domains Is domaining on the downslide?

[equity78]

From posts and private conversations in the first two weeks I see some calling for domaining’s demise. I finally got hold of a long time friend in the business who told me he just got into NFT’s and could care less about domain names. I was surprised as they have had decent success, […]
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[Jasonn]

Unless you are a successful domainer..

I am talking from the perspective of just starting out. If someone was just starting and could focus on either domains or crypto/nft's which would be easier to make more money the quickest? I'd say crypto because it typically takes a while to be profitable in domains.

 

[Jasonn]

Like what?

Are people really making a lot of money on NFT's other than BAYC? I ask that sincerely because i don't know, I'm not invested in NFT's.

I'm not involved in crypto either, but I was speaking to someone the other day, who told me their company have invested lots of money in Bitcoin and it's been a disaster.

I think it depends on what domains, ultra-premiums (ie single word .com's) are some of the safest assets you can buy right now as an investment.

I really have no idea what people are doing in NFT's. I can only assume by the number of people hyping it up including people like Andrew Rosener that there is money to be made. Though part of the whole thing is the need to hype and draw in new money otherwise its just a circle jerk.

 

[Kingslayer]

I really have no idea what people are doing in NFT's. I can only assume by the number of people hyping it up including people like Andrew Rosener that there is money to be made. Though part of the whole thing is the need to hype and draw in new money otherwise its just a circle jerk.

To be fair to Andrew, i think he's made a lot of money in NFTs, even working on his own project with Timbaland, so he's an NFT success story.

What i don't know about is that other 99%, who don't own bored apes or don't have their own NFT range, are they making lots of money?

It just all seems crazy to me, even BAYC, what is their long term future? Even best case where these characters end up as celebrities, on cereal boxes/advertising brands etc which is not going to happen because no company is going to pay huge amounts of money for that when they can design their own mascot for next to nothing and why would they share this mascot with another company (since these apes would be getting marketed out everywhere)?

Might be wrong, but BAYC NFT owners don't own the rights to that ape either, right? I'm guessing BAYC still own the rights to that, if thats the case and NFT holders just own 1 image of a character designed and owned by BAYC, what is the end goal on what you are going to do with it?

 

[garptrader]

This week I read a Medium post by a prominent individual in the crypto space describe domain investing as community theft and proposed some solutions to "name squatting.". While businesses will pay thousands of dollars for all kinds of business services, 25 + years after the internet became mainstream there is still considerable resistance to paying a premium price for a short, memorable domain name which can be used to promote a business. Meanwhile there are numerous crypto investors willing to pay thousands of dollars for software code and one of the arguments for doing so is the limited supply of that coin. Ditto for NFTs.

 

[redemo]

I am talking from the perspective of just starting out. If someone was just starting and could focus on either domains or crypto/nft's which would be easier to make more money the quickest? I'd say crypto because it typically takes a while to be profitable in domains.

Do you mean domain selling or domaining in general? If you register and develop a domain name you could start getting converting traffic within one day from creating a social media or paid advertising campaign. The same goes for domain flipping I would imagine if you do all the required research. But with crypto the value can randomly drop and you lose everything. I might be wrong.

 

[mr-x]

Web3 is the future. Early adopters will make money. NFT is a tool and a resource.

 

[mr-x]

I don’t understand the NFT ecosystem. Is there inherent value that supports the astronomical rise?

No. BAYC is like trading / buying baseball cards but people are paying with ethereum coins. The NFT (non fungable token ), is used to ensure the "item" is legit, not a copy.

 

[mr-x]

@Bob Hawkes I imagine, in the near future we will be able to use images, word descriptions, etc. to find resources on the network.

edit**

nft can be translated to ip addresses. You can buy a nft, linked to the word example.eth. The nft address is translated to an IP for name resolution on the internet.

The difference is, ANYONE can create a unique tld, issue NFTs, provide name resolution, not just ICANN approved registrars.

There are no renewal fees but someone has to provide name resolution to an IP address or invent a new way of routing traffic.

 

[kite26]

''Every trap has a piece of cheese inside.''

If you get me.

 

[Ostrados]

The only thing that can kill domains is a new reality were people no longer need to enter a url to access a website on the internet.. mobile Apps had beed predicted to do that but that didn't happen. Now there are some claims that the Meraverse might be the true killer of domain names but I doubt that the Metaverse will be successful business in first place. Regarding NFTs thet are not related at all to the live or death of domains industry.

 

[FolioTeam]

No, just the inherent need to be part of something. We get it in domaining too.

The value in NFTs comes in the form of the rarity of a release (eg. how many in a set, how skilled is the art) and perceived demand for it. And that's it, there is no use for NFTs other than collecting them.

I do reckon at some point or maybe it's already out there, we'll have NFT "picture frames" where one can display their tokenized art on their walls. Which would be kind of cool.

I agree. And digital frames for NFTs are already available.

NFTs for now are a collector's item, which is a very small subset of what the tech has to offer. Innovation needs to expand beyond that before it can be taken seriously by the mainstream crowd. Think real estate titles, car ownership, educational qualifications, govt documentations etc etc

Same can be said for blockchain tech which has been mainly focused on its cryptocurrency use case. If cryptocurrency ends up as blockchain's only use case down the line, despite its many other potentials, then it has failed as a tech.

Time will tell how things play out

 

[FolioTeam]

I am talking from the perspective of just starting out. If someone was just starting and could focus on either domains or crypto/nft's which would be easier to make more money the quickest? I'd say crypto because it typically takes a while to be profitable in domains.

And also the fastest way to lose money for people starting out. This also applies to other high risk/high reward industries.

That's why diversification is key when it comes to investing.

 

[Mkt Sales Leads]

Well it wasn't about the industry, it was about the practice of being a domain investor, I think some think it's done. The one thread is here, where a member declared domaining as dead.

I was being facetious as it seemed virtually everyone wanted to talk up how much cash they were making on NFTs/developing websites.

Of course domaining isn't on a big decline, although interest has waned as NFTs and Crypto appear to be faster money than the historically slow and illiquid nature of domaining (plus renewals).

It also wouldn't be surprising if some high profile figures exit the industry in the next few years and sell off their portfolios to focus on newer pastures.

 

[ThexxShwa]

I’ve sold 4 domains so far in 2022. All for 100-350x my initial investment. Might be luck, not sure, but to me it seems like domaining is only becoming more profitable. Also a lot of domainers have garbage domains, I wouldn’t even consider them domainers, they are just people that think they are going to get rich overnight. I think for the people that actually know what they are doing, it is only going up.

 

[AEProgram]

I think that all some you that mentioned NFT's so far watched one too many Gary V videos and are not really on those platforms or understand anything at all.

The money being made in NFT's now is not by artists selling their art, the few that made money doing that are lotto winners.

So who is making the big money? People serving dreamers AKA suckers.

1. Platforms charge giant fees to list your item. Everyone thinks they have something that will sell for a lot of money as a NFT.

2. Developers helping suckers build their NFT project

So can you make money from suckers? YES! Should you? Well, I wouldn't.

Did some people make money on crypto? Yes, most lost and many in profit now will lose.

Like domaining, most will never make money, at least in this world, you only pay commission if there is a sale. But there are some places that know that everyone thinks their name is worth something and they charge you to list your name in their auction.

Here is a riddle

What is the different between the real world and the MetaVerse?

In the real world there is a sucker born every second. In the MetaVerse, 1000 suckers are born every second and the proof of their delusions is recorded on the blockchain.

What should you do now?

Please go to YouTube and search for Gary V and watch all his videos about negativity. You must follow everything he says because anyone that argues is negative and negativity is very bad, especially for his wallet.

Sorry but I felt I should speak up because based on some of the comments here, I think some readers can be misled and lose everything they own.

 

[HotKey]

Thanks AE, You got it case in points;

So can you make money from suckers? YES! Should you? Well, I wouldn't.

In the real world there is a sucker born every second. In the MetaVerse, 1000 suckers are born every second and the proof of their delusions is recorded on the blockchain.

When making money from suckers, it has a negative trickle effect where it ends up affecting everyone because we all end paying for the consequences.. eg. tighter security measures when we were just fine managing our own $hit, banned domains due to fake news possibly based on them or being "confusing" for the real thing, the list goes on.

Rather than having people learn from their mistakes, it becomes make everyone pay the price for the "safety" of those that don't know better. And what this does is just dumb everything down and eliminates the opportunity of sensibility. It's like forcing every owner of a tall building to put a bouncy castle on the ground below it, just in case. And now to enter the building, we have to walk through the bouncy castle first.

We've got Walmart getting into their crypto offerings and meta space, and Nike getting into NFTs. Recent purchase of RTFKT. These people are realizing the profits to be made on imaginary value and capitalizing on it. If you read the opening message from the founders:

We grew up playing Diablo, Half-life, Runescape, Minecraft, watching DBZ, Evangelion, Akira, Star Wars, collecting, trading and reselling Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon cards.

Like, what?? This is the mentality driving todays investments? To me, it's a perfect example of sucking and blowing at the same time; an impossibility made possible by sheer morphing from the physical to the digital. Suck in the market, blow out the trend, profit. Trickle effect be damned.

Domains on the other hand, cannot be phased out or replaced or made prettier, they are the cornerstone to EVERYTHING we currently experience virtually just as they are, so any decline on domaining would mean a decline on the internet. Be it meta or NFTs, these all are founded on domains. I'm not seeing a travel downslide on the internet, au contraire whilst there be a connection there be a domain waiting on the other end.

 

[Ostrados]

I would like to add that the idea of totally abandoning URLs is almost impossible. Domains are user friendly URLs that cannot be replaced by anything else, even in a Metaverse users still need some sort of address to enter, it is not practicale to chose an address from a list because there are millions of addresses, also it is not practicle to replace addresses by visual images (in a virtual word) or QR codes or anything else that is not human-readable.

So my conclusion is that domains will always be important as long as there is internet, regardless of how the internet evolves.

 

[DomainNature]

This is how I see it, with 2 outcomes.
1. if the metaverse becomes the Internet under one company like Facebook, providing everything inside it, domains will not be required.
2. if it continues to run as the current Internet then domains may still be used inside this one metaverse for different services and different businesses.

Based on what I see currently because of Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Discord, Reddit, Tiktok and other such internet crap, then no one will need our domains soon, most end users are too lazy to create and invest in a personal website, those who are interested in domains are businesses who again can steal end users attention with their products and services or social media websites.

 

[Idbanks]

I can understand his point of view. Yes I've also made a lot of money from NFTs. However I disagree with his point of view about domains.

Yes there are a lot of low quality names in the domain industry, but that doesn't take away the fact that you can make a lot of money in the domain industry. All you need is adequate research, and a good portfolio.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

2 outcomes.
1. if the metaverse becomes the Internet under one company like Facebook, providing everything inside it, domains will not be required.
2. if it continues to run as the current Internet then domains may still be used inside this one metaverse for different services and different businesses.

I see it similarly. I think it will almost certainly go to your second option.

Even if Meta/FB were able to achieve 1, I can't see governments allowing any one company that monopoly.
What I am less clear on is whether under 2 there will be a small number of giants, kind of how big tech dominates now, or will it be very diverse with a huge number of loosely linked metaverse initiatives, some of them nonprofit. I personally hope the latter, and would be best for domain invvestors.

Thanks for your comments.

Bob

 

[bmugford]

I see it similarly. I think it will almost certainly go to your second option.

Even if Meta/FB were able to achieve 1, I can't see governments allowing any one company that monopoly.
What I am less clear on is whether under 2 there will be a small number of giants, kind of how big tech dominates now, or will it be very diverse with a huge number of loosely linked metaverse initiatives, some of them nonprofit. I personally hope the latter, and would be best for domain invvestors.

Thanks for your comments.

Bob

Having one, or a handful of companies, control it defeats the entire purpose of decentralization and the "metaverse" though that is probably the most likely outcome.

Decentralization is kind of just a buzz word. There needs to be some structure and order for a system to operate on a large scale.

Brad

 

[biggie]

Hi

decentralization, will become centralized,
when miners unionize for higher pay.
the validation of transactions will be affected, and market value will decline.



imo...

 

[Jimmysun]

I think domaining is just beginning especially for .xyz, a web3 domain like .eth can do things much more than the original TLDs as it can store any sort of ETH dapp coin, keys or set up a destination address in vr world, if the CEO of xyz registry Daniel keeps collaborating with other famous blockchain like he did with ETH then .xyz will definitely become a best choice for future domain adoption.

 

[oldtimer]

I hope that domaining is not going to be dead,

I just registered these domains for 9 dollars each:

ImmersiveScanner.com

and

HapticScanner.com

I am hoping that some big company becomes interested in buying them so that I can eat three meals a day like most people instead of having just rice and beans all the time.

In the long run I believe that domaining (and everything else for that matter) will be effected more by AI, Automation, and Quantum Computing than anything else.

IMO

PS: please don't click on any links for my domains since they are currently parked.

 

[DomainNature]

Decentralization is kind of just a buzz word. There needs to be some structure and order for a system to operate on a large scale.

Yes agree, they still operate from centralized domain names, so it's just a buzz word.