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analysis What Names Are Web3 Companies Using?

Spaceship Spaceship
Web3 is a hot term these days, with many startups in the sphere, and existing companies reimagining themselves as Web3.

In this article, I take a look at the names of 156 top Web3 companies. I also study what extensions are popular, and the sectors that predominate within the Web3 world.

Compiling A Web3 Company List

I wanted a list of Web3 companies not subject to personal biases. I used the following four lists of top Web3 companies in compiling an overall list.
There was less overlap than you might think between the lists, indicating that how we define top, and what is Web3, are both somewhat fuzzy currently. I ended up with a cumulative list of 156 Web3 companies and organizations.

What Do Web3 Businesses Do?

Earlier in the NamePros Blog, I covered What is Web3? The principles of Web3 include decentralization, individual ownership, integration with a cryptocurrency wallet, permissionless, and borderless.

I visited each of the 156 websites and assigned a single word to best describe the major function of that company, such as NFT or crypto. Clearly there is overlap between say fintech and crypto and blockchain.

I used WordCloud Generator from MonkeyLearn to produce a word cloud from the results.

Image-CloudWeb3Categories.png


The most frequent sector was crypto, appearing 39 times, followed by developer at 21, and then blockchain and NFT, at 12 each.

The Names Web3 Companies Choose

There is a lot of variety in the names selected by Web3 companies and organizations. Some use common English words, while others more specialized terms. Alphanumerics, hyphenated names, two and three-word names, merged terms, and made-up brandables are all represented.

You can see the full list in the following table. Among terms that appear in multiple names, are bit, pay, block, chain, and labs.

8thLightBraintrustENERGILaPraimOnScalerippleripple
AAVEBraveENTRELatokenOowlishSemioticAISemioticAI
AlchemyC-LabsEsportsOneLedgerOpenSeaShakepayShakepay
aldrinCakeDefiEthereumLocalCoinPalmsoraresorare
AmberdataCandyetixLuvNFTParadigmSpatialSpatial
AnchorageDigitalCEEKFetch.AIMegaFansParityStellar
ankrCertiKFigmentMessaripassbaseSubspaceLabs
AptosChainFigureMetaMaskPaxfulSweet
AutographChainalysisFinoa MetaplexPerfectQuoteSwissBorg
AvaLabsChainlinLabsFlowcarbonMoonPayPikNiKSygnum
AVALANCHEChangeGalaxyMoralisPinataTamarinHealth
beeCogniGammaIOMystenLabsPocketWorldsTenderly
BINANCEcoinbasegearMythicalGamesPolygonTerra
BitconDepotCoinFlipGeminiN3tworkPolymerTheBlock
BITFINEXCoinListglipNansenProject GalaxyTheDappList
BitfuryCoinMetricsGloveBoxNearProofOfLearntripleseat
BitGoCoinSquareGnosisNewton.coPublicTRON
BitMEXCONSENSYSGSRNextBigThingQubit9UniswapProtocol
BITTREXcrypto.comGuildFINFTYLabsQuidientUphold
BitwiseAssetManagementCrystalBlockchainHOSTWAYNovelQuikNodeVauld
BlockchainDecorMattersHyperTraderNuriRainbowVenly
BlockchainFoundryDemandImmutableXO(1)LabsRaribleVoodoo
BlockDaemonDfinityIotaodiggoRE.STATEMENTWeatherXM
BlockFIDNABlockkrakenokcoinRecurWeb3Auth

Astronomical names appear a number of times, such as Galaxy, MoonPay, Stellar and Gemini.

What Extensions Are Popular with Web3?

I analyzed the extension used by each, with results below. COM was used by 61.9% of the Web3 companies, with .io used by 14.2% and .org by 8.4%.
ImageBarGraphTLDs-Web3.png

I was surprised that only 2 of these companies used an .xyz for their main website. There are many Web3 companies using .xyz, from previous analyses. I think the reason they are not well represented in this list is that these are relatively large and established companies, often formed some years ago, with a more recent refocus on Web3.

There were 5 Web3 companies in the analysis that used a .co.

I was also surprised that 2 of the companies use only a linktr.ee site, rather than their own domain name.

Only one of the companies used a .net.

There were 3 companies on the list using the .ai extension, and 3 more used .network.

Among other extensions used by at least one company on the list are .ag, .app, .cloud, .eco, .gg, .me, .money, .tech and .world.

While the majority of the companies do own their exact match name in some extension, that is not true in all cases.

.ETH Website

I could not readily see how many of these companies control their own decentralized .eth domain name. Essentially all of the company names are registered in .eth, I imagine in most, but not all, cases by that company.

I implemented the bridge with a Brave browser to see how many had an operational website on the .eth. However, it seemed almost none do. I stopped checking after finding none in the first 25 that I checked.

Final Thoughts

We are still in the early stages of Web3. Many existing companies will probably not survive, but a larger number of startups will replace them.

The analysis provides some indication of the hot sectors now, but that will probably diversify in the coming years. Anything that is well suited to decentralization will find traction. There were a number of interesting collaborative enterprises in the list, from employment and consulting to crowd-based design to a weather network that rewards individual home weather stations.

Have you sold a domain name to a Web3 company? Feel free to share your thoughts on what makes a good domain investment for potential use by a Web3 company or organization.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Great analysis @Bob Hawkes! Also surprised to see so few .xyz
 
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Thank you for another great post.
 
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This is my favorite post of yours so far. So much insight and value for those looking.

Thanks Bob! (y)
 
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do web3.com pass the radio test?
 
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Also surprised to see so few .xyz
Yes, I know there are many hundreds, probably thousands, of Web3 companies operating on xyz. I expected at least 5-10% to be here. One list I used was assembled by how many open positions were at the business. Most had dozens or more open positions now. That really favours established companies.

Also, while I did not keep track of start dates, I did notice quite a few of these bigger companies started prior to the XYZ surge, and supposedly would not change their domain name after getting established in most cases. I still think there is a good market for .xyz names that would make a good brand for a Web3 startup, even though this analysis does not give much evidence.
do web3.com pass the radio test?
I might misunderstand but are you asking. Some of these names are challenged that way? I would agree some are - e.g. o1labs.org or a company with name LocalCoin being on localcoinatm.com (they have ATMs for crypto, so the name sort of makes sense, but any time mismatch can lead to confusion).

Bob
 
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Have you sold a domain name to a Web3 company?
I will start, hoping it will spur others to share a name they have sold to a Web3 company. This might help us see better see the sorts of approaches Web3 companies are taking. I think seeing the many ways Web3 companies might operate will help us offer names that might be attractive.

I sold vana.xyz. Their site is up, but they are just in alpha mode, so nowhere near a list like the ones used in this analysis. They describe their plan this way. Ultimately people will be able to make money by allowing their data to be used.
Vana’s data vault gives people ownership of their data with security, privacy, and regulation in mind. Users control their data with private keys, bringing it across the internet however they choose. Users can grant permissions to data scientists, contributing their data towards training machine learning models.
I hope others will share. You don't need to disclose price or sales venue, just to add to the view of Web3.
Bob
 
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Just to share how I got the list, I included all companies listed in the first 3 source lists, and the first 24 companies from the 4th list. There were a couple of cases that I could not locate an operating website, and excluded that company. Some names were on multiple lists, but they only counted once in my statistics. Especially the third list, Web3 Career, because it is organized by number of current open positions, the companies on it vary from day to day somewhat.
Bob
 
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I will start, hoping it will spur others to share a name they have sold to a Web3 company. This might help us see better see the sorts of approaches Web3 companies are taking. I think seeing the many ways Web3 companies might operate will help us offer names that might be attractive.

I sold vana.xyz. Their site is up, but they are just in alpha mode, so nowhere near a list like the ones used in this analysis. They describe their plan this way. Ultimately people will be able to make money by allowing their data to be used.

I hope others will share. You don't need to disclose price or sales venue, just to add to the view of Web3.
Bob

i have WebThree.org , i hope it can pass the radio test and with a good price
 
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Thank you so much for in-depth analysis, Bob.

I own few .xyz extensions for web3 projects. Let's see how it goes.
 
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I’m not a big fan of reporting sales as I believe buyers deserve privacy, but to help stimulate conversation as per Bob’s request heres some crypto keyword names I’ve sold in the past 12 months:

(Mostly com, some .io)

Bit + keyword (x2)
Mine + keyword
Crypto + keyword (x3)
Psi + keyword
Keyword + token
Keyword + chain
Coin-based brandable (x2)

Nothing revelatory, but the demand is still there despite crypto market crash.
 
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You haven't bought into the myth that every man and his dog is building on .xyz have you? Check golden.com and filter it down to web3 and crypto properties and you'll see it is not the case.
Don't believe the xyz hype. It was just domainers willing on a trend.

It's nice to be vindicated once in a while, even if I do wish that everybody here could have made a killing on xyz.
 
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Only one "web3" name on the list.......
 
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Only one "web3" name on the list.......
Well it doesn't surprise me that nobody has the phrase web3 in their name, no end user knows or cares what it is I suspect
 
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thanks Bob.

Of course this list shows, that big companies care a lot about mass-adoption (recognition, memorization) of their name by end-users / prospects.

Hence the heavy use of .com, which makes totally sense here.


Usage of .eth is interesting:
They care about registering it, but not so much about running it.

However, .eth is (if, then) more used for crypto transactions, than for anything else; at least at the moment.
 
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Don't believe the xyz hype. It was just domainers willing on a trend.
It's not. In doing other investigations I have visited hundreds and hundreds of sites, mainly Web3, operating on .xyz. I was surprised only 2 showed up here, but as noted I think it is because the lists I used to compile a list emphasized size as represented by number of employees (or in one case number of job openings currently). So what this shows is that the bigger companies that consider themselves web3 mainly use other extensions.

I am pretty sure the picture would be different had I looked only at small web3 startups. I am sure the .xyz takeup there is significant, although would not be surprised to see perhaps a thin majority on .com and a fair number on .io. I am speculating, until I do that. I may at some point try to find an independent web3 startup list and do the analysis.

As with any analysis, important to see what the assumptions or implications of data selection were.

Bob
 
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Hi

mentioned this in another thread, sold "upyo.com" which is now a nft marketplace site.

interesting analysis, considering all the predictions of web3 and what extensions will be used.
for the concept to be "dcentralization", it appears 62% chose to centralize with .com

:)

imo.....
 
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Thanks @Bob Hawkes for again pulling me back into the domain realm with one of your wonderful reports.

This topic is exactly why I once again have "retired" from actively pursuing domains.

Since my main skills have been web development for a very long time aka web2, I dusted off my interest in crypto and jumped full force into web3 development and wow am I thrilled at the results.

Little did I expect my focus to change so much, but now my projects have exploded - mostly in a good way.

As a result, I've let most of my domains expire over the last year with some selling at far less than I'd have wanted when I was active, but at this point I'm pretty much "over" my domain addiction so mostly I don't care haha

One Web3 type domain that did sell was ConsensusNode dot com but it was a liquidation sale.

For me when I do buy a web3 type domain for development, I focus on dot com, io or even cc extensions.

Side note: I've also been writing a Sci-fi novel for awhile and have many domains for that which in a strange way go along with my web3 interests haha thats a "Cryptoic" hint haha
 
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The .ai extension seems rediculously neglected at present, albeit due to its costly renewals
 
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Good number of Web3 companies use .ai and .io extensions. I think those two extensions apart from .com suits them.
 
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Perhaps some of the down voters can prove to us all the XYZ is the holy grail like they seem to think it is. When you look at the list of companies/startups and they're not using .XYZ and then you go on Google and search "site:.xyz" and most of the pages are redirects, spam or just don't load, where do you get the idea from that it's so popular? Is it from the fact that one person has had great success in it, is that all? One or two companies are using it as their main domain even though their sites do nothing (block.xyz, abc.xyz)?

Is it the reams and reams of domainers bottom picking domains at $xxx?:

1660901189804.png


Looks like it's just domainers willing for a foregone conclusion, not a real investment opportunity. Certainly not a replacement for .com, not even getting close to being popular either.
 
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Only one "web3" name on the list.......
Was thinking the same thing. Web3 is really too specific to be useful over the long run for a brand name. Web2 (or 2.0) was used for a decade but now it would be dated, like calling your mobile company Mobile5g (you'd outdate yourself as soon as 6g kicked in).
 
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Thank you very much, valuable information here.
 
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God to see .io holding on there, as some were declaring it's demise.
Whether xyz will challenge it or .org is another matter.
 
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