Unstoppable Domains Inc., a platform for user-controlled digital identity using Web3 technology, announced today it has raised $65 million in new funding led by Pantera Capital at a $1 billion valuation.

Other investors that joined in the Series A funding round included Mayfield, Gaingels, Alchemy Ventures, Redbeard Ventures, Spartan Group, among many others. Previous investors Boost VC and Draper Associates also participated in the round. The funding brings the total the company has raised to $72 million.

Unstoppable Domains allows users to register internet domain names using nonfungible tokens in order to control their own online identities. NFTs are a type of blockchain-based cryptographic asset that are used to represent digital goods such as artwork, music and documents.

In the case of Unstoppable, the NFTs represent user identities and can be used as login for apps, services and games. NFTs are stored in a blockchain wallet, which remains under the control of the user at all times and is protected by privately owned cryptographic keys.

With this service, a user no longer needs to remember multiple usernames and passwords spread across multiple apps and services in order to log into each of them. They can instead have a single Unstoppable Domain that will work with any app that integrates it.

“For too long, companies have controlled people’s digital identities, and Unstoppable Domains is putting that power back into the hands of people,” said Matthew Gould, founder and chief executive of Unstoppable Domains. “As the digital economy becomes a larger part of our lives, it’s time for people to own their identity on the internet.”

The technology is also arguably superior to single sign-on services such as Google, Facebook or Twitter because they require third-party access to usernames and passwords to provide the identity of the individual. The company that owns the single sign-on service can choose to revoke or modify the user’s access at any time, but with an NFT the user retains complete control over their own identity and only the apps and services that they sign into control that access.

It also protects user privacy from surveillance by big companies because they no longer go to them for the convenience of their single sign-on service. Although the user could still be tracked by individual apps by their sign-on, they are no longer being watched by an individual company when they sign on and off apps because they own and manage their own identity. A user’s reputation remains connected to their identity, which they control and manage themselves, as an NFT, rather than a third party.

This is the benefit of Unstoppable Domain’s “Login with Unstoppable,” a single sign-on mechanism for Ethereum and Polygon apps that seeks to allow users to create a unique username using their own human-readable wallet address. With this service, users can have a username such as “username.eth” allowing them to authorize apps that have been integrated with Unstoppable.

Decentralized identity is also a fundamental component of Web3, the name given to what is termed to be the next evolution of the World Wide Web of peer-to-peer network applications run atop blockchain technology.

The company said that since its launch in 2019 it has registered more than 2.5 million domains that users have used to log into more than 150 Web3 applications and it has been integrated with more than 80 web wallets and exchanges to replace lengthy wallet addresses with human-readable domains as well.

Unstoppable Domains has partnered with numerous Web3 companies such as the Ethereum scaling project Polygon, crypto exchanges Blockchain.com and Coinbase, web browser Brave, crypto wallet Rainbow and the crypto payment service Moonpay.

Image: Unstoppable Domains