Unstoppable Domains: A Competitor to Ethereum Name Service (ENS)

In recent times, there has been an emergence of decentralized services such as Ethereum Name Service (ENS) and Unstoppable Domains. These services allow users to create a human-readable name for their cryptocurrency wallet addresses and non-censored websites. This article will explore Unstoppable Domains as a competitor to Ethereum Name Service.

What is Unstoppable Domains?

Unstoppable Domains is a decentralized service that allows users to create a human-readable name to represent as many wallet addresses as they want. They can also use the service to build non-censored websites. Unstoppable Domains just closed a $65 million series A funding round, bringing its valuation to $1 billion and establishing it as a unicorn.

How Does Unstoppable Domains Work?

Unstoppable Domains works like the internet's Domain Name System (DNS), which allows users to create centralized human-readable domain names like Google.com or Coingecko.com for their websites. The internet needs IP addresses to route websites to their intended destinations; however, IP addresses are difficult to remember. As a result, DNS maps a human-readable domain like Google.com to Google's IP address, allowing the computer to recognize Google.com as the user requesting to access Google's website.

Unlike the domain names we use on the internet, Unstoppable Domains allows users to create NFT domains that run on the blockchain. For example, users could create Coingecko.crypto to represent Coingecko's wallet address. Any user can type Coingecko.crypto when they want to send cryptocurrency to their Bitcoin wallet instead of the longer, more complicated wallet address with random letters and numbers.

Unstoppable Domains are powered by two blockchains: Ethereum and Silica. Out of the ten extensions available on Unstoppable Domains, nine are hosted on Ethereum, and one is hosted on Silica. Choosing the best extension depends on popularity, price, availability, and use case.

Unstoppable Domains vs Ethereum Name Service (ENS)

Unstoppable Domains run and mint new NFT domains on the layer 2 protocol Polygon, whereas ENS runs and mints new NFT domains solely on Ethereum. Unstoppable Domains support more than 275+ coins and tokens from multiple chains, including Ethereum, Binance Chain, Ethereum Classic, Solana, Omni, and more. ENS also has multi-chain support, which as of October 2019, was as many as ten cryptocurrencies.

Unstoppable Domains distinguish themselves through their no renewal fee business model, in which users only pay a one-time fee, ranging between $10 to $25,000, which they can pay in a variety of currencies, including fiat and cryptocurrency. On the other hand, ENS subscriptions expire after the registration period, and users must renew them regularly. The fees vary depending on the number of characters but typically range from $5 to $640 per year, payable in ETH.

Unstoppable Domains have negligible gas and minting fees because they mint on Polygon, a layer 2 protocol with greater scaling. Due to rampant network congestion on the layer 1 Ethereum protocol, ENS may sometimes have high gas and minting fees.

There is no governance token for Unstoppable Domains, but ENS has one, with its popular governance token airdrop taking place in November 2021. Unstoppable Domains preserve popular brand names, celebrity names, or major IP addresses, while ENS is a permissionless protocol that allows anyone to buy any domain they want.

Unstoppable Domains offers ten extensions, including .x, .crypto, .coin, .wallet, .bitcoin, .888, .nft, .dao, .