Everyone knows about cryptocurrency. Mainstream tokens such as bitcoin and Ethereum have swept the financial world, showing people that money can be intrinsically owned and transferred without arbitrary control from big banks and agencies.

Beyond just the currencies themselves, non-fungible tokens and other digital assets — built atop the same blockchain underpinnings — are making up what’s known as Web3.

“I think that what’s been happening in general, this whole revolution around cryptocurrencies and then NFTs,” said Bradley Kam (pictured), co-founder of Unstoppable Domains Inc. “And what Unstoppable Domains is doing is all around creating this idea that people can own something that’s digital. What we’re working on is like a decentralized identity, like a username for Web3 and each individual domain name is an NFT. It’s been a crazy ride over the past 10 years.”

Unstoppable Domains is creating unique addresses on blockchain networks that serve as user identifiers for use cases like sending money, accessing user profiles and accessing content. 

“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,” Kam added.

Kam spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase event. They discussed the advancements in blockchain and how they will positively affect every netizen. (* Disclosure below.)

The nagging problem with the current-day internet, or Web2

One area in which the traditional internet has faltered is that of identity management, according to Kam.

“Identity is just this huge problem in Web2,” he said. “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 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%.”

Web3 will also allow for increased competition among technology companies, as opposed to the old model that created vast monopolies across the internet.

“If you’re thinking, from the user perspective, what’s going to happen is that instead of Facebook storing all of my data and then me being trapped inside of Facebook, I’m going to store it,” Kam said. “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.”

Another core paradigm that UD is helping make mainstream is decentralized applications, or dApps. Instead of signing in with traditional usernames and passwords, users only need their wallet information. In doing so, dApps will keep ownership and control of users’ private data in their own hands, Lam explained.

The reason why this shift toward decentralized identities, digital properties and currencies will be huge is due largely to the increasing adoption of things like crypto wallets.

“It’s not just the crypto companies that you’re thinking of. Every app’s going to have a wallet,” Kam said. “And it’s going to really change the way that we use the internet.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase event. Neither Unstoppable Domains, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE