downsides can pan out either way. It's not to say that there is a perfect solution. I think one of the advantages of the DAO is that you can let more people contribute. You can probably remove buyers quite effectively and you can have a high level of participation and involvement in decisions and own the upside in many ways. You know as a company, it's a slightly different setup. We have the opportunity to coordinate a very diverse and part-time workforce in a very you a different way. And we do not have to deal with the inefficiencies that might be inherent to some form of extreme decentralization. So there is a balance from an organizational structure that comes either side. >> Awesome. Jeremiah, I want to get your thoughts on a trend that you've been involved in, we've both been involved in. And you're seeing it now with the kind of social media world, the world of the role of an influencer. It's kind of moved from what was open source and influencer was a connect to someone who shared, created content enabled things to much more of a vanity. You update the photo on Instagram and having a large audience. So is there a new influencer model with Web 3.0 or is it, I control the audience I'm making money that way. Is there a shift in the influencer role or ideas that you see that should be in place for what is the role of an influencer? 'Cause as Web 3.0 comes you're going to see that role become instrumental. We've seen it in open source projects. Influencers, you know, the people who write code or ship code. So what's your take on that? Because this has been a conversation. People have been having the word influencer and redefining and reframing it. >> Sure, the influence model really hasn't changed that much, but the way that they're behaving has when it comes to Web 3.0. In this market, I mean there's a couple of things. Some of the influencers are investors. And so when you see their name on a project or a new startup, that's an indicator there's a higher level of success. You might want to pay more attention to it or not. Secondly, influencers themselves are launching their own NFT projects. So, Gary Vaynerchuk, a number of celebrities, Paris Hilton is involved. They are also doing theirs as well. Steve Aok, famous DJ launched his as well. So they're going head first and participating in building in this model. And their communities are coming around them and they're building economy. Now the difference is it's not I speak as an influencer to the fans. The difference is that the fans are now part of the community and they literally hold and own some of the economic value, whether it's tokens or the NFTs. So it's a collaborative economy, if you will, where they're all benefiting together. And that's a big difference as well. >> Can you see- >> Lastly, there's one little tactic we're seeing where marketers are air dropping NFTs, branded NFTs influencers wallet. So you can see it in there. So there's new tactics that are forming as well. Back to you. >> That's super exciting. Ren, what's your reaction to that? Because he just hit on a whole new way of how engagement's happening, how people are closed looping their votes, their votes of confidence or votes with their wallet. And the brands which are artists now influencers. I mean, this is a whole game changing instrumentation level. >> I think that what we are seeing right now is super reinvigorating as a marketeer who's been around for a few years, basically. I think that the shift in the way brands are going to communicate and engage with their audiences is profound. It's probably as revolutionary and even more revolutionary than the movement for brands in getting into digital. And you have that sentiment of a gold rush right now with a lot of brands that are trying to understand NFTs and how to actually engage with those communities and those audiences. There are many levels in which brands and influencers are going to engage. There are many influencers that actually advance the message and the mission because the explosion of content on Web 3.0 has been crazy. Part of that is due to the network effect nature of crypto. Because as Jaremiah mentioned, people are incentivized to promote projects. Holders of an NFT are also incentivized to promote it. So you end up with a fly wheel which is pretty unique of people that are hyping their project and that are educating other people about it and commenting on the ecosystem with IP right being given to NFT holders. You're going to see people promote brands instead of the brands actually having to. And so the notion of brands are gaining and delivering elements of the value to their fans is something that's super attractive, extremely interesting. And I think again, we have hardly scratched the surface of all that is possible in that particular space. >> That's interesting. You guys are bringing some great insight here. Jeremiah, the old days the word authentic was a kind of a cliche and brands like tried to be authentic. And they didn't really know what to do they called it organic, right? And now you have the trust concept with authenticity and environment like Web 3.0 where you can actually measure it and monetize it and capture it if you're actually authentic and trustworthy. >> That's right, and be because it's on blockchain, you can see how somebody's behaved with their economic behavior in the past. Of course, big corporations aren't going to have that type of trail on blockchain just yet. But individuals and executives who participate in this market might be. And we'll also see new types of affinity. Do executives do they participate in these NFT communities, do they purchase them or numerous brands like Adidas to acquire, you know, different NFT projects to participate. And of course the big brands are grabbing their domains. Of course you could talk to, Ren about that because it's owning your own name is a part of this trust and being found. >> That's awesome. Great insight guys. Closing comments, takeaways for the audience here. Each of you take a minute to share your thoughts on what you think is happening now where it goes, all right, where's it going to go? Jeremiah, we'll start with you. >> Sure, I think the vision of Web 3.0 where full decentralization happens, where the power is completely shifted to the edges. I don't think it's going to happen. I think we will reach Web 2.5. And I've been through so many tech trends where we said that the power's going to shift completely to of the end, it just doesn't. In part there's two reasons. One is the venture capital are the ones who tend to own the programs in the first place. And secondly, the startups themselves end up becoming the one-percenter. We see Airbnb and Uber are one-percenter now. So that trend happens over and over and over. Now with that said, the world will be in a better place. We will have more transparency. We will see economic power shifted to the people, the participants. And so they will have more control over the internet that they are building. >> Awesome, Ren final comments. >> I'm fully aligned with Jeremiah on the notion of control being returned to users, the notion of ownership and the notion of redistribution of the economic value that is created across all the different chains that we are going to see and all those ecosystems. I believe that we are going to witness two parallel movements of expansion. One that is going to be very lateral. When you think of crypto and Web 3.0 essentially you think of a few 100 tribes. And I think that more projects are going to be a more coalitions of individuals and entities, and those are going to exist around those projects. So you're going to see, you know, an increase in the number of tribes that one might join. And I also think that we're going to progress rapidly from the low 100 millions of crypto and NFT holders into the big hands basically. And that's going to be extreme interesting. I think that the next waves of crypto users, NFT fans are going to look very different from the early adopters that we had witnessed in the very early days. So it's not going to be your traditional model of technology adoption curves. I think the demographics are going to shift and the motivations are going to be different as well, which is going to be a wonderful time to educate and engage with new community members. >> All right, Ren and Jeremiah, thank you both for that great insight great segment breaking down Web 3.0 or Web 2.5 as Jeremiah says but we're in a better place. This is a segment with the influencers. As part of theCUBE and the Unstoppable Domain Showcase. I'm John Furrie, your host. Thanks for watching. (bright upbeat music)

(bright upbeat music) >> Hi, everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. This segment in this session is about expansion into Asia Pacific and Europe for Unstoppable Domains. It's a hot startup in the Web3 area, really creating a new innovation around NFTs, crypto, single sign-on, and digital identity, giving users the power like they should. We've got two great guests, Sajjad Rehman, Head of Europe, and Nilkanth, known as Nil, Iyer, head of Asia. Sajjad, Nil, welcome to this CUBE, and let's talk about the expansion. It's not really an expansion, the global economy is global, but showcase here about Unstoppables going to Europe. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for inviting us. >> Thanks John, for inviting us. >> So we're living in a global world, obviously, crypto, blockchain, decentralized applications. You're starting to see mainstream adoption, which means the shift is happening. There are more apps coming, and it means more infrastructure, and things got to get easier, right? So, reduce the steps it takes to do stuff, makes the wallets better, give people more secure access and control of their data. This is what Unstoppable is all about. You guys are in the middle of it, you're on this wave. What is the potential of Web3 with Unstoppable, and in general, in Asia and in Europe? >> I can go first. So, now, let's look at the Asia market. I mean, typically, we see the US market, the Europe markets, for typical Web 2.0 software and infrastructure is definitely the larger markets, with US typically accounting for about 60%, and Europe about 20 to 30%, and Asia has always been small. But we see in this whole world of blockchain, crypto, Web 3.0, Asia already has about 160 million users. They have more than 35 local exchanges. And if you really look at the number of countries, in terms of the rate of adoption, many of the Asian countries, which probably you'd have never even heard of, like Vietnam, actually topping the list, right? One of the reasons that this is happening, again, if you go through the Asian Development Bank's latest report, you have these Gen Zs and millennials, of that's 50% of the Asian population. And if you really look at 50% of the Asian population, that's 1.1 billion people out of the total, 1.8 billion Gen Z and millennials that you have have in the world. And these folks are digitally native, they're people, in fact, the Gen Zs are mobile first, and millennials, many of us, like myself, at least, are people who are digital, and 20% of the world's economy is currently digital, and the rest, 40 to 50%, which is going to happen in the Web 3.0 world, and that's going to be driven by millennials and Gen Zs. I think that's why this whole space is so exciting, because it's being driven by the users, by the new generation. I mean, that's my broad thought on this whole thing. >> Before we get get this started, I want to just comment, Asia, also, in other areas where mobile first came, you had the younger demographics absolutely driving the change, because they're like, "Well, I don't want the old way." They go right from scratch at the beginning, they're using the technologies. That has propelled the crypto world. I mean, that is absolutely true. Everyone's kind of seeing that. And that's now influencing some of these developer nations, like say, in Europe, for instance, and even North America, I think Europe's more advanced than North America, in my opinion, but we'll get to that. Oh, so potential in Europe. Sajjad, take us through your thoughts on... As head of Europe, for our audience. >> Absolutely, so, Nil's right. I think Asia is way ahead in terms of Gen Z user adopting crypto, Europe is actually a distant second, but it's surprising to note that Europe actually has the highest transactional activity in crypto over the last year and a half. And if you dig a bit deeper, I'd say, arguably, for Europe, I think the opportunity in Web3 is perhaps the largest. And then perhaps it can mean the most for Europe. Europe, for the last decade, has been trailing behind Asia and North America, when it comes to birthing unicorns, and I think Web3 can provide a StepChain opportunity. This belief, for me, stems from the fact that Europe's policy, right, like, for example, GDPR, is focused on enabling your data ownership. And I think I recently read a very good paper out of Stanford, by Patrick Henson. He speaks about Web3 being the best part, here, for Europe enabling patient sovereignty. So what that means is users control the data, they're paying to enter it, and they harness the value from it. And on one hand, while Europe is enabling that regulation, that's entered in that code, Web3 actually brings it into action. So I think with more enablement, better regulation, and we'll see more hubs, like the Crypto Valley in Switzerland pop up, that will bring, I think, I'd rather be careful, better to say, not over-regulation, the right regulation. We can expect more in prop capital, more builder talent, that then drives more adoption. So I think the prospects for Europe in terms of usage, as well as builders, are quite bright. >> Yeah, and I think, also, you guys are in areas where the cultural shift is so dramatic. You mentioned Asia, the demographics, even the entrepreneurial culture in Europe right now is booming. You look at all the venture-backed startups, and the young generation building companies! And again, cloud computing is a big part of that, obviously. But look at, compared to the United States, you go back 15 years ago, Europe was way behind, on the startup scene. Now it's booming and pumping on all cylinders. And it kind of points at this cultural shift. It's almost like a generational... It's like the digital hippies changing the world. The Web3, it's kind of, "I don't want to be Web2, Web2 is so old, I don't want to do that." And then it's all because it's changing, right? And there are things inadequate with Web2, on the naming system. Also the arbitrage around fake information, bots, users being manipulated, and also merchandised and monetized through these portals. Okay, that's kind of ending. So talk about the dynamic of Web2, 3, at those areas. You've got users and you've got companies, who build applications. They're going to shift and be forced, in our opinion, and I want to get your reaction to that. Do you think applications are going to have to be Web3, or users will reject them? >> Yeah, I think that I'll jump in and add to there in Nil's part. I think the Web3 is built on three principles, right? They're decentralization, ownership, and composability. And I think these are not binary. So if I look further on in the future, I don't see a future where you have just Web3. I think there's going to be coexistence or cooperation between Web2 companies, Web3, building bridges. I think there's going to be... There's a sliding scale to decentralization, versus centralization. Similarly, ownership. And I think users will find what works best for them in different contexts. I think what Unstoppable is doing is essentially providing the identity system for Web3, and that's way more powerful when it comes to being built on blockchains, than with the naming system we had for Web2, right? The identity system can serve the purpose of taking a user's personal identifier, password, blockchain, domain name, and attaching all kinds of attributes that define who you are, both in the physical and digital world, and filling out information that you can transact on the basis of. And I think the users would, as we go to a no-code and low-code future, right, where in Web2, more of the users were essentially consumers, or readers of the internet. And in Web3, with more low-code and no-code technology platforms taking shape and getting proliferation, you would see more users being actually writers, publishers, and developers on the internet. And they would value owning their data, and to harness the most amount of value from it. So I think that's the power concept, and I think that's the future I see, where Web3 will dominate. Nil, what do you think? >> Well, I think you put it very, very nicely, Sajjad. I think you covered most of the points, I think. But I'm seeing a lot of different things that are happening at the ground. I think a lot of the governments, a lot of the Web 2.0 players, the traditional banks, these guys are not sitting quiet on the blockchain space. There are a lot of pilots happening in the blockchain space, right? I mean, I can give you real life examples. I mean, one of the biggest examples is in my home state of Maharashtra, where Mumbai is. They actually partnered with Polygon (MATIC), right? Actually built a private blockchain-based capability to kind of deliver your COVID vaccination certificates with the QR code, right? And that's the only way they could deliver that kind of volumes in that short a time, with the kind of user control, the user control the user has on the data. That could only be possible because of blockchain. Of course, it's still private, because it's healthcare data, they still want to keep it, something that's not fully on a blockchain. But that is something. Similarly, there is a consortium of about nine banks who have actually trying to work on making things like remittances or trade finance much, much easier. I mean, remittances through a traditional, Web 2.0 world is very, very costly. And especially in the Asian countries, a lot of people from Southeast Asia work across the world and send back money home. It's a very costly and a time-taking affair. So they have actually partnered and built a blockchain-based capability, again, in a pilot stage, to kind of reduce the transaction costs. For example, if you just look at the trade finance days where there are 14 million traders, who do 2.4, 5 trillion dollars, of transaction, they were able to actually reduce the time that it takes from eight to nine days, to about two to three days. And so, to add on to what you're saying, I think these two worlds are going to meet, and meet very soon. And when they meet, what they need is a single digital identity, a human-readable way of being able to send and receive and do commerce. I think that's where I see Unstoppable Domains, very nicely positioned to be able to integrate these two worlds, so that's my thought on all the logistics. >> That was a great point. I was going to get into which industries, and kind of what areas, you see in your geographies. But it's a good point about saving time. I like how you brought that up, because in these new waves, you either got to reduce the steps it takes to do something, or save time, make it easy. And this is the successful formula, in anything, whether it's an app or UI or whatever, but what specifically are they doing in your areas? And what about Unstoppable are they attracted to? Is it because of the identity? Is it because of the apps? Is it because of the single sign-on? What is the reason that they're leaning in, and unpacking this further into their pilots? >> Sajjad, do you want to take that? >> Yeah, absolutely, man. >> Because. >> Yeah, I'm happy. Please jump in if you want. So I think, and let me clarify the question, John, you're talking about Web2 companies, looking to partner in software, or potential partnerships, right? >> Yeah, what are they seeing, and what are they seeing as the value that these pilots we heard from Nilkanth around the financial industry? And obviously, gaming's one, it's obvious. Huge: financial, healthcare, I mean, these are obviously verticals that are going to be heavily impacted in a positive way. What are they seeing as value? What's getting them motivated to do these pilots? Why are they jumping in, with both feet, if you will, on these projects? Is it because it's saving money, is it time, or both, is it ease of use, is it the user's expectations? Trying to tease out how you guys see that evolving. >> Yeah, yeah, I think... This is still, the space is, the movement is going very fast, but I think the space is still young. And right now, a lot of these companies are seeing the potential that Web3 offers. And I think the key, key dimensions, right, composability, decentralization, and ownership. So I think the key thing I'm seeing in EU is these Web2 companies seeing the momentum and looking to harness that by enabling bridges to Web3. One of the key trends in Europe has been Fintech, I think over the last five to six years, we have the Revolut, N26, e-TOTAL creating platforms, new banks and super finance, super apps rising to the forefront. And they are all enabling, or also connecting a bridge with Web3 in some shape and form, either enabling creating of crypto, some are launching their own native wallets, and these are, essentially, ways that they can, one, attract users. So the Gen Z who are looking for more friction in finance, to get them on board, but also to look to enable more adoption by their own users, who are not using these services that potentially create new revenue streams, and create allocation of capital that they could not access, to have access to otherwise. So I think that's one trend I'm seeing over here. I think the other key trend is, in Europe, at least, has been games. And again, dead links or damaged, web creators would call the metaverse. So a lot of game companies are looking to step into Game Fire, which is, again, a completely different business model to what traditional game companies used to use. Similarly, metaverse is where again, ownership creates a different business model and they see that users and gamers of the future would want to engage with that, versus just being monetized on the basis of subscription or ads. And I think that's something that they're becoming aware of, and moving quickly in the space, launching their own metaverses, or game by applications. Or creating interoperability with these decentralized applications. >> You know, I wanted to get into this point, but I was going to ask about the community empowerment piece of this equation, 'cause digital identity is about the user's identity, which implies they're part of a community. Web3 is very community-centric. But you mentioned gaming, I mean, people who have been watching the gaming world, like ourselves, know that communities and marketplaces have been very active for years, many years, over 15 years. Community, games, currency, in-game activity, has been out there, right, but siloed within the games themselves. So now, it seems that that paradigm's coming in and empowering all communities. Is this something that you guys see and agree with? And if so, what's different about that? How are communities being empowered? I guess that's the question. >> Yeah, I can maybe take that, Sajjad. So, I mean, I must have heard of Axie Infinity, I mean, 40% of their user base is in Vietnam. And the average earning that a person makes in a month, out of playing this game, is more than the national, daily or minimum wage that is there, right? So that's the kind of potential. Actually, going back, as a combination of actually answering your earlier question, and I think over and above what Sajjad said, what's very unique in Asia is we still have a lot of unbanked people, right? So if you really look at the total unbanked population of the world, it's 1.6 billion, and 24% of that is in Asia, so almost 375 million people are in Asia. So these are people who do not have access to finance or credit. So the whole idea is, how do we get these people on to a banking system, onto peer-to-peer lending, or peer-to-peer finance kind of capabilities. I think, again, Unstoppable Domains kind of helps in that, right? If you just look at the pure Web 3.0 world, and the complex, technical way in which money or other crypto is transferred from one wallet to the other, it's very difficult for an unbanked person who probably cannot even do basic communication, cannot read and write, to actually be able to do it. But something that's very human-readable, something that's very easy for him to understand, something that's visual, something that he can see on his mobile. With 2G network, we are not talking of... The world is talking about 5G, but there are parts of Asia, which are still using 2G and 2.5G kind of network, right? So I think that's one key use case. I think the banks are trying to solve because for them, this is a whole new customer segment. And, sorry, I actually went back a little bit, to your earlier question, but coming to this whole community-building, right? So on March 8th, we're launching something called this Women of Web3, or, oh, that is WoW3, right? This is basically to, again, empower. So if you, again, look at Asia, women need a lot of training, they need a lot of enablement, for them to be able to leverage the power of Web 3.0. I can talk about India, of course, being from India. A lot of the women do not... They do all the small businesses, but the money is taken by middlemen, or taken by their husbands. With Web 3.0, fundamentally, the money comes to them, because that's what they use to educate their children. And it's the same thing in a lot of other Southeast Asian countries as well. I think it's very important to build those communities, communities of women entrepreneurs. I think this is a big opportunity to really get the section of society, which probably will take 10 more years, if we go through the normal Web1 to Web 2.0 progression, where the power is with corporations, and not with the individuals. >> And that's a great announcement, by the way, you mentioned the $10 million worth of domains being issued out for... This is democratization, it's what it's all about. Again, this is a new revolution. I mean, this is a new thing. So great stuff, more education, more learning. And going to get the banks up and running, get those people banking, 'cause once they're banking, they get wallets, right? So they need the wallets. So let's get to the real meat here. You guys are in the territory, Europe and Asia, where there's a lot of wallets. There's a lot of exchanges, 'cause that's... They're not in the United States. There's a few of them there, but most of them outside the United States. And you've got a lot of dApps developing, decentralized applications, okay? So you got all this coming together in your territory. What's the strategy, how you going to attack that? You got the wallets, you got the exchanges, and you got D applications. DApps. >> Yeah, I'm happy to (indistinct). So I think, and just quickly there, I think one point is, and Nil really expressed it beautifully, is finding inclusion. That is something that has inspired me, how Web3 can make the internet more inclusive. That inspired my move here. Yeah, I think, for us, I think we are at the base start when it comes to Europe, right? And the key focus, in terms of our approach in Europe would be that, we want to do two things. One, we want to increase the utility of these domain names. And the second thing is, we will invite proliferation with our partners. So when I speak about utility, I think utility is when you have a universal identifier, which is a domain name, and then you have these attributes around it, right? What then defines your identity. So in the context, in Europe, we would look to find partners to help us enrich that identity around the domain name. And that adds value for users, in terms of acquiring these domains and new clients. And on the other end, when it comes to proliferation, I think it's about working with all those crypto, and crypto and Web3, Web3 participants as well as Web3-adjacent companies, brands, and services, who can help us educate current and future, and upcoming Web3 users about the utility of domain names, and help us onboard them to the decentralized internet. So I think that's going to be the general focus. I think the key is that, as, oh, and hopefully, we'll be having one, overarching regulation, EU, that allowed us to do this at a vision level. But I would say I think it's going to be tackling it country by country, identifying countries where there's deeper penetration for Web3, and then making sure that we are partnered with local, trusted partners that are already developing for local communities there. So, yeah, that's my view and Nil, I believe those are wants in, for Asia. >> Oh, I think, yeah, so again, in Asia, one is you have a significant part of humanity living in Asia, right? So obviously, all the other challenges and the opportunities that we talk about, I think the first area of focus would be educating the people on the massive opportunity that they have, and if you're able to get them in early, I think it's great for them as well, right? Because by the time governments, regulations, large banking, financial companies move, but if you can get the larger population into this whole space, it's good for them, so they are first movers in that space. I think we are doing a lot of things on this, worldwide. I think we've done more than 100 past podcasts, just educating people on what is Web 3.0, what are NFT domains? What is DeFi, and so on and so forth. I think it would need some bit of localization, customization, in Asia, given that India itself has about 22 languages. And then there are the other countries which, each of them with their own local languages and syntax, semantics and all those things, right? So I think that that is very important, to be able to disseminate the knowledge, although it's global, but I think to get the grassroot people to understand the opportunity, I think it would need some amount of work there. I think also building communities, I think, John, you talked about communities, so did Sajjad talk about communities. I think it's very important to build communities, because communities create ideation. It talks about... People share their challenges, so that people don't repeat the same mistakes. So I think it's very important to build communities based on interest. I think we all know in the technology world, you can build communities around Elegram, Telegram, Discord, Twitter spaces, and all those things. But, again, when you're talking of financial inclusion, you're talking of a different kind of community-building. I think that that would be important. And then of course I will kind of, primarily from a company perspective, I think getting the 35 odd exchanges in Asia, the wallets to partner with us. Just as an example, MATIC. They had, until September of last year, about 3,500 apps. In just one quarter, it doubled to 7,000 dApps on their platform. But that is the pace, or the speed of innovation that we are seeing on this whole 3.0 space. I think it's very important to get those key partners, Who are developing those dApps. See the power of single sign-on, having a human-readable, digital identity, being able to seamlessly transfer all your assets, digital assets, across multiple cryptos, across multiple NFT marketplaces, and so on and so forth. >> Yeah, and I think the whole community thing, too, is also you seeing the communities being part of, certainly in the entertainment area, and the artistry, creator world, the users are art of the community, they own it, too. So it goes both ways, but this brings up the marketplace, too, as well, because you guys have the opportunity to have trust built into the software layer, right? So now you can keep the reputation data. You can be anonymous, but it's trustworthy, versus bots, which we all know bots can be killed and then started again with... And no one knows what the tagalong has been around. So the whole inadequacy of Web2, which is just growing pains, right? This is what it evolution looks like, next abstraction layer. So I love that vibe. How advanced do you think that thinking is, where people are saying, Hey, we need this abstraction layer. We need this digital identity. We need to start expanding our applications so that the users can move across these and break down those silos where the data is, 'cause that's... This is like the nerd problem, right? It's the data silos that are holding it back. What's your guys' reaction to that? The killing the silos and making it horizontally scalable? >> Yeah, I think it's a nerd problem. It is a problem of people who understand technology. It's a problem of a lot of the people in the business who want to compete effectively against those giants, which are holding all the data. So I think those are the people who will innovate and move. Again, coming back to financial inclusion, coming back to the unbanked, those guys just want to do their business. They want to live their daily life. I think that's not where you'll see... You will see innovation in a different form, but they're not going to disrupt the disrupters. I think that would be the people, Fintechs, I think they would be the first to move on to something like that. I mean, that's my humble opinion. >> Sajjad, you heard. >> Yeah, I think- >> Go ahead. >> I mean, absolutely. I think, I mean, I touched on creators, right? So, like I said earlier, right, we are heading to a future where more people will be creators on the internet. Whether you're publishing, writing something, you're creating video content, and that means that they have data they own, but that's their data, they bring it to the internet. That's more powerful, more useful, and they should be able to transact on that basis. So I think people are recognizing that, and they will increasingly look to do so. And as they do that, they would want these systems that enable them to hold permission to their data. They will want to be able to control what their permission and what they want to provide, dApp. And at the end of the day, these applications have to work backwards from customers, and the customer's looking for that. That's where... That's what they will build. >> The users want freedom. They want to be able to be connected, and not be restricted. They want to freely move around the global internet and do whatever they want with the friends and apps that they want to consume, and not feel arbitraged. They don't want to feel like they're kind of nailed into a walled garden and stuck there and having to come back. It's the new normal. >> They don't want to be the product, right, so. >> They don't want to be the product. Gentlemen, great to have you on, great conversation. We're going to continue this later. Certainly want to keep the updates coming. You guys are in a very hot area in Europe and Asia Pacific. That's where a lot of the action is happening. We see the entrepreneurial activity, the business transformation, certainly with the new paradigm shift, and this big wave that's coming. It's here, it's mainstream. Thanks for coming on and sharing your insights. Appreciate it. >> Thanks, John. >> Thanks, John, Thanks for the opportunity, have a good day. >> Okay, okay, great conversation. All the action's moving and happening real fast. This is theCUBE Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (contemplative music)

(bright music) >> Hello, welcome to theCUBE's presentation of the Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase. I'm John Furrier host of theCUBE. We're here talking about the metaverse and what it all means, what it brings to the table. We've got two pioneers here in the metaverse breaking it down, doing great stuff. Both co-founders of companies, Noah Gainer, co-founder and CEO Parcel. And CJ Hetherington Co-Founder of Atlantis World, digging deep and doing all the great stuff in the Midwest. Chill and thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you so much for having us. >> Thanks for having us. >> So, first of all, I want to say congratulations for the work you guys are doing. This is one of the biggest waves we've seen coming on. It's a changing user expectations, it's a changing architecture, it's real technology involved, there's a lot of action. 30% of people at University of California, Berkeley are dropping out of the Computer Science program to get into Web3. This is the biggest technological change, business model change, user experience change. And we've been seeing going back multiple inflection points. This is a big deal. So the metaverse is real. Some people say, "Well, you know, it's not com..." It's coming it's just a matter of time. So let's get into it. What are you guys doing? Tell us about your company's Parcel and Atlantis World. Noah, start with you. >> Sure, so Parcel is a marketplace for virtual real estate. So you can think of something like OpenSea, which everyone is familiar with, but we solely focus on virtual land and virtual real estate in a number of virtual world, maybe part of decent land or the sandbox. So we feature those on our platform and, you know, we take it the next level with the user experience. So we have fully interactive maps. We have price estimates. You can think of it like a estimate on Zillow and in general, we're building the fully verticalized solution for virtual real estate users. And that will extend into rentals, like Airbnbing out your virtual condo or getting a mortgage on your virtual home, as well as, you know, cultivating the community around it. And especially helping empower creators and architects and builders and getting them work and getting their work on display. >> I'm looking forward to digging into that, that sounds very cool. CJ what's Atlantis world doing? What do you got going on? >> Yeah, exactly. So at Atlantis world, we're building the Web3, social metaverse by connecting Web3 with social, gaming, and education in one light web virtual world, that's accessible to everybody. So by going with actually a light web first and a pixel approach so that you can play on mobile or a really old device, because the problem with existing metaverses is that they set an incredibly high cost barrier to entry and also tech isn't necessarily readily available globally in terms of things like VR headsets and gaming PCs. Like for example, when I was in Africa, I travel a lot. If my book would break, it's not even that I couldn't necessarily afford to buy anyone, it's actually not available there. So we're ruling out a lot of the global kind of population from a metaverse experience. And we're building something which is like 3D pixel and super light weight, to kind of bridge that gap and build something which is ready to be massive up till now and onboard billions of users into Web3. So they'll all basically be using Web3 applications in a gamified way and going really hard on connecting that with social features, like voice chat and talking, getting, and virtual events and vaulting and all of that stuff. >> You know, I love what you guys are doing, you're pioneering a whole another area, but what's great about the whole crypto area, is that, since you know, 2017 onwards you saw Ethereum set the developer market started coming in strong. So you start to see that development. And now we got the metaverse. So I got to ask you guys what's the current definition of the metaverse. I mean everyone's... I mean, since Facebook changed their name to Meta, it's been a hype cycle and everyone's like, "Woh..." First of all, you know why they did that. But they're actually putting a lot of DAO in this. This is a wave, we talked about that. But what is the metaverse? How do you describe it? Why is it relevant? Virtual real estate, that sounds cool. What does this all come together? Explain it for the people out there that might not be getting it right. >> Yeah, I feel like for me, the critical difference between an ordinary gamer, what one might think of as game and a metaverse is actually Web3. For me, Web3 is metaverse. And for me it's really because Web3 enables real world utility, but inside of a virtual environment. So for example, inside of Atlantis, you might run into a DeFi bank and understand by interacting with other game characters, which are programmed to teach you about DeFi and like, what is Avel, how to deposit. And so you're actually getting a real world utility out of doing something in a virtual environment. And for me, that's what really bridges the gap into metaverse. Yeah, I'm really kind of bullish on that. (chuckles) >> Noah, what's your take? Define the current state of the definition of the metaverse? What is the metaverse? >> Yeah, to me, it's the 3D internet. And I do agree with what CJ's saying, how, you know, what makes it the most compelling and will ultimately the most successful is that addition of a blockchain and essentialized, you know, tributed ledger technology. Because you can have the closed metaverse, which nobody wants that future. And I don't believe that will be the future. you know, versus the open metaverse, which is blockchain-based, the users are the owners of the assets and the land and everything around it. And it's really foreign by the people. But I see the metaverse as just an extension of the internet we're already using today but we're going to have hardware that makes it 3D and more immersive like AR and VR. >> Yeah, I think- >> Yeah, definitely- >> Go on CJ. >> Around kind of like eight or nine months ago when we started to build Atlantis, we decided that the metaverse was a virtual world where you could live, work, play, and earn, and that's what we've been building. It started off as like building the metaverse that has DeFi and over the kind of time it's gone on our community has grown, we've started to understand the future of our product and our mission and values. It started to become the Web3 metaverse, right? And then on top of that, the Web3 social metaverse, so it's a combination of what all these things. >> You know, it's interesting. And I'm a little bit older than you guys, I wish I was your age, but when the web came along, people were saying the same thing. That the web's terrible. It's a stupid thing. It's never going to be real. And yeah, there was problems. It was slow to dial up back in the day. But yeah, now with gaming, I got to say, I had to look at the gaming evolution being a gamer myself, old school, I guess, but the gaming culture is proxy to what I see kind of happening in the metaverse. And let me get your reaction to that. I'm not saying directly, but you saw what gaming did, right? In game currency, some, you know, pockets of the same kind of dynamic where a lot of value is happening, the expectations were different for users. So how does the metaverse... How does gaming cross over? What's the ecosystem of metaverse? Obviously it's a cultural shift, one. Infrastructure, two. But I can just see this new generation of thinking. It's a whole nother level. Can you guys share your thoughts on that riff? >> Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It's like for us, we really believe that we can enable a social revolution, where workers from impoverished and remote regions can actually be onboarded into these digital player to earn economies and also learn to earn economies. So it's about leveraging Web3 and blockchain gaming, whatever actually you want to call it, to enable this revolution and actually onboard new people into a completely new working and dynamic. One of the other things we envision for Atlantis, imagine like you run around this game world and you complete quests inside of the game. And these quests basically involve talking to the non-player characters, the NPCs, which are basically pre-programmed. I don't know if anyone's ever played an MMORPG before, but it can be super fun. And they'll actually teach you how to use different crypto applications. Whether that's a DeFi bank, NFT marketplace, kind of digital asset exchange. And once you all do that, the kind of end goal in vision is that you'll be rewarded with tokens. So users will earn crypto for learning about crypto. And if anybody wants to do that right now, they can actually go to rabbithole.gg. It's a different project to Atlantis, but they building learn to earn, and you go on you complete quests and interact with different crypto applications. And it's so crucial for onboarding. And yeah, it's going to be really powerful, the kind of revolution that play to earn and learn to earn will enable. >> I'll check out the rabbihole.gg sounds awesome. What's your take on the reaction to that riff on this convergence of culture tech, gaming, vibe that's kind of divine the metaverse what's your take on that, Noah? >> Yeah, I mean... I think gaming will be the on ramp for maybe the first billion people, you know, into blockchain. It's something people already do and are already paying for, and they now have the opportunity to get paid to play. So the incentives are extremely strong and I think that will be a great way to usher people in, teach 'em about blockchain without realizing that they're using blockchain. And then once they're already in it and have already used it, then it becomes much more natural to user than other applications. >> It's funny, people always talk about, "Oh, user experience!" You know, expectations drive experience, right? If you expect something and if they're used to gaming, I see the great, great call out there, good point. Well, let me ask you guys a question, 'cause I think this is comes out a lot in terms of like the market shifts and metaverse, as an old expression, "Great markets pull the products out of companies or out of the industry." What organic growth have you guys seen in the metaverse that's been either a surprise or a natural evolution of just success and just growth, because the market's hungry for this and it is relevant. It's new, what's pulling out? What's coming out of the organic aspect of the metaverse? >> I think a lot of art and architecture and design. And, you know, it's empowering a lot of independent creators and allowing 'em to stretch their skills in a way that they maybe couldn't do before, but now can do and get compensated for. Like, we see really see the rise of the creator coming in the next couple of years in the open metaverse and finally they will be the ruling class. They won't get the short end of the stick, which artists have for... I mean all the time. >> Yeah, some of the wall street bet skies in the same way, feel the same way. CJ, What's your take on... What's getting pulled out on the organic execution growth of the interactions and metaverse evolution? >> Of course, yeah. I would, first of all love to go back to the previous point on gaming and just kind of like, definitely agree with what Noah said. And the thing is that gaming is 3.4 billion user market, and they're typically an experimental by nature people and group of users, right? So it's definitely a huge onboarding opportunity for teaching users about Web3 and using Web3 in a gamified way and making that kind of inherently fun and engaging. And again, in terms of organic growth, Web3 is incredible for that. We place a huge emphasis on, I think, collaborate versus compete and try to enable network effects for everybody who is involved in Atlantis and becoming part of our fast growing ecosystem. Like we have eight blockchain, more than 10 DeFi apps, like Aave, Yearn, Balanced, 1inch, Perpetual. All of the DAOs like The Exile, MetaCartel, lobsterdao, PizzaDAO, all of the NFT communities. Like we're actually building a yacht for bought yacht club on the beach in Atlantis. So that's fun. But yeah, we grew our community. We're very early stage still. We've been building only for eight or nine months, but we grew our community to like 20 to 30,000 community members across social channels. And we recently raised over a million dollars from our community and we're fully bootstrapped and taken no private money. So the ability to actually do that and to coordinate both kind of community efforts and fundraising and resources is really testament to Web3 and what it's becoming in the community aspect of that. And also its future and the kind of dawn and domination of the Metaverse. >> Well, I got to say, I just got to give you props for that. I think that fundraising dynamic is a real entrepreneurial new thing, that's awesome. You've got active community vote with their contribution and whether it's money and or other value, right? You got social value. This is the whole thing about the metaverse, there's a new community culture going next level here. >> We believe in community and we believe in Web3. And we know we don't understand why most leading metaverses are focusing fully on huge IP and actually ignoring Web3. So we're actually trying to build the infrastructure layer for Web3 applications and for Web3 driven utility inside of the metaverse. And what we mean by that imagine that any developer or any project or any team or any company could occupy a plot for free inside of the metaverse, customize it by branding and then effectively set up shop, whether that's a Web3 integration, so it's a DeFi Bank, or it's an exchange. Or whether that's an NFT marketplace or a music venue or a coworking space. We're really excited about that. And we really believe we've designed the value capture mechanism for virtual land in the metaverse and we're approaching it in a different way to land in the real world. >> That's awesome. Well, let's get that infrastructure conversation, unstoppable domains obviously there having the partner showcase here. You guys are partners. This NFT kind of like access method is a huge... I love it by the way. I think it's phenomenal. I love the value there, but it's also digital identity and it's distributed naming. So you kind of got this enablement vibe, you got solve a problem. How is it working with you guys? Take us through what does unstoppable metaverse... Why does unstoppable matter to the metaverse? >> Yeah, unstoppable is very great mostly for identity and having a kind of crush chain identity inside of the metaverse and just kind of in Web3 in general. And unstoppable, we enable log in with unstoppable. So if you have, for example, an unstoppable domain which is like a human readable kind of crypto wallet address, but you can also do some incredible, stuff with it, and there is a lot of fun and exciting utility, effectively, like if you would have, I don't know, like unstoppable.dao you would be able to use that to log in to the Atlantis metaverse and it would represent some of your identity and social graph in game with your peers. >> Awesome, Noah, what's your take on the unstoppable angle on this? >> Yeah, I mean, it makes it social. So, instead of you can have a feed, you know, something we're thinking about at Parcel is like a feed of all the real estate transactions, and you could follow certain people, you can follow your friends and see a feed of everything that your friends are doing in English or human readable terms that are not just like a wallet address. So, that's obviously a big one and they're also giving people more options in terms of, naming and top level domains if you want to be something.wallet or .nft, or hopefully eventually .metaverse- >> John: Yes. >> Will help expand that ecosystem much more. In addition to like on our... Like backend being able to capture email when they login and to provide better marketing for our users. >> What would you guys say to other metaverse partners looking for work with unstoppable domains for their login and digital identity, what would you recommend? >> It doesn't make sense to- >> I believe- >> Connect with the best DAO and integrate that if you want to keep shipping stuff for your community and keeping it exciting and engaging and enabling user choice in how they choose to display their identity in virtual environments. >> Yeah, there's practically no downside and plenty of upside, again, having those users who are already using unstoppable domains quickly, you know, log into your site and plug in. >> All right. That's awesome. Good stuff with unstoppable. I got to ask you guys give an example of on your products, I love the metaverse progression. I love the pioneering work you guys are doing. And again, the funding things are different. The user expectations are different. The technology experience are different. Billions of people going to be in enabled for it. What are the cool things you guys got going on? CJ, we were talking before we came on camera about the tree thing you got going on. Take us through some of the things that are exciting that people may not know about or may know about. What should they pay attention to share, share some insight? >> Yeah, of course. So one of the fun things, actually that we're building on that on these sites together with our full team and also some outside contributors from the community and two kin protocol, which is a regenerative finance protocol. And I'll get into that a little bit in a minute. Effectively what we're actually doing is planting a carbon capturing virtual forest inside of the metaverse that will in future also be bio diverse. So how we're approaching that is imagine that you can plant NFT trees inside of the metaverse, providing that your will deposit X amount of kind of USD stablecoin or Ether or some digital asset. You can actually use that to deposit inside of the tree. And we will use some, probably something like super fluid, which is like a kind of smart projecting infrastructure platform. And we all essentially enable every single second funds being sent from the contract and actually purchasing real world carbon credits. So legitimate, you know, government bags to carbon credits from the voluntary kind of public market that have actually been bridged on chain, transformed into a crypto asset, and they will be locked away inside of these trees inside of game forever. And in future, we also hope to have like user on animals, roaming the great forest of Atlantis, which will have biodiversity and endangered species credit, locked inside. And we hope to support a variety of different kind of sustainable assets and things like that to really populate this ecosystem. >> So it's you're doing climate change good for real, as well as rendering it as an asset for everyone to see and enjoy. >> Absolutely. And for me, that's what makes the metaverse the metaverse, that's what I talked about. It's how Web3 enables the metaverse to cross over into our real world, ordinary life from URL to IRL and actually provide some incredible positive impact for all of humanity on the planet. >> And Noah, you have some action going on there. I mean, I would be like, "oh, virtual real estate, isn't it unlimited real estate?" But when you have users come together, this value, we've seen this in gaming, what are some of the cool things you got going on over there at Parcel? >> Yeah, I think one thing that stands out, which maybe not enough people are thinking about are AR virtual world. So, right now a lot of people are focused on the VR types, central and sandbox and, and Atlantis, but there very well may be a billion people using augmented reality before there are a billion using virtual reality just because of the nature of the hardware development and apple may come out with their AR headset by the end of the year. So there are a few projects there they've taken the real world to map and Parcel it out into hexagons, and you can actually buy that, and you own that, that piece and you can put your own custom content there. And on that social impact point, we have heard about a few projects that are trying to use it for good. And like one project is bought up some land in the Amazon rain forest and some of the proceeds go to conservation of the rain forest. So, you know, we're all about using blockchain for good and right, coming together as a globe. >> I can't wait to see the commercial real estate division of your group with all the work from, a remote coming on. Guys, great stuff you got going on, again, you guys are pioneering an area that is coming big. It's coming strong, its got a lot of... A momentum, vitality, and energy to it. Put a plug in for your companies. Noah, we'll start with you. What's going on with Parcel, share a plug for the company. What you're looking for, do some key highlights, news, take a minute to, to give a plug. >> Sure. Yeah, great. We are the destination for virtual real estate and that extends well beyond just the buyers and sellers. That's everyone across the whole chain with property managers and property developers, but then also the builders and creators and artists, and we are working right now on aggregating the best creator directory in the metaverse. So you can think of it as a place where artists can come showcase their work and get hired. As well as just generally like bridging this knowledge gap that is much wider than we even expected. So we have our Parcel learn product coming soon, which is a fully fledged, knowledge base with education, informational content and lots of rich data. >> Where can people get involved? What's the channels? Are all channels open? Where can we find you? >> Yeah, our websites Parcel.so on Twitter, you can find us at ParcelNFT and you can link to our discord from either one of those. It's the best way to get involved. >> All right, CJ, put a plug in for the last world, I know you got a lot of action to share. >> Yeah, of course. I would love to see everybody there. Thanks so much for having us. And thanks for listening. Like I said, at the start of the call, we're building the Web3 social metaverse and we're connecting Web3 with social gaming and education, in one light web virtual world that's accessible to everybody. We're also doing some crazy stuff like planting their cabin, capturing virtual forest and all of that, and trying to be the infrastructure layer for Web3 driven real world utility inside of the metaverse. And we believe that we have designed the critical value capture mechanism for virtual learn. I we'll be sharing more all of that very soon and continuing to integrate the best apps from across the Web3 ecosystem and showcasing them at the center of Atlantis. You can go to discord.gg/atlantisworld. If you would love to learn more about us, you can go to wiki.atlantis.world. And there is some documentation now, which includes back story and team and some of our milestones and achievements so far from winning hackathons to raising grants and launching our Alpha belt, soft launching it. And we all have the public free to play coming in March. And where most active, I would say on discord and Twitter. On Twitter you can find us atlantisOx, or just search Atlantis world. And it's the first one that come up. >> All right. CJ, thank you. Noah, thanks for coming out. I really appreciate you spending the time here, and unstoppable showcase and being a partner. Again they got the great digital identity, great plug there for them here. Thanks for sharing that and thanks for sharing the time. Appreciate you guys are pioneer of some good stuff. Appreciate it. >> Thanks so much man. >> I so appreciate that. >> All right, theCUBE's unstoppable domains partner showcase. Thanks for watching. (bright music)

(upbeat music) >> Hello, everyone welcome to theCube special presentation of the Unstoppable Domains partner showcase. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCube. We have here, Cube alumni, Sandy Carter, SVP and channel chief of Unstoppable Domains. Sandy, great to see you. Congratulations on your new assignment. Exciting new company, and thanks for coming on for the showcase. >> Well, thank you, John. It's so fun to always be here with you through all my companies, it's really great. Thanks for having me. >> Well, it's been pretty amazing what's going on in the world right now. We just had the past Super Bowl which is the biggest event in the world around advertising, a lot of Web 3.0, crypto, blockchain, decentralized applications. It's here, it's mainstream. We've talked off camera many times around the shifts in technology, cloud computing. We're now with Web 3.0 and some are even saying Web 4.0. (Sandy laughs) A lot of technology programmers, people who are building new things are all in the Web 3.0 world. It's really going mainstream. So what's your view on that? I see you're in it too. You're leading it. >> I am in it too. And it's so exciting to be at the verge of the next technology trend that's out there. And I'm really excited about this one, John because this is all about ownership. It's about members not users. It's quite fascinating to be honest. >> What is Web 3.0? What is Web 3.0? Define it for us 'cause you have a good knack for putting things in the perspective. People want to know what does this Web 3.0? What does it mean? >> Okay, great. That's a great question. In fact, I have just a couple of slides because I'm a visual learner. So I don't know if you guys could pop up just a couple of slides for us. So first to me, Web 3.0 is really all about this area of ownership and that's whether it's in gaming or art or even business applications today. In fact, let me show you an example. If you go to the next slide, you will see like with Twitter, and John, you and I were there, I was the first person to onstage announce that we were going to do tweets during a major event. And of course I started on Twitter back in 2008, pretty early on. And now the valuation of Twitter is going up, I got a lot of value and I helped to attract a lot of those early users. But my value was really based on the people, building my network, not based on that monetary valuation. So I really wasn't an owner. I was a user of Twitter and helped Twitter to grow. Now, if you go with me to the next slide you'll see just a little bit more about what we're talking about here and I know this is one of your favorites. So Web 1.0 was about discovery. We discovered a lot of information. Web 2.0 was about reading the information but also contributing with that two-way dialogue with social but Web 3.0 is now all about membership, not being a user but being a member and therefore having an ownership stake in the power of what's coming. And I think this is a big differential, John, if I had to just nail one thing. This would be the big differential. >> That's awesome. And I love that slide because it goes to the progression. Most people think of web 1.0 data, the worldwide web, web pages, browsers, search engines, Web 2.0, better interfaces. You got mobile, you got social networks. And then it got messy, bots and misinformation, users of the product being used by the companies. So clearly Web 3.0 is changing all that and I think the ownership thing is interesting because you think about it, we should own our data. We should have a data wallet. We should have all that stored. So this is really at the heart of what you guys are doing. So I think that's a great way to put it. I would ask you what's your impression when people you talk to in the mainstream industry that aren't in Web 3.0 that are coming in, what's their reaction? What do they think? What do they see? >> Well, a lot of what I see from Web 2.0 folks is that they don't understand it, first of all. They're not sure about it. And I always like to say that we're in the early days of Web 3.0. So we're in that dial up phase. What was that? Was that AOL? Remember that little that they used to make? >> (laughs) You've got mail. >> Yeah, you've got mail. That's right. That's where we are today with Web 3.0. And so it is early days and I think people are looking for something they can hang their hat on. And so one of the things that we've been working on are what would be the elements of Web 3.0? And if you could take me to one more slide and this will be my last slide, but again, I'm a very visual person. I think there are really five basic assumptions that Web 3.0 really hangs its hat on. The first is decentralization, or I say at least partially decentralized because today we're building on Web 2.0 technology and that is okay. Number two is that digital identity. That identity you just talked about, John where you take your identity with you. You don't have identity for Twitter, an identity for LinkedIn, an identity for a game. I can take my identity today, play a game with it, bank with it, now move on to a Metaverse with it, the same identity. The other thing we like to say is it's built on blockchain and we know that blockchain is still making a lot of improvements but it's getting better and better and better. It's trustless, meaning there's no in between party. You're going direct, user, member to institution, if you would. So there's no bank in between, for example. And then last but not least, it's financially beneficial for the people involved. It's not just that network effect that you're getting, it's actually financially beneficial for those folks. All five of those give us that really big push towards that ownership notion. >> One thing I would point out, first of all, great insight, I would also add and and love to get your reaction to it, and this is a great lead into the news, but there's also a diversity angle because this is a global phenomenon, okay? And it's also a lot of young cultural shift happening with the younger generation, but also technologists from all ages are participating and all genders. Everything's coming together. It's a melting pot. It's a global... This is like the earth is flat moment for us. This is an interesting time. What's your reaction to them? >> Absolutely and I believe that the more diverse the community can be, the more innovative it will be. And that's been proven out by studies, by McKenzie and Deloitte and more. I think this is a moment for Web 3.0 to be very inclusive. And the more inclusive that Web 3.0 is, the bigger the innovation and the bigger the power and the bigger that dream of ownership will become a reality. So I'm 100% with you on the diversity angle for sure. >> So big new news tomorrow launching. This is super exciting. First of all, I love the acronym, but I love the news. Take us through the big announcement that you're having. >> Yeah. So John, we are so excited. We have over 55 different companies joining together to form Unstoppable Women of Web 3.0, or we call it WOW3. Unstoppable WOW3. And the mission is really clear and very inclusive. The first is that we want to make Web 3.0 accessible for everyone. The second is we don't want to just say we want it accessible for everyone, we want to help with that first step. We're going to be giving away $10 million worth of domains from Unstoppable which we believe is that first step into Web 3.0. And then we're going to be action oriented. We don't want to just say we're going to help you get started or just say that Web 3.0 is accessible, we're going to launch education, networking, and events. So for example, we've got our first in person event that will occur at South by Southwest. Our first virtual event will occur on March 8th which is International Women's Day and there'll be two components of it. One is an hour YouTube Live so that people can come in and ask questions and then we've got a 24 hour Twitter space. So almost every half an hour or every hour on the hour, you're going to have these amazing women talk to you about what is DeFi? What is minting? What is Web 3.0 all about? Why gaming in Web 3.0? I mean, it's just going to be phenomenal. And in that we want to support each other as we're moving forward. This whole concept of from the very beginning, we want Web 3.0 to be diverse. >> And I want to also point out that you've got some activities on the March 8th International Women's Day but it's always every day in this community because it's a community. So this whole idea of community inclusion continues every day. Talk about those activities you're having on March 8th. Can you share what's happening on International Women's Day? >> Yeah, so first we're going to have a YouTube Live where we're going to go in detail into what is Web 3.0? What is DeFi? What is an NFT and why do they exist? Then we're going to have this 24 hour Twitter spaces where we've got all these different guest speakers from the 55 different companies that are supporting the initiative. We're also going to launch a list of the 100 most inspirational women of Web 3.0. We're going to do that twice a year. And we decided John not to do the top women, but the women that are inspirational, who are pioneering the trail, who are having an impact. And so we want it to be a community. So it's 100 of the most inspirational women of Web 3.0. We're also setting up a Web 3.0 Women's Speakers Bureau. So I cannot tell you, John, how many time people will call me up and they'll be like, "We really want you to speak here." And when I really get down to it, they really want me because I'm a woman that can speak about Web 3.0 but there are so many women who can do this. And so I wanted to have a place where everybody could come and see how many different diverse people we have that could speak out this. >> Yeah, and that's a great thing because there are a lot of women who can speak on this. They just have to have their voices found. So there's a lot of discovery in that format. Is there any plans to go beyond? You mentioned some workshops, what other things... Can you give another quick highlight of the things else you're doing post the event? >> Yeah, so one of the big things post the event is working with Girls in Tech, and I know you know Adriana. We are going to host on their platform. They have a platform for mentoring. We're going to host a track for Web 3.0 and during International Women's Day, we're going to auction off some NFTs that will contribute to that mentoring platform. So we've got folks like Lazy Lions and Bella and Deadheads that are going to donate NFTs. We'll auction those off and then that will enable the ongoing platform of Girls in Tech to have that mentoring that will be available for the next generation. We'll also do events, both virtually through Twitter spaces and other means as well as in-person events. I just mentioned at South by Southwest which I'm really looking forward to. We're going to have our first in-person event on March the 12th. It's going to be a brunch. A lot of the women told me, John, that they go to all these Web 3.0 or crypto events and everything's like a frat party in the evening. And they're like, "Why can't we just have a nice brunch and sit down and talk about it?" (John laughs) So at South by Southwest that is exactly what we're going to do. We're going to have a brunch and we're going to sit down and talk about it with all of these companies. And John, one of the things that's amazing to me is that we have over 55 companies that are all coming together to support this initiative. To me, that was just overwhelming. I was hoping to get about 20 companies and so far we have 55. So I'm feeling so excited and so empowered by what I see as the potential for this group. >> Yeah, well, first of all, congratulations. That's a really great thing you're doing. If you need place on theCube to post those videos, if you can get copies, we'd be glad to share them as well 'cause it's super important to get all the great minds out there that are working on Web 3.0 and have them showcased. I got to ask you now that you're in the trenches now, doing all this great work. What are some of the buzzwords that people should know about in Web 3.0? You mentioned to five main pillars as well as the ownership, the paradigm shift, we got that. What are some of the buzzword that people should know about? How would you rank those? >> Well, I think there are a couple. Let's see. I mean, one is if you think about it, what is a decentralized application? Some people call them Dapps. Dapps, you'll hear that a lot. And a decentralized application just means that you are leveraging and using multiple forms. There's no centralization of the back end. So everything is decentralized or moving around. Another is the gas fee. This comes up a lot, many people think, "Oh yeah, I put gas in my car." But a gas fee in Web 3.0 is you're actually paying for those decentralized computers that you're using. So in a centralized land, a company owns those computers. In a decentralized land, since you're using all these different assets, you've got to pay for them and that's what the gas fee is for. The gas fee is to pay for those particular types of solutions. And many of these terms that we're talking about minting, what is an NFT, we'll be explaining all of these terms on International Women's Day in that 24 hour Twitter space as well. >> We'll look forward to that Twitter space. We'll share as well. In the Web 3.0 world, when you look at it, when you look at what Unstoppable's doing, it's a paradigm shift. You laid it out there. What is the bottom line? What's the most practical thing people are doing with the domains? 'Cause it is definitely headroom in terms of capability, single sign on, you own your own data, integrating into wallet and decentralized applications and creating this new wave just like the web. More web pages, better search. More pages, the search has to get better, flywheel kicking in. What's the flywheel for Unstoppable? >> Well, I think the flywheel is the really around digital identity. It's why I came to Unstoppable because I believe that the data about you should be owned by you and that identity now travels with you. It's your wallet, it's your healthcare data, it's your educational records, and it's more. So in the future, that digital identity is going to become so much more important than it is today. And oh my gosh, John, it's going to be used in so many different ways that we can't even imagine it now. So for me, I think that digital identity and it really puts that ownership right in the hands of the members, not in anyone else's hands, a company, a government, et cetera. It puts the ownership of that data in your hands. >> I just love these big waves, these shifts, because you mentioned healthcare. Imagine an NFT is that sign on where you don't have to worry about all these HIPAA regulations. You can just say, "Here's me. Here's who I'm trusted." And they don't even know my name, but they know it's trusted. >> And everything just trickles down from there. >> That's right. >> And all the databases are called. It's all immutable. I got my private key. It unlocks so much potential in a new way. Really is amazing. >> I agree. And even just think about education. I was with Arizona State University and so my daughter took some classes at a community college and I wanted to get those classes and have those credits available for her university. How hard is that? Just to get that education and everything is paper and I had to physically sign, I had to physically mail it. It was pretty crazy. So now imagine that your digital identity contains all of your degrees, all of the skills that you've gone through all of your experiences, John. You told me before the show, all different experiences that you have that I didn't know about. I'm sure a lot of people didn't. What if you had that piece of you that would be available that you could use it at any time. >> It's locked in LinkedIn. There's a silo. Again, I'm a huge believer in silo busting going on. This new generation is not going to tolerate experiences that don't fit their mission. They want to have liberation on their data. They don't want to be the product. They want to have the value. >> That's right. >> And then broker that value for services and be able to be horizontally scalable and pop around from place to place without logging in again or having that siloed platform have the data like LinkedIn. You mentioned my resume's on basically LinkedIn, but I got webpages. I got some stories. I got videos. I'm all over the place. I need an NFT. >> And just think about LinkedIn, John. You could say that you graduated from Yale and didn't even graduate from Yale because nobody double checks that but in a wallet, if Yale actually sent that information in so you could verify it. It's that verification that's done over the blockchain, that immutable verification that I find to be very powerful. And John, we were just chatting with some companies earlier today that are Web 2.0 companies and they're like, "Oh, okay. All this is just for people? It's just for consumers?" And I was like, "No, this is for B2B. You've got to start thinking about this as a company." So for example, if you're a company today, how are you going to entice users to let you see some of their data? How are you going to look at ownership when it might be done via a dow and maybe a part of a piece of art, a part of a company, a part of real estate, like Parcel who you guys are going to talk to later on. Look at how that is going to change the world. It's going to change the way funds are raised. It's going to change the way you buy carbon credits, the way you buy art. If you're a consumer company, think about games and endgame economics. People are now playing game that money is real and your brand could be positioned. Have you thought about that? >> Yeah, I think that point you mentioned earlier about Twitter being the user, you had some personal connection, we didn't monetize it. Now with Web 3.0, you own it. One of the things that I see happening and it's coming out a lot of the Unstoppable interviews as well as what we're seeing in the marketplace is that the communities are part owners of the talent of whether it's an artist, a music artist, could be theCube team. The communities are part of the fabric of the overall group ownership. So you're starting to see you mentioned dows, okay? It's one kind of it. So as users become in control of their data and owning it, they're also saying, "Hey I want to be part of someone else." Artists are saying, " Be my stockholder. Own my company." >> That's right. >> So you start to see ownership concept not just be about the individual, it's about the groups. >> Right. And it's about companies too. So I'm hoping that as part of our Unstoppable Women of Web 3.0, we do have several companies who have joined us that are what I would say, traditionally Web 2.0 companies, trying to go over the chasm into Web 3.0. And I do think it's really important that companies of all types and sizes start looking at the implication of that ownership model and what that does. So for example, it's a silly one, but a simple one. I bought a Lazy Lion. It was actually part of my signing bonus, which is also interesting. My signing bonus was an NFT and now my Lazy Lion, I now own that Lazy Lion but the artist also gets a potential percentage of that. I can put my Lazy Lion on a t-shirt. I could name a store after my Lazy Lion because now it's mine. I own it. I own that asset. And now myself and the artists are teamed together. We're like a joint venture together. It's fascinating new models and there are so many of them. After ETHDenver, I was reading some of the key takeaways. And I think the biggest key takeaway was that this space is moving so fast with so much new information that you really have to pick one or two things and just go really deep so that you really understand them versus trying to go so wide that you can't understand everything at one time and to keep up it's a mission today to keep up. >> That interesting example about the Lazy Lion, the artist in relationship with you, that's a smart contract. There's no law firm doing that. It's the blockchain. Disintermediation is happening. >> It's trustless. Back to those five things we talked about. It's on the blockchain, it's decentralized at least partially, it's a digital identity, it's financially beneficial to you and it's trustless. That's what that is. It's a smart contract. There's no in between >> Can't change. It's immutable. Can't hack. Once it's on the blockchain, you're good to go. Sandy, well, congratulations. Great to see you. Unstoppable Women of Web3, WOW3. Great acronym. We're going to support you. We're going to put you on our March 8th site we're putting together. Great to have you on. Congratulations and thanks for sharing the big news. >> Thank you so much, John. Great to be on. >> Okay, this is theCube coverage of Unstoppable Domain partner showcase. I'm John Furrier, your host, here with Sandy Carter. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>>Hi, everyone. Welcome to the cube and unstoppable domain, special showcase women of web three or well, three I'm super excited for this season. We have three great guests, Sandy Carter, the SVP and channel chief of unstoppable domains. Noel Bailey managing director for the entertainment, AKA disco leper. That's her handle NFT handle. We'll talk more about that. And Kristen Mirabella, Bella director of business development, Gemini all in the web three world here for women of web three. Welcome to the show. So what a great announcement, Sandy? What is the wow three women of web three. And why did you announce it on stumbled domains? Web three. >>Awesome. Well, thanks John. So today we are so excited to announce unstoppable women of web three. And one of the things that we noticed ourselves plus 60 plus companies is that we need more diversity in the web three space. So our mission is to make web three more accessible for everyone to help women with that first step and be very action oriented. So we're going to launch education, networking and events as we move forward. And we're real excited to start today, March 8th, we've got a 24 hour Twitter space. We have a YouTube live. We're going to be auction and off some NFTs to donate to girls in tech, a not-for-profit who is also going to launch a mentoring platform for women in web three. We'll also be announcing a hundred inspirational women's and Webster, and I can take up the entire time talking about all we have in store to make web three accessible to everyone. >>That's awesome. We're going to unpack that lot of things to talk about there. I'm really looking forward to it, neural, your, you got a great story here. What are the lazy lions and, and the queen so to speak and what are you guys doing? And tell us about your handle. >>That's a lot of questions there. John, why don't we start with that? So, I mean, I started my NFT journey about six months ago only, and I got really lucky in entering into the space for the lazy lions to start with and the Kings and existing Queens that were kind of in that space to begin were incredibly welcoming. I literally like, I love being the person in the room that asked the dumb question, because if I, if I can ask it, then, you know, there's, there's a hundred other people there that aren't asking that question. And so when I stepped into the, you know, the pride space with Twitter and discord, getting to know the lazy lions before I even got into my first project, they were incredibly welcoming. Like any question that I asked they had an answer for. And so, you know, why we're kind of wondering with unstoppable and supporting that? >>Well, one, once we, once through that space, I got introduced to queen Sandy as well. You know, she's part of the pride and, and one of the lazy lions and again, yeah, it's that whole symbiotic relationship where you've got, you know, Kings and Queens, men and women kind of in the pride, but it's not just about men and women either. It's the diversity aspect where it's people from all different cultures, backgrounds all around the world. And so, you know, getting in and learning and growing together in this brand new space that we're all part of creating. And then Unstoppables a huge part of that with the gateway to allowing people to kind of get into it, to begin. So it just all makes sense. We're going to expense. >>Okay, we're going to unpack that in a minute, but Kristen w what's going on with Gemini and web three, what's going on in the ecosystem there? How are you supporting the women of web three initiative? >>Really excited. Gemini is an exchange and custodian. We offer access to cryptocurrencies. We are your access points. We're the access point for women who are trying to embrace their own financial freedom and build their own story, be economically empowered and interacting with web three in a way that's going to be increasingly necessary. As, as this continues to build, Gemini is really excited to be able to provide a platform for education for anyone and especially women who are looking to build their knowledge base around what's happening in cryptocurrency. How can they interact with it? How can they make really good financial decisions as they look to interact with networks, you know, within defy, what tokens do they want to be able to, you know, purchase, move off of a centralized platform like Geminis. We are very regulated. We're very secure as an access point to be able to interact with cryptocurrencies and use crypto to interact with this ecosystem that's growing. You can, you know, as a woman decide on a really good idea on how you want to embrace that financial freedom of interacting with the protocol that might unlock your potential to be more financially independent, make really good decisions about the future of what your, your family might need economically, you know, in Gemini as an access point for that, as far as crypto and other digital assets go is where we were really proud that we can power that network. >>So we have to chip and I got the lazy lions. You have the unstoppable, all three of you guys are in the middle of all the action and it's super game-changing. It's also a cultural shift. You seeing a lot of young, the young generation, as well as senior experienced people coming in, certainly technologists are coming in, business leaders are coming in and it just feels like a whole nother cultural shift. So we have to ask you, what are you guys most excited for in this roadmap for women of web three what's on your mind? What do you guys see? What's the vision? >>Well, I'll start first. You know, one of the things that I'm really excited about is getting women to experience web three, not just book learning, but really get in there and interact and play with it. So for example, John, there is a game called de-central land. They sell land. And what they're going to help us do is to build a virtual women of web three headquarters inside of the game. And as women go there, they're going to experience, you know, logging in, they're going to experience crypto, like Kristin does talked about they'll experience. NFT is like disco, just talked about. And so it won't just be book smart. They'll be able to get in there and do and see and play, which I think is the best way to learn about web three. >>For me, I'd say, I mean, honestly, I'm most excited about getting it started. There's been so much work kind of going into this to begin with. And, and this space is, is also new and constantly growing and kind of evolving, changing as we go because we're pioneers kind of in this space, really. Like we all have web three. And so getting it started and it continues to grow and evolve from there, which is, you know, a lot to do with kind of community driven initiatives what's happening in the market and the space at the time as well. So super get it started, build it. And it keeps growing from there. >>Christine, what's your vision to what, how do you see this evolving what's what do you hope for and what are some of the things you're excited about? >>I couldn't agree more. What I think is really exciting is that again, if you're looking to learn about this, you know, Sandy you're so right, you're not gonna learn about really how to unlock the potential of this ecosystem by reading about it. You have to get in there, find crypto, come to Geminis platform, open an account, understand what it means to buy cryptocurrency, buy Bitcoin, understand what you're comfortable with. Use resources like our crypto pedia, to understand the differences between tokens, the differences between layers. Why would you buy this token and transfer it off of the platform where you're looking to interact with three, maybe you're looking at these web three applications and you want to understand what generating income through one of these looks like you really got to start with the basics, but start here, purchase something, move it off. You know, test it, use little, little amounts. >>You don't have to buy a full Bitcoin. I think that that's a common misconception with people who are really starting to get interested in the space, especially as they start to learn about cryptocurrency, buy a tiny piece, you know, you don't need to sell the farm, move it off the platform, learn a little bit about how you can interact, build a community around yourself. There are a lot of women who are learning how to do this and through NFTs and through other interests that you might naturally have, you can really embrace the technology and understand what it can do for you. >>You know, you, you mentioned that in the early days of Bitcoin, even a theory of giving it away was a big part of that kind of early days of community. And Earl, you mentioned the word pride as part of the lazy lions community is a big part of this. Sandy, you know, this you've seen communities develop over the years, this new kind of community dynamic is a network effect, but it's also people centric. It's also about reputation. So it's about being open and collaborative. I mean, it sounds like a bunch of cliches jammed together, but this is kind of the world we're in for web three. Can you guys share your thoughts on that and get a reaction to that? >>Yeah. And I just wanted to jump on kind of what Kristin was mentioning there as well. You know, like, and Sandy, like get in there, get started, like have a little taste, have a little of this watch learn and then kind of tying into your community aspect there, ask the questions, get into, and you know, the two, the couple of main spaces, there are discord and Twitter, which, and again, I signed up my Twitter account in 2014 and I pretty much didn't touch it, like from 2015 kind of onwards, like now learning and getting in and growing with this space, that's kind of where the mediums are to start with with that. So yeah. Get in and get started and, and ask the questions on the way >>Sandy, you see Twitter and discord as the primary. >>Yeah. Yeah. There's so many this guy, right. Because you know, I'm on, I'm now on telegram. I'm on disbarred, I'm on Twitter, I'm on signal. I just got invited to signal groups. So this is one of the areas that we need to work on for web three. I think all of us would agree is just that interface. Part of the reason that we're launching this is because it is hard today, right? Web three is hard. And so there's multiple communications channels, you know, and that's why we love, you know, partners like Jim and I, who are making it easier and lazy lions who are setting up these communities. You know, when you buy in it of T you're really not, I guess you are buying the NFT for value, but you're also buying into the community disco. And I have been meeting actually every Saturday night for a while now with the rest of the Queens, planning out women of web three, Kristin and Jim and I, and I have been meeting together it's about the people and the networking and the tribe that you're part of as well. You really nailed it on the community piece. >>You know, ever since we started talking about it unstoppable, I got to say, I've been wanting to get the cube and FTS going because it is a community dynamic, but it's also this got practical usage of is there's data behind it. There's actually real use cases. Can you guys share your thoughts on how you see the use cases being applied specifically to the world, but also to, to women of web three to Wasn't go first. >>Yeah. We're also polite. We're all quite polite. And do you want to go first? You're one of our partners, we'll let you start us off. >>Sorry. I didn't want to and want to jump in there and they want to get started a real applications of, of what this looks like. I think goes back to an idea I had at the top of the call as there's clarity, as that continues to emerge as web three continues to build. And we understand what this really means. I think many would say that there's, you know, lack of clarity around what web three means. Maybe there are some platforms that are slightly more centralized than others. If we think of what web three in general represents, you know, it's this idea of decentralization empowering you through ownership of your data, empowering you through the ability to do things in a decentralized way, but you're not able to do on web two. And I think the real application of transition of where we are today into what this becomes is, you know, I think we keep nailing it on the head. >>You really have to get out there and practice. You have to understand what this transition means for you and what does it mean for what you're trying to achieve? So if my personal stance is, is really solid in where, you know, your financial future is rooted. And if we're talking about cryptocurrency in your ability to interact with these networks, like we've been saying, you have to practice, you have to understand and learn what you're getting yourself into. But I also think there's this element of being okay with making mistakes, but you are talking about your financial future. You're talking about something that's there really high stakes around making mistakes means starting with really good partners. You can start with platforms like Gemini. You can start with platforms like unstoppable domains and know that the foundation has been laid for you to be able to test these grounds. >>I think that what this becomes and what is really important here is knowing that there are going to be a few centralized points that are your access to this web of three, to this broader ecosystem. But being able to trust that these platforms have security in mind. So the security first mindset that empowers you to then go be in charge of data, privacy, being able to take charge of really what your interaction with the rest of this world means. And being, being able to trust that the foundational layer that you're entering that world through is one that can be trusted. I think that as we look at the real world application of this finding that right starting point is really important. >>Yeah. And I w I would just add John to, to what Kristen just said. There are also B2B use cases here. So we want to make sure that, you know, there's a lot of consumer work, but there's also B to B as well. So, you know, imagine you're in decentral land or you're in sandbox a game. If you're a retailer or in a consumer business, you can place your products or your portfolio inside of that game, there is now decentralized finance that's out there. How does that play a role in your company and the way that you're financing for your company? Not just for yourself, like Kristin mentioned, but also for your company. And then dowels, of course, fractional ownership of different things. We're seeing, you know, funding change. SPACs turning into dowels, all of this. If you look at our 24 hour Twitter space, I'm S I can't wait. I think I'm going to actually do a 24 hour bins for myself because >>That's a college come on. We gotta do. >>Right. I know this guy will be with me. Right. And just that last time I did, that was new. Yeah. >>Well, super exciting. I mean, wow, wow. Three could be a doubt. I mean, the vision here is really amazing. I am so impressed. I think this is a great thing because it could go anywhere. What do you guys see at Dow in the future merging communities and merging tribes together? How do you guys have you guys talked about that? What's the, what's the thought process there? >>We actually did talk about doing a Dow. We decided to kick off first and get everybody up to speed on what it was before we jumped into a doubt, which I think is pretty advanced and sophisticated. And so, you know, part of what we also see is if you look at part of the membership, you'll see women of blockchain, women of data BFF. I mean, all these women's groups coming together to unite as long with, along with a lot of major companies, web to companies, Google Deloitte I'll chair, with the who's, who of web three, you've got Gemini, you've got, you know, consensus, you've got blockchain.com. So, you know, I love this because we are coming together for a movement, not for individual companies, but to have an impact on the industry to really educate women. And John, I forgot one of the really cool things we're also announcing today is our first 100 inspirational women of web three. In fact, disco helped me come up with the name of that, because we do want to highlight as examples, all of these great women that are in the space so that we each can reach back and pull others forward. >>Okay, now we've got to get into the, the disco leopard, let's put the lower third up there so we can see it. And the name that's tell us about the story here. And what does it mean to you? Take us through the thought process, the experience and how you envision this unfolding. Cause it's an NFT. You have one it's >>Yeah, totally. I guess. I mean, starting with, so the disco leopard kind of piece to it as well, like in this new space, in the, in the web space, first of all, you get to like, come up with your own identity. So I got to pick this go leopard, like if he doesn't want to be a disco leopard. And so even just coming up with the journey of like, what is your identity with that? And then, you know, you go through that path of being doxed, meaning being revealed, people kind of know who you are or not, or keeping it, you know, kind of a name on the side, that's all. Okay. Like it's all part of that whole decentralized space, which is super exciting. So just so you know, like the disco leper feeds, you know, optimist glass, half full, you know, pessimist, glass, half empty. And then the third piece to that was disco leopard equals. Awesome. And that's where I saw it. And I'm like, that's me a hundred percent. I'm >>Trying to get your lower third, had your name next to it, >>But that's okay. I'm all right with that. I don't mind. So, you know, getting, getting into that to start with, and then, you know, when we were talking about partners and coming into this safe space as well, and yeah, absolutely kind of technology based partners infrastructure to make sure that we're, we're safe and we've got a smooth gateway kind of coming in, but I'm also gonna put communities into partnerships as well, because there are so many NFT projects, you know, defy gaming projects, et cetera, finding your people, finding the community that resonates with you and it's different for everyone. And that's a beautiful thing, but you get to kind of find like-minded people and join them. >>You know, I've been thinking this for about a long, long time, and I thought I was just weird, but now that it's happening, you guys are in the middle of it. The, your identity is so important now, and you could have a community and tribe to belong to, but yet traverse other tribes and move around. This is kind of the whole prospect of unstoppable, right? So Sandy, this is like a great future. You can be protected in a trusted tribe or community, and then still move around to others and engage. It's almost like a packet moving around a network. It's really about people too, on the internet. This is a total complete game changer. It wasn't really, it's not really possible prior to this. >>Yeah. I mean, if you look at all the members, you can move from a metaverse, you can move into gaming, you can go into defy, we've got NFT communities. And, and I love, you know, like you said, traversing, those communities, like we're going to do an auction and we've had donated NFTs. So disco and lazy lions, the queen of lazy lions are donating a lazy lion. Crypto chicks are gonna donate something. If you don't know what these are, these are all NFT communities that have their own identities as well. We have Deadheads NILAH and the long neck ladies, which is started by a 13 year old girl, who's going to talk on one of our Twitter spaces about how she had 13 earned millions of dollars and became times first artist in residence. So there's just, I mean, there's so much potential here and just look at all these amazing women on the screen. You know, I think web three, the face of web three is female. >>That's awesome. Any final thoughts for you guys and, and the session here, it's amazing. First of all, I'm so excited to, to have this conversation and be included and be included into the group here. Thank you for having me closing thoughts on women of web three, how people can get involved, what you guys aspire to be, what are some of the goals can take us through that? >>I guess for me looking at, you kind of asked the question of, you know, what we're most excited about with what's coming up with the international women's day. And, and, you know, what's beyond that. I'm really excited about what unstoppable are doing in introducing the gateway from web two to web three, because that whole 24, the, the events that we have coming on today is, you know, information, education, openness, how to use it, but what's coming beyond there. And it is that transition from web to, and how to, how do we even, like, I'm about to learn that as well. And as I said, I've been in that, in this NMT journey for six months learning thus far, but what does it look like to get into a web three experience and the web page and that design and look and feel so that next step of learning and getting into it. And again, anyone that's kind of being involved in this conversation now you'll be the first people stepping into that space as web three really comes to life. And it is the new web. Very exciting, >>Great. >>I couldn't agree more neural. What I think excites us the most is the level of interest and the level of engagement that we're seeing an unprecedented levels. These and what's coming next is that you're going to see more and more women and more, more people as part of these communities, as we've talked about wanting to learn, wanting to engage and wanting to be part of this and numbers that we really haven't even seen still yet. We've just scratched the surface. And what I want to ask everyone to do is not to wait not to wait until you feel like you're behind. Take action. Now go to our crypto pedia page, open an account at Gemini, start to interact with cryptocurrencies, understand what it means to take, you know, a crypto or digital asset off of a platform and interact with some of these networks, understand what it means to own, and then empty look at unstoppable domains and understand how you can start to dip your toe in. We really want to empower everyone with the knowledge of what you can do here, and we couldn't be more excited about the future >>Also Sandy final word. >>Yes. So I'm excited about a new world where diversity helps shape the next movement. You know, we've seen web one and web two shaped by, you know, homogeneous groups. And what I'm looking forward to is the future, because we know that innovation is driven by diversity of thought. And so for me, I'm really excited about today international women's day, where we're launching all these educational sessions, you know, Kristen mentioned don't wait, get involved, disco, you know, talked a lot about the potential of going from web two to web three. We hope to see tons of women learning from the web to world. And then I just have to say, I mean, if we could get this across in the virtual world, we're then going to also host an in real life I R L event at south by Southwest. So I'm real excited to be back in person to John so that I can actually give my, my fellow colleagues hugs as well. >>I can't wait to be in person. Thank you so much for coming on this. A great program today is international women's day, but every day is women of web three day. Thanks for sharing great insight. I'm looking forward to more conversations and seeing what happens and participating in any way that I can. And thanks for having me and including me in the conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. This is the cubes conversations here in the showcase women of web three. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching.

>>Hello and welcome to the AWS partners showcase season one, episode two. I'm your host of the cube John ferry. We're here with two great guests who John Kumar, CEO of and Sabina Joseph, the general manager of AWS. Welcome to the show. Welcome to welcome to the cube, >>John. Good to see you >>Again. Great to see both of you both cube. Alumna's great to see how the businesses is going, going very well. Cloud scale, continuing to dominate Columbia is doing extremely well. Tell us more about what's going on in Columbia. What's your mission? What kinds of use cases are you seeing? Napa John, that's helping you guys keep your growth trajectory and solve your customer problems. >>Yeah. Firstly, thank you, John. Thank you, Sabina. Great to be here is a backup as a service platform. That's built natively on AWS for AWS, and we do support other use cases beyond AWS. But our primary mission is to basically deliver, you know, a ransomware data protection solution, you know, on AWS for AWS customers. Right? So if we think about it, you know, one of the things that's, you know, typically holding back any company to put mission critical workloads on a fantastic platform, a public cloud platform like AWS is to make sure that the data is protected in the event of any attack. And it's also done with extreme amount of simplicity, right? So that nobody is doing the heavy lift of doing backup themselves, right? So that's what really drew me or provides. It's a service. It's a turnkey service that provides, you know, data protection on AWS, whatever. >>Well, you're a frequent cube alumni. We're always talking about the importance of that, but I want to ask you this year more than ever, you're seeing it at the center of the conversation built in from day one, you're seeing a lot more threats, certainly mentioned ransomware and more there's more and more online attacks that's impacting this particular area more than ever before. Can you comment on what your focus has been this year around that? >>Yeah, I see it. If you think about tumor's evolution, our primary mission has been to go and protect every data source, but guess what? Right with more and more move to the public cloud and you look just AWS is journey and that pioneer in public cloud going from, you know, whatever 3 billion in revenues, 10 years ago to north of 70 billion run rate today, there's so much of data that is in the public cloud and the, and the most important thing that customers need is they want to free themselves from going and protecting this data themselves. Right? And, and there's a lot of scale in these environments, right? If you look at customers running hundreds of thousands of AWS accounts across every region on AWS, and if you give them that kind of flexibility and that kind of scale, what they want is give me a turnkey solution that just allows me to go and protect all of these workloads running across all of these regions in a service that takes the data out of my accounts separately in an air gap fashion, right. And that's really what we basically provide. And that's what we focused on over the last 12 months. Right? So if you look at what we have done is we've gone after every important service on AWS TC to EBS RDS, S3, dynamo, sequel databases, and other databases running on top of BC too. So now that becomes the comprehensive set of things that somebody needs to use to really deliver an application on top of the public cloud. And that's where we want for, >>And the growth has been there and the results on Amazon because of the refactoring has been huge. Can you share any examples of some successes that you've had with, with the AWS refactoring and all that good stuff going on? >>Yeah. I mean, I think that what we have seen is, you know, customers that basically told us that before you guys existed, we had to go and build these things ourselves, right. Again, you know, they had all the, the, the blocks to go and do it themselves, but it was so much of a heavy lift to go and do it themselves. And again, they didn't want to be in a, you know, in that business. So, so what we have done essentially for, and we have, you know, we have some joint customers at a pretty massive scale that basically have said that, okay, let me just use your solution to protect my critical assets. Like, you know, things, you know, sitting in S3 and really, you know, we'll use gloomy as a, as a >>Yeah, I think that's a great example of the refactoring Sabina. Gotta, I gotta ask you, you obviously you're at the center of this. You have your hand on the wheel of the partnerships and all the innovators out there. The growth of AWS just has been spectacular because there's value being created. Again, companies are refactoring their business on the cloud and you're at the center of it. So talk about the partnership with Clooney. Can you tell us how it all started and where it's going? >>Yeah, thanks for having me here, John, and good to see you again, Fujian, if I'm not mistaken for John, we met each other at the San Francisco summit, the AWS San Francisco summit, actually I believe it was in 2016 or 2017. You can correct me if I'm wrong here, but yes, I think so. It was, it was in the 8% a month of April. I still remember it. And that's when, you know, you kind of mentioned to me about and this modern backup as a service solution that you were creating, you're still in stealth mode. So you couldn't talk a lot about it. And B started to engage deeply on the partnership, right from 2017. And initially we were kind of focused around helping Colombia build a solution using our well-architected review. And then as soon as we all came out of stealth mode, we started to engage more deeply around deeper integrations and also on go to market activities. >>As you know, AWS has a very prescriptive approach to our partnerships. So we started to work with around the five pillars of security, reliability, cost optimization, performance, and operational excellence to really help them tune the solution on AWS. And we also started to engage with our service teams and I have to thank Paul John and his team here. They really embraced those deeper and broader integrations, many services that Pooja mentioned, but also specifically want to mention S3 EBS. And our Columbia was also a launch partner for AWS outpost when AWS in fact, launched outpost. So I want to kind of commend CLU, CLU MEO, and the entire team kind of embracing this technology and innovation and this modern backup as a service approach. And also also embracing how we want to focus on the five key pillars that I mentioned. >>And that's a great example of success when you ride the wave, which I talk about the ACLU, Colombia trends in the data protection, because one of the things that you pointed out earlier is the ransomware. Okay. That's a big one, right? That's a big, hot area. How, how is the cloud, first of all, how is that going? And then how has the cloud equation changed the ransomware defense and protection piece of it? >>Yeah. Now I just, I wonder I had a little bit on what Sabina mentioned before I answered the question, John, if you don't mind. Sure. I think that collaboration is where is the reason why we are here today, right? Like if you think about it, like we were the first design partners to go and build, you know, the EBS direct API, right. And we work closely with the EBS teams, not just for the API, but the cost structure of it. How would somebody like us use it? So we are at the bleeding edge of some of these services that we are using and that has enabled us, you know, to be where we are today. So again, thank you very much to be enough for this fantastic partnership. And again, there's so much to go and do to really go and nail this in a, in a, in a, in a great way on, on the public cloud. >>So now coming back to your question, John, you know, fundamentally, if you see right, you know, what happened is when, when, when customers move to the public cloud, you know, right there, you know, the ease of use with which, you know, AWS provides these services, right? And the consumption of these services actually drives some amazing behavior, right? Where people actually want to go and build, build, build, and build. But then it comes a time where somebody comes in and says, okay, you know, are you compliant? Right. You know, do you have the right compliance in place? You have all these accounts that you have, but what is running in each of these accounts, you have visibility in those accounts. And are these accounts that the data in these accounts is this gap, right? This is getting air gap in the same region, or does it need to be across regions? >>Right. You know, I'm in the east, do I need to, you know, have an air gap in the west and so on and so forth. Right? So all of these, you know, confluence of all these things come in and by the, all these problems existed in on-premise world, they get translated in, in the public cloud, where do I need to replicate my data, doing it to back it up? Do I need air gapped in a, like an on-prem world? You had a data domain of plans, which was separate from your primary storage for a reason, same similar something similar now needs to happen here for compliance reasons and for ransomware reason. So a lot of parallels here is just that here we are, it almost feels like, you know, as they say, right, the more things changed. The more they remain the same. That's what it is in the public cloud again. >>Well, that's a good point. I mean, let's take that example of on premises versus the cloud. Also, the clouds got more scale too, by the way. So now you've got regions, this is a common problem that customers are having, you can build your own and, or use solutions, but if you don't get ahead of it, the compliance question can bite you in the, you know what, because you then got to go back and retrofit everything. So, so that's kind of what I hear a lot on my end is like, okay, I want to be compliant from day one. I want to have an answer when asked, I don't want to have to go to old techniques that don't fit the cloud. That comes up a lot. What's your answer to that? >>Yeah, no, no. We were pretty much right. I think it's like, you know, when it, when it comes to compliance and all of these things, you know, people at the end of the day are looking for that same foundation of, of things. The same questions are asked for an encryption. You know, you know, I is my data where it needs to be when it needs to be right. What is my recovery point? Objective? What is my recovery time objective? All of these things basically come together. And now, as you said, it's just the scale that you're dealing is, is extremely different in the cloud and the, and the services, right? The easier it is that, you know, it is to use these services. And especially what AWS does, it makes it so easy. So compelling that same ease of use needs to get translated with a SAS service, like what we are doing with data protection, right? That that ease of use is very important. You have to preserve that sanctity >>Sabina. Let's get back to you. You mentioned earlier about the design partner, that benefits for Colombia. Now let's take it to the next level. As customers really realize they have a problem, they need solutions and you're on the AWS side. So you gotta have the answers for the customers. You've got to put people together, make things work. There's a variety of things that you guys offer. What are some of the different facets of the ISV or the partner programs that you offer to partners like Clooney, you know, that they can benefit from? >>Absolutely John, we believe in a win-win approach to the partnerships because that's what makes partnerships durable over time. We're always striving to do better here. And we continue to broaden our investments. As you know, John, the AWS management team, right from Adam Phillipsky, our CEO down firmly believe that partners are critical to our success, our longterm success, and as partners like CLU MEO work to lean in with us with more investment resources, our technology innovation. We also ensure that we are doing our part by providing value back to Cleo about a few years ago, as you might recall, right. We really did a lot of investment in our sales team on the AWS side. Well, one of the tanks me and also our partners observed is while we were making investments in the AWS sales team, I don't think we were doing a great job at helping our partners with reaching out to those customers. >>What we call as co-sale and partners gave us feedback on this. We are very partner and customer feedback driven, and we introduced in fact, a new role called the ISP success manager, ISS, who are basically embedded in our field. And they work with partners to help them close opportunities. And also net new opportunities are we've also in 2020. I believe that re-invent, we launched the ISB accelerate program whereby we offer incentives to the AWS field team to work with our partners to close existing opportunities and also bring in net new opportunities. So all of this has led to closer collaboration in the field between both our field teams, Muir's field team and our field team, but also accelerated mutual customer wins. I'm not saying that we are doing everything great. We still have a long ways to go. And we are constantly getting feedback from cluneal and also some of our other key partners, and we'll continue to get better at it. But I think the role of the ISV success manager and also the ISP accelerate program has been key to bringing in cold cell success. >>Well, John, what's your take on, is this a good partnership for you? I mean, see, the wave of Vegas has got the growth numbers. You mentioned that, but from a partnership standpoint, you're closing business, they got scale. Is it working? How do you organize your company to take advantage of these benefits? Can you share your thoughts? >>Absolutely not. We have embraced the ecosystem wholeheartedly 100%, but if you think about it, what we have done is look at our offering on AWS marketplace. There's an example, right? We are the only company I would say in our domain, obviously that routes our entire business through AWS marketplace. Whether obviously we get a lot of organic benefit from AWS marketplace, people go and search for a solution and from your shows up, and obviously they go and onboard self onboard themselves, and guess what? We let them self onboard themselves. And we rely on AWS's billing automatically. So you don't need to talk to us. You can just get billed automatically in your AWS bill and you get your data protection solution. Or if you directly reached out to us, guess what we do. We actually route you through AWS marketplace. All the onboarding is just to one place and it's a fantastic experience. >>So we have gone like all in, on that experience and completely like, you know, internalized that that's the right way to do things. And of course, thanks to, you know, Sabina's team and the marketplace team to create that platform so that we could actually plug it into it. But that's the kind of benefits that we have that we have, you know, taken advantage of a DWI. That's one example, another example that Sabina mentioned, right, which is the whole ACE program. We put a ton of registrations on AIS and with all the wins that we get on AWS, they could broadcast it to the sellers. So that creates its own vicious cycle in terms of more coming into the pipeline and more closing in. So, so these are just two small examples, but there's other examples that we look at our recent press release, where AWS, you know, when we, when we launched yesterday data protection and backup, the GM of AWSs three supported us in the press release. So there's things like that, that it's a, it's a fantastic collaboration. That's working really well for our joint customers. Sorry. >>And tell us something about the partnership between 80 of us, including, you know, that people might not be aware of some of the things that Poojan said that they're different out there that, that are, co-selling go marketing, that you guys offer people you guys work together on. >>Yeah. The, the ISV accelerate program that was created, it was really created with partners like Klunier in mind, our SAS partners. I think that that is something very, very unique between our partnership and, you know, I, I want to double click on what Poojan said, which is riding their opportunities through marketplace, right? All of their opportunities. That is something pretty unique. They understand the richness of the platform and also how customers are procuring software today in this world. And they've embraced that. And we really appreciate that. And I want to say, you know, another thing about Qumulo is they're all in on AWS, which is another unique thing. There are not a lot of, I would say all in partnerships in my world and I manage infrastructure, business apps, applications, and industry partnerships from the Americas globally. And all of those things are very, very unique in our partnership, which has led to success. Right. We started very, very early stage when Columbia was in stealth mode in 2017 and look where we've come today. And it's really kudos to Paul, John and his entire team for believing in the partnership for leaning in with us and for placing that trust with us. >>Awesome. Pooja, any final words you'd like to share for folks out there about the conversation and what's going on in Columbia? >>Yeah, no, absolutely. You know, as I said, I think we have been fortunate to be very early adopters of all these technologies and go and really build what a true cloud native solution has to be. Right. And, and again, right, you know, this is what customers are really looking for. And people are looking for, you know, at least on the data protection side, you know, ransomware air gap solution, people are looking for a solution natively built on the cloud because that's the only way a solution can deliver something at the scale and the cost structure that is needed to have, you know, a data protection solution in the public cloud. So, so this has been just a fantastic thing end to end, you know, for us overall. And we really look forward to, you know, going, you know, doing much more with AWS as we essentially go and scale, >>I have to ask, but before we, before we go, cause you're the CEO of the company and founder having all that backend infrastructure from Amazon, just on the resources, great. It creates a market for your product, but also the sales piece, you know, they got the marketplace, you mentioned, that's a big expense that you don't have to carry, you know, and you get revenue and top line. I mean, that's an impact for startups out there and growing companies. That's a pretty big deal. What's your, what's your advice to folks out there who are trying to think about the buy versus use the leverage of the, of the marketplace, which is, which is at large scale, because as a CEO, you're, you've got to make these decisions. What's your opinion on that? >>It's not, it's not as, as easy as I make it sound to do your own part. You know, AWS is, is, is, is huge, right? It's huge. And so we have to do our part to educate everybody within the, you know, even the AWS seller base to make sure that they internalize the fact that this is the right solution for the customers, for our joint customers, right? So we have to do that all day long. So there's no running away the no shortcut to everything, but obviously AWS does its part to make it very, as easy as possible, but there's a lot of heavy lifting we still have to do. And I think that'll only become easier and easier over the next few years >>And Sabina your takeout at AVS. You've got a great job. You were with all the hot growth companies. This is the big wave we're on right now with the cloud next generation clouds here, a lot of opportunities. >>Absolutely. And it's, and it's thanks to Pooja and, and partners like Lumeo that really understand what it takes to build a cloud native solution because it's part of it is building. And part of it is the co-selling go-to-market engine and embracing both of that is critical to success. >>Well, thank you both for coming on this journey here on the cube, as part of the showcase, push on. Great to see you to being a great to see you as well. And thanks for sharing that insight. Appreciate it. >>Thank you very much. >>Okay. AWS partners showcase speeding innovation with AWS. I'm John Ford, your host of the cube. Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) >> Hello, everyone welcome to theCube special presentation of the Unstoppable Domains partner showcase. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCube. We have here, Cube alumni, Sandy Carter, SVP and channel chief of Unstoppable Domains. Sandy, great to see you. Congratulations on your new assignment. Exciting new company, and thanks for coming on for the showcase. >> Well, thank you, John. It's so fun to always be here with you through all my companies, it's really great. Thanks for having me. >> Well, it's been pretty amazing what's going on in the world right now. We just had the past Super Bowl which is the biggest event in the world around advertising, a lot of Web 3.0, crypto, blockchain, decentralized applications. It's here, it's mainstream. We've talked off camera many times around the shifts in technology, cloud computing. We're now with Web 3.0 and some are even saying Web 4.0. (Sandy laughs) A lot of technology programmers, people who are building new things are all in the Web 3.0 world. It's really going mainstream. So what's your view on that? I see you're in it too. You're leading it. >> I am in it too. And it's so exciting to be at the verge of the next technology trend that's out there. And I'm really excited about this one, John because this is all about ownership. It's about members not users. It's quite fascinating to be honest. >> What is Web 3.0? What is Web 3.0? Define it for us 'cause you have a good knack for putting things in the perspective. People want to know what does this Web 3.0? What does it mean? >> Okay, great. That's a great question. In fact, I have just a couple of slides because I'm a visual learner. So I don't know if you guys could pop up just a couple of slides for us. So first to me, Web 3.0 is really all about this area of ownership and that's whether it's in gaming or art or even business applications today. In fact, let me show you an example. If you go to the next slide, you will see like with Twitter, and John, you and I were there, I was the first person to onstage announce that we were going to do tweets during a major event. And of course I started on Twitter back in 2008, pretty early on. And now the valuation of Twitter is going up, I got a lot of value and I helped to attract a lot of those early users. But my value was really based on the people, building my network, not based on that monetary valuation. So I really wasn't an owner. I was a user of Twitter and helped Twitter to grow. Now, if you go with me to the next slide you'll see just a little bit more about what we're talking about here and I know this is one of your favorites. So Web 1.0 was about discovery. We discovered a lot of information. Web 2.0 was about reading the information but also contributing with that two-way dialogue with social but Web 3.0 is now all about membership, not being a user but being a member and therefore having an ownership stake in the power of what's coming. And I think this is a big differential, John, if I had to just nail one thing. This would be the big differential. >> That's awesome. And I love that slide because it goes to the progression. Most people think of web 1.0 data, the worldwide web, web pages, browsers, search engines, Web 2.0, better interfaces. You got mobile, you got social networks. And then it got messy, bots and misinformation, users of the product being used by the companies. So clearly Web 3.0 is changing all that and I think the ownership thing is interesting because you think about it, we should own our data. We should have a data wallet. We should have all that stored. So this is really at the heart of what you guys are doing. So I think that's a great way to put it. I would ask you what's your impression when people you talk to in the mainstream industry that aren't in Web 3.0 that are coming in, what's their reaction? What do they think? What do they see? >> Well, a lot of what I see from Web 2.0 folks is that they don't understand it, first of all. They're not sure about it. And I always like to say that we're in the early days of Web 3.0. So we're in that dial up phase. What was that? Was that AOL? Remember that little that they used to make? >> (laughs) You've got mail. >> Yeah, you've got mail. That's right. That's where we are today with Web 3.0. And so it is early days and I think people are looking for something they can hang their hat on. And so one of the things that we've been working on are what would be the elements of Web 3.0? And if you could take me to one more slide and this will be my last slide, but again, I'm a very visual person. I think there are really five basic assumptions that Web 3.0 really hangs its hat on. The first is decentralization, or I say at least partially decentralized because today we're building on Web 2.0 technology and that is okay. Number two is that digital identity. That identity you just talked about, John where you take your identity with you. You don't have identity for Twitter, an identity for LinkedIn, an identity for a game. I can take my identity today, play a game with it, bank with it, now move on to a Metaverse with it, the same identity. The other thing we like to say is it's built on blockchain and we know that blockchain is still making a lot of improvements but it's getting better and better and better. It's trustless, meaning there's no in between party. You're going direct, user, member to institution, if you would. So there's no bank in between, for example. And then last but not least, it's financially beneficial for the people involved. It's not just that network effect that you're getting, it's actually financially beneficial for those folks. All five of those give us that really big push towards that ownership notion. >> One thing I would point out, first of all, great insight, I would also add and and love to get your reaction to it, and this is a great lead into the news, but there's also a diversity angle because this is a global phenomenon, okay? And it's also a lot of young cultural shift happening with the younger generation, but also technologists from all ages are participating and all genders. Everything's coming together. It's a melting pot. It's a global... This is like the earth is flat moment for us. This is an interesting time. What's your reaction to them? >> Absolutely and I believe that the more diverse the community can be, the more innovative it will be. And that's been proven out by studies, by McKenzie and Deloitte and more. I think this is a moment for Web 3.0 to be very inclusive. And the more inclusive that Web 3.0 is, the bigger the innovation and the bigger the power and the bigger that dream of ownership will become a reality. So I'm 100% with you on the diversity angle for sure. >> So big new news tomorrow launching. This is super exciting. First of all, I love the acronym, but I love the news. Take us through the big announcement that you're having. >> Yeah. So John, we are so excited. We have over 55 different companies joining together to form Unstoppable Women of Web 3.0, or we call it WOW3. Unstoppable WOW3. And the mission is really clear and very inclusive. The first is that we want to make Web 3.0 accessible for everyone. The second is we don't want to just say we want it accessible for everyone, we want to help with that first step. We're going to be giving away $10 million worth of domains from Unstoppable which we believe is that first step into Web 3.0. And then we're going to be action oriented. We don't want to just say we're going to help you get started or just say that Web 3.0 is accessible, we're going to launch education, networking, and events. So for example, we've got our first in person event that will occur at South by Southwest. Our first virtual event will occur on March 8th which is International Women's Day and there'll be two components of it. One is an hour YouTube Live so that people can come in and ask questions and then we've got a 24 hour Twitter space. So almost every half an hour or every hour on the hour, you're going to have these amazing women talk to you about what is DeFi? What is minting? What is Web 3.0 all about? Why gaming in Web 3.0? I mean, it's just going to be phenomenal. And in that we want to support each other as we're moving forward. This whole concept of from the very beginning, we want Web 3.0 to be diverse. >> And I want to also point out that you've got some activities on the March 8th International Women's Day but it's always every day in this community because it's a community. So this whole idea of community inclusion continues every day. Talk about those activities you're having on March 8th. Can you share what's happening on International Women's Day? >> Yeah, so first we're going to have a YouTube Live where we're going to go in detail into what is Web 3.0? What is DeFi? What is an NFT and why do they exist? Then we're going to have this 24 hour Twitter spaces where we've got all these different guest speakers from the 55 different companies that are supporting the initiative. We're also going to launch a list of the 100 most inspirational women of Web 3.0. We're going to do that twice a year. And we decided John not to do the top women, but the women that are inspirational, who are pioneering the trail, who are having an impact. And so we want it to be a community. So it's 100 of the most inspirational women of Web 3.0. We're also setting up a Web 3.0 Women's Speakers Bureau. So I cannot tell you, John, how many time people will call me up and they'll be like, "We really want you to speak here." And when I really get down to it, they really want me because I'm a woman that can speak about Web 3.0 but there are so many women who can do this. And so I wanted to have a place where everybody could come and see how many different diverse people we have that could speak out this. >> Yeah, and that's a great thing because there are a lot of women who can speak on this. They just have to have their voices found. So there's a lot of discovery in that format. Is there any plans to go beyond? You mentioned some workshops, what other things... Can you give another quick highlight of the things else you're doing post the event? >> Yeah, so one of the big things post the event is working with Girls in Tech, and I know you know Adriana. We are going to host on their platform. They have a platform for mentoring. We're going to host a track for Web 3.0 and during International Women's Day, we're going to auction off some NFTs that will contribute to that mentoring platform. So we've got folks like Lazy Lions and Bella and Deadheads that are going to donate NFTs. We'll auction those off and then that will enable the ongoing platform of Girls in Tech to have that mentoring that will be available for the next generation. We'll also do events, both virtually through Twitter spaces and other means as well as in-person events. I just mentioned at South by Southwest which I'm really looking forward to. We're going to have our first in-person event on March the 12th. It's going to be a brunch. A lot of the women told me, John, that they go to all these Web 3.0 or crypto events and everything's like a frat party in the evening. And they're like, "Why can't we just have a nice brunch and sit down and talk about it?" (John laughs) So at South by Southwest that is exactly what we're going to do. We're going to have a brunch and we're going to sit down and talk about it with all of these companies. And John, one of the things that's amazing to me is that we have over 55 companies that are all coming together to support this initiative. To me, that was just overwhelming. I was hoping to get about 20 companies and so far we have 55. So I'm feeling so excited and so empowered by what I see as the potential for this group. >> Yeah, well, first of all, congratulations. That's a really great thing you're doing. If you need place on theCube to post those videos, if you can get copies, we'd be glad to share them as well 'cause it's super important to get all the great minds out there that are working on Web 3.0 and have them showcased. I got to ask you now that you're in the trenches now, doing all this great work. What are some of the buzzwords that people should know about in Web 3.0? You mentioned to five main pillars as well as the ownership, the paradigm shift, we got that. What are some of the buzzword that people should know about? How would you rank those? >> Well, I think there are a couple. Let's see. I mean, one is if you think about it, what is a decentralized application? Some people call them Dapps. Dapps, you'll hear that a lot. And a decentralized application just means that you are leveraging and using multiple forms. There's no centralization of the back end. So everything is decentralized or moving around. Another is the gas fee. This comes up a lot, many people think, "Oh yeah, I put gas in my car." But a gas fee in Web 3.0 is you're actually paying for those decentralized computers that you're using. So in a centralized land, a company owns those computers. In a decentralized land, since you're using all these different assets, you've got to pay for them and that's what the gas fee is for. The gas fee is to pay for those particular types of solutions. And many of these terms that we're talking about minting, what is an NFT, we'll be explaining all of these terms on International Women's Day in that 24 hour Twitter space as well. >> We'll look forward to that Twitter space. We'll share as well. In the Web 3.0 world, when you look at it, when you look at what Unstoppable's doing, it's a paradigm shift. You laid it out there. What is the bottom line? What's the most practical thing people are doing with the domains? 'Cause it is definitely headroom in terms of capability, single sign on, you own your own data, integrating into wallet and decentralized applications and creating this new wave just like the web. More web pages, better search. More pages, the search has to get better, flywheel kicking in. What's the flywheel for Unstoppable? >> Well, I think the flywheel is the really around digital identity. It's why I came to Unstoppable because I believe that the data about you should be owned by you and that identity now travels with you. It's your wallet, it's your healthcare data, it's your educational records, and it's more. So in the future, that digital identity is going to become so much more important than it is today. And oh my gosh, John, it's going to be used in so many different ways that we can't even imagine it now. So for me, I think that digital identity and it really puts that ownership right in the hands of the members, not in anyone else's hands, a company, a government, et cetera. It puts the ownership of that data in your hands. >> I just love these big waves, these shifts, because you mentioned healthcare. Imagine an NFT is that sign on where you don't have to worry about all these HIPAA regulations. You can just say, "Here's me. Here's who I'm trusted." And they don't even know my name, but they know it's trusted. >> And everything just trickles down from there. >> That's right. >> And all the databases are called. It's all immutable. I got my private key. It unlocks so much potential in a new way. Really is amazing. >> I agree. And even just think about education. I was with Arizona State University and so my daughter took some classes at a community college and I wanted to get those classes and have those credits available for her university. How hard is that? Just to get that education and everything is paper and I had to physically sign, I had to physically mail it. It was pretty crazy. So now imagine that your digital identity contains all of your degrees, all of the skills that you've gone through all of your experiences, John. You told me before the show, all different experiences that you have that I didn't know about. I'm sure a lot of people didn't. What if you had that piece of you that would be available that you could use it at any time. >> It's locked in LinkedIn. There's a silo. Again, I'm a huge believer in silo busting going on. This new generation is not going to tolerate experiences that don't fit their mission. They want to have liberation on their data. They don't want to be the product. They want to have the value. >> That's right. >> And then broker that value for services and be able to be horizontally scalable and pop around from place to place without logging in again or having that siloed platform have the data like LinkedIn. You mentioned my resume's on basically LinkedIn, but I got webpages. I got some stories. I got videos. I'm all over the place. I need an NFT. >> And just think about LinkedIn, John. You could say that you graduated from Yale and didn't even graduate from Yale because nobody double checks that but in a wallet, if Yale actually sent that information in so you could verify it. It's that verification that's done over the blockchain, that immutable verification that I find to be very powerful. And John, we were just chatting with some companies earlier today that are Web 2.0 companies and they're like, "Oh, okay. All this is just for people? It's just for consumers?" And I was like, "No, this is for B2B. You've got to start thinking about this as a company." So for example, if you're a company today, how are you going to entice users to let you see some of their data? How are you going to look at ownership when it might be done via a dow and maybe a part of a piece of art, a part of a company, a part of real estate, like Parcel who you guys are going to talk to later on. Look at how that is going to change the world. It's going to change the way funds are raised. It's going to change the way you buy carbon credits, the way you buy art. If you're a consumer company, think about games and endgame economics. People are now playing game that money is real and your brand could be positioned. Have you thought about that? >> Yeah, I think that point you mentioned earlier about Twitter being the user, you had some personal connection, we didn't monetize it. Now with Web 3.0, you own it. One of the things that I see happening and it's coming out a lot of the Unstoppable interviews as well as what we're seeing in the marketplace is that the communities are part owners of the talent of whether it's an artist, a music artist, could be theCube team. The communities are part of the fabric of the overall group ownership. So you're starting to see you mentioned dows, okay? It's one kind of it. So as users become in control of their data and owning it, they're also saying, "Hey I want to be part of someone else." Artists are saying, " Be my stockholder. Own my company." >> That's right. >> So you start to see ownership concept not just be about the individual, it's about the groups. >> Right. And it's about companies too. So I'm hoping that as part of our Unstoppable Women of Web 3.0, we do have several companies who have joined us that are what I would say, traditionally Web 2.0 companies, trying to go over the chasm into Web 3.0. And I do think it's really important that companies of all types and sizes start looking at the implication of that ownership model and what that does. So for example, it's a silly one, but a simple one. I bought a Lazy Lion. It was actually part of my signing bonus, which is also interesting. My signing bonus was an NFT and now my Lazy Lion, I now own that Lazy Lion but the artist also gets a potential percentage of that. I can put my Lazy Lion on a t-shirt. I could name a store after my Lazy Lion because now it's mine. I own it. I own that asset. And now myself and the artists are teamed together. We're like a joint venture together. It's fascinating new models and there are so many of them. After ETHDenver, I was reading some of the key takeaways. And I think the biggest key takeaway was that this space is moving so fast with so much new information that you really have to pick one or two things and just go really deep so that you really understand them versus trying to go so wide that you can't understand everything at one time and to keep up it's a mission today to keep up. >> That interesting example about the Lazy Lion, the artist in relationship with you, that's a smart contract. There's no law firm doing that. It's the blockchain. Disintermediation is happening. >> It's trustless. Back to those five things we talked about. It's on the blockchain, it's decentralized at least partially, it's a digital identity, it's financially beneficial to you and it's trustless. That's what that is. It's a smart contract. There's no in between >> Can't change. It's immutable. Can't hack. Once it's on the blockchain, you're good to go. Sandy, well, congratulations. Great to see you. Unstoppable Women of Web3, WOW3. Great acronym. We're going to support you. We're going to put you on our March 8th site we're putting together. Great to have you on. Congratulations and thanks for sharing the big news. >> Thank you so much, John. Great to be on. >> Okay, this is theCube coverage of Unstoppable Domain partner showcase. I'm John Furrier, your host, here with Sandy Carter. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)