Ep 54, Creating the Censorship-Resistant Standard for Global Free Speech —With Brad Kam of Unstoppable Domains

Imagine having the capacity to build a website that only you can put up or take down. A website that doesn’t require you to answer to any government or powerful company. A truly censorship-resistant website created on a decentralized registry.

Brad Kam is the Cofounder and Head of Business Development at Unstoppable Domains, a blockchain startup that makes crypto payments simple and facilitates the creation of such censorship-resistant websites. On this episode of Wyre Talks, Brad joins us to discuss the custody problem with centralized domain registries and explain how Unstoppable Domains is building a decentralized system that works for wallets and websites simultaneously. He shares the idea of using extensions to support blockchain-based domains and the value of Unstoppable’s ecosystem partnerships with those browser extensions as well as IPFS providers and wallets.

Brad goes on to address how Unstoppable Domains differs from ENS, functioning as both a registry and registrar and driving adoption through a sunrise period for brand owners. He also weighs in on the team’s conscious decision to be unifying and inclusive of any currency or wallet, describing the current customer profile and the most interesting use potential use cases for the platform. Listen in for insight around Unstoppable’s show-don’t-tell approach to marketing its censorship-resistant sites and learn how Brad thinks about balancing global free speech with ethical concerns.

Follow Thomas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tomscaria

Follow Unstoppable Domains on Twitter: https://twitter.com/unstoppableweb


Today’s Topics

[0:28] How living in ‘the house that Bitcoin built’ inspired Brad’s interest in crypto

[1:16] Brad’s previous referral marketing SaaS startup, Talkable

[1:50] How the 4 cofounders met and decided to work together on Unstoppable Domains

[3:04] The custody problem around centralized registries

[3:53] Why domain pricing differs across registries 

[4:53] How top-level domains leverage marketing efforts to gain traction

[6:14] What you can do through Unstoppable Domains in terms of making crypto payments and building websites

[7:59] The Unstoppable Domains team’s progress to date

[8:46] Why Brad’s team decided to build on the Zilliqa blockchain and the value of high transaction throughput

[9:41] The simple process of creating an Unstoppable Domain that works for wallets and websites simultaneously

[11:53] Using extensions to support blockchain-based domains

[12:46] Unstoppable Domains’ partnerships with IPFS providers, browser extensions and wallets

[14:46] How Unstoppable Domains stores data from multiple crypto addresses

[16:00] How Unstoppable Domains differs from ENS

[18:07] Unstoppable’s plans to auction top domains 

[19:19] Unstoppable’s adoption thus far + the site’s customer profile

[20:29] The ethical concerns around picking top-level domain names

[21:25] The Unstoppable team’s conscious decision to be unifying and inclusive of any currency or wallet

[22:01] How Unstoppable is addressing domain squatting with a sunrise period

[22:22] Unstoppable’s show-don’t-tell approach to marketing its censorship-resistant news sites

[24:13] Interesting use cases for Unstoppable (i.e.: political conflicts)

[24:55] How Brad thinks about ethics on the platform + how users can choose filters to match their beliefs

[26:44] The future of the Unstoppable Domains product