The Future Of The Domain Industry Lies In Blockchain
Undeveloped.com is on the verge of setting the path forward for the future of one of the first internet industries
An Introduction
Ever since Undeveloped started, we’ve done things differently. The sole reason why we entered the market was to become a driving force of innovation in an industry that seemed to be at a standstill.
When we take a close look at the domain industry, we can split the market in two. You’ve got the primary market which is ruled by registrars that mostly only provide access to unregistered domains and the secondary market which exists out of marketplaces like Undeveloped that represent and promote their own inventories.
Both the primary and secondary markets today reside in a heavily outdated and splintered state. This has lead to inefficiencies which affect every single stakeholder in the market, be it a startup looking for the right brand to use or domain owners looking to sell or monetize their assets.
Meanwhile, the demand for quality brands keeps increasing while the market isn’t getting mobilized more efficiently to cater this increase in demand.
Primary market players have a hard time growing due to new registrations slowing down, caused by peak domain name registrations. Secondary market players have to work with very low liquidity on the existing platforms. As a domain seller for example, if you’re doing great, you’ll sell just a fraction of your portfolio on a yearly basis. Meanwhile, every single month 8 million new businesses get started that bump into the same problems when trying to find the right brand for their business. In the current market it’s not a given that both sides of the table will effectively find each other, trust each other and transact together. There are just too many barriers and hurdles to overcome.
We firmly believe that the industry is ripe for disruption and that this is the right time to change the domain industry as you know it today. Change through disruptive innovation is the only way change can have a truly significant impact. It’s sheer disruption, not mere incremental changes that can bring forward the industry that we all care about. ~ Reza Sardeha CEO of Undeveloped
Welcome to the New
We’re about to set the new standard. But we’re not doing it entirely on our own. We invite and welcome all industry players to join us in our endeavor as we believe this is the only path forward.
The first innovation items we’re planning to launch are detailed below:
1. No more long, complex and painful transactions
By removing the middleman (the escrow provider in our case) we can automate all domain, brand & IP transfer transactions from one party to another. Today, even for standard transactions you need a party in between of your transactions as a trust layer. This is inefficient, time-consuming and expensive.
By adopting blockchain to automate all processes required to facilitate transactions (escrow), Undeveloped is about to make (close to) instant transactions the new norm in the market. This paves the way for our vision to introduce BaaS. Brands as a Service, because we can finally use blockchain to make this scale without any limitations. Learn more about BaaS here.
Verification systems will be put into place that accommodate domain transfers guaranteeing 100% safe and secure transactions without the hassle, delay and at a fraction of the cost that you’re currently used to.
2. Flexible domain use
Want to use a domain for an hour, a day, a week or as long as your business exists? Today, this is not possible. It requires too many manual processes to make it a feasible and a standard normalized option. In real estate, this is already the norm.
Renting shop space in a high traffic area is the standard for shop owners. Why do you per se have to buy the perfect brand for your business for four, five, six or seven figures? Quality domains have become unreachable for starters. We can make them accessible & above all affordable again.
By introducing smart contracts, you can digitally sign flexible and instantly deployable deals with anyone around the world.
From a user perspective within a minute you’re all set in three simple steps:
- Select the domain/brand you want
- Choose your option to start using the domain on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis at the set price
- Pay and instantly get access to the domain and start developing it!
More flexible transactions be it rental agreements or a lease with the option to buy will result in more movement and liquidity in the market.
Let’s put the 147,000,000 undeveloped domains to use and get them activated by a startup or an ambitious developer looking to build something new. In the end, it’s all about democratizing access to quality domains.
3. Fractional domain ownership
Domains are currently illiquid assets. We can change that. Anyone should be able to invest in premium domains and entire domain portfolio’s after we introduce fractional domain ownership. This can lead to the inception of the first stock exchange for domains. And that’s just the start. The core innovation here is that multiple parties can legally own or represent a domain, brand package or portfolio. This can even create the path forward for crowdsourced domain purchases (ask your friends and family to help you acquire the right name for example) and more.
4. Activity Reward Engine, powered by the Web token
Undeveloped has developed a crypto-currency called the Web token. Web tokens are a cross-platform enabled utility token, that will be the centerpiece of the platform and network.
By incentivizing activity on Undeveloped’s platform we encourage users to engage in transactions and, in turn, reward them with our utility token. We chose to not make our tokens mineable because the big mining companies with extensive resources eventually will dominate the market and that’s not per se the most democratic way to go for.
5. Domain Monetization
All domain experts know that the current domain monetization model is broken and has no future. With the rise of ad blockers and Google indicating to want to move away from facilitating domain type-in traffic monetization via PPC (Pay Per Click), domain owners have been asking and looking for a new model for years.
That’s why we’re very excited to introduce a new model. The inception of the Web token allow us to distribute tokens to domain owners that use our for sales pages (example: http://antiwet.com).
Our for sales pages are a growth engine for the Undeveloped platform and allow the combined traffic that domains attract to be used to grow the ecosystem. In the coming three year we’re aiming to host over 40,000,000 for sale pages by providing the right incentives and value to domain owners to get them activated to move their idle domain inventory instead of letting them hide in obscurity.
Non blockchain oriented roadmap items to empower our marketplace users:
6. Peer-to-Peer Ecosystem
We want to go beyond being a primary and secondary market player that limits it’s services to the domain industry itself. We want to open up new channels to other industries, powered by a peer-to-peer marketplace where you can buy services required to go beyond an idea. This new market won’t be available from day one but we’re keen to start the development of this ecosystem in late 2017 / early 2018.
Ideally, the next wave of leading high tech companies will be incubated at Undeveloped.
The web token will have a strong position in this ecosystem, allowing free transactions between two or more parties. Web tokens can be used to buy services like filing for a Trademark, getting access to cloud computing or basic hosting, a Logo or the development and launch of your MVP(Minimum Viable Product) on our peer-to-peer ecosystem.
7. All-in-one market, making the primary market less fragmented
Register, renew, buy, lease, rent and sell domains in all extensions in the world. Ranging from centrally operated extensions like, .com but also decentralized operated extensions like .eth & .coin. No lock-ins, over charges, no funny business.
We’ll also provide the services you’re used to get from registrars & hosting providers like private whois, cloud storage, email & website makers either in-house built or via partners, while giving decentralized providers priority.
Sharing value created with our contributors, supporters and users.
We want to experiment with a new type of organization that’s inherently open but with a strong commercial use case. The end goal is to create a hybrid where key platform decision are made in consent between Undeveloped’s management and it’s influential network users to autonomously make decisions and set the path forward.
Every user of the network will be assigned an importance score inspired by the Proof-of-Importance model introduced by NEM.io. The importance score of each user will eventually determine your impact on the platform & ecosystem and make sure you’re rewarded accordingly. Later you’ll also have a say in impactful decisions made on the platform based on your importance score.
PS: we’re hiring full-stack engineers with an affinity for blockchain. Get in touch if you’re interested!
With kind regards,
Reza Sardeha
CEO of Undeveloped.com
