I’ve been seeing more and more about blockchain domains… are they actually likely to take off or just another blockchainerisation fad?
Hard to say, but at this stage, I would say that it is just a fad. This may change if these domains are natively integrated into each major browser, but for as long as these domains will need a plugin to work, they will not gain mass appeal.
HN domains degenerated into a total scam a long time ago, wasn’t well thought out and is something between a ponzi and a shakedown now
Some of the “repurposing” tlds maybe have a future, but it’s all a bit buy-now, business-plan-in-future
If there was a proper re-think of distributed db with an actual “management/committee” without the icann-bloat but still certain protections, proper browser / app support and so on then it would have a place, but needs tech & domain people to plan it out rather than crypto pump and dumpers
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That’s basically the conclusion I’ve come to as well, why would you buy some obscure “tld” for the same price as a .com which doesn’t work for 99.999999% of your potential users still baffles me slightly.
I suspect it’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation though, ICANN won’t give away its power, and it won’t succeed without ICANNs support.
I do wonder what the GDPR implications might be as well though? Admittedly my knowledge of blockchain is mostly superficial but if it’s storing the history, and a domain is sold does that not mean previous owner/NS info in some form is forever public?
Essentially it is a bet that it might have more functionality in the future. Paying once only without renewal fees can be quite attractive.
You’re right about the browser support, but it is a very low hurdle to pass.
Once two major browsers integrate it, others will have to follow and these could take off.
As far as I understand the owner listed on the chain is just a public key hash, so completely anonymous. I’m sure the EU will have plenty say about that with their NIS2 shenanigans.
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If that was the case I might see the point, although it looks like many offering these are charging yearly…
I doubt these could be free of ongoing charges, there is a cost to maintain an infrastructure.
Handshake TLDs are bought using a very scam oriented auction method, and so “.pgp” (or more specifically HN$/pgp) has an “owner” - the subdomain-ish things under that only exist as long as the people with the pseudo tld want them to - which is upto the day the do-lars stop funding the pyramid