Unstoppable Domains, a software company who are building domains on blockchains, today announced that they have raised $4 million in a series A led by Draper Associates. The company is building tools that allow their users to build censorship resistant domains which make takedown requests impossible.
Tim Draper, managing partner of Draper Associates explained what attracted him to the project via press-release, citing concerns with freedom of speech.
“ By decentralizing domain names, Unstoppable Domains has the potential to spread free speech around the world. Get your blockchain domains and don’t let them be controlled by anyone else, ever! ”
The project which runs on the Zilliqa blockchain will launch in June. Pre-orders for the company’s first domain extension (.Zil) are already open and on the 20th of June, a public auction for more valuable domains will begin[1]. Unlike typical domains, .zil domains are not part of The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number (ICANN), so do not sit alongside the likes of others on a centralised registry controlled by companies, individuals and governments. Though staunchly against the current system for controlling domains, when we spoke with Bradley Kam, founder & Head of Biz Dev at CoinDesk’s Consensus 2019 Conference, he explained that while Unstoppable Domains have no aspirations to have their domain extensions approved by ICANN, they ultimately may have to as a defensive move.
” We would potentially have to get our domains approved by ICANN, but this would probably be more as a defensive move, we don’t need ICANN to sell and distribute domains, but instead we wouldn’t want other ICANN approved domains to be competing with us so we may go and do it defensively, though in reality we are going to be launching
