They will replace lengthy & complex crypto wallet addresses with easy to remember domain names

Sending cryptos to different wallets is about to become as easy as typing a website name. The process would be much more streamlined when you just have to type a name of a website instead of a wallet address with a huge string of alphabets & numbers. Even for the regular websites when we type a web address like ‘google.com’, it is mapped onto an IP address on a server where it is residing — so we don’t have to type in or remember something like ‘192.68.10.88.’

For people who have digital wallets, they know that crypto wallet address looks something like this — “1BvBMSEYstWetqTFn5Au4m4GFg7xJaNVN3” Imagine trying to remember this when making any kind of transactions or even copy-pasting such a complicated address.

A startup called Unstoppable Domains, which builds domains on different blockchains has launched a .crypto domain registry on the Ethereum blockchain. The company has the financial backing of Draper Associates and Boost VC and has also received grants from the Ethereum Foundation and the Zilliqa Foundation.

The simplification of the cryptocurrency payments as a result of this innovation can lead to wider adoption of digital currencies. The original service that was launched on the Ziliqa blockchain (.zil) has now been extended to include .crypto domain name extension. The website content for these blockchain domains resides in decentralized storage like the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS).

The move was precipitated by the great interest shown by the crypto community, having purchased 100,000 .zil domains. Apart from the simplification of the crypto payment process, blockchain domains offer certain other advantages like:

Acting as a cheap and instant global payment gateway. No exchange or third party agents to approve or process the transactions.

Decentralized storages guarantee that the user owns the content & it’s not censorable by any government etc.

Permissionless, since you don’t require approval from a central authority like ICANN for the regular website domain names.

You only have to make one payment for lifetime access. No renewals.

On similar grounds, Ethereum Name Service (ENS) has announced multi-coin support for 15 more wallet partners bringing the total to 24 wallets that support the new feature. For those of you who don’t know ENS — it is a non-profit organization that spun out of the Ethereum Foundation and provides Internet naming service built with smart-contracts on the Ethereum blockchain.

The top-level domain for ENS is .ETH, but it goes beyond the naming of the blockchain ecosystem. It has also emerged as a key component of the emerging decentralized web — an example of this is the combination of ENS+IPFS, accessible natively in the Opera browser.

Despite the common notion that ENS provides naming services for the Ethereum ecosystem only is not accurate. In addition to providing easy to read & use domain names, ENS resolves IPFS and Swarm hashes for decentralized websites, as well as to resolve Tor .onion addresses.

ENS’s user interface currently supports Ether (ETH), Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC) and Ethereum Classic (ETC) addresses. Eventually, the service intends to add support for other cryptocurrency addresses as well. ENS plans to add support for traditional DNS addresses like .org, .com and others.

What domain name would you choose for your crypto wallet?

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