Transcript

[Music] all right [Music] thank you okay how you doing Tom I’ve seen you interacting so far at handycon thanks again

01:08
Thomas have been a big supporter of blockchain domain’s handshake early early into handshake are you with us Tom just to make sure but you gotta unmute you got to click the button on the bottom to like unmute or show video all right oh oh here you know how we doing okay there you go there you go great you’re good you’re good all right so we have Tom Barrett president of inserta uh you know like I was just saying early you know you’re very early state adopter in uh in all these uh blockchain domains handshake

01:50
early you know one of the first registrars to support handshake we thank you for that um you participate in the communities you know we see you in the discourse the telegrams you know you’re a supporting sponsor here second year in a row um you know and and you also really help us Bridge with uh the traditional domain space so I think that’s a great topic for today you’re gonna give us some insights I think we changed the title I think I call it gray listing but I think it’s a DOT it’s the web 3 imperative

02:24
um and uh I I’m just really excited we would you want questions too right you have some you have some absolutely you can you can um you certainly could ask all the questions you want but I’m gonna do something a little different today great uh yeah if you have if you want to share okay there you go you got it okay I’m gonna hide I’ll be here but uh just uh I’ll I’ll step down all right cool thanks Michael thanks everyone for for lasting this long um I’m gonna talk about what I call uh

02:56
defining and enforcing Community Values and you’ll see in a second why I think this is so important for web 3 uh to grow and and start to embrace uh the next generation of users a little bit about myself you know pre-icand icam is formed in 98.99 I was I built a a trademark research platform for Thompson Reuters I ran a corporate domain name registrar called net names which I sold off uh to another UK company and I was a founding board member of Affiliates which uh launched the first new gtld uh back in the early 2000s

03:38
prior to that I’m a mechanical engineer so I did Factory automation at Pratt Whitney GE aircraft uh my my Master’s thesis was on laser drilling for for jet engines so I’m very much an engineer I can appreciate all the hard work that the handshake developers have done uh to get us this far uh currently I am the I run two I can registrars in Circa and named share my specialty is to provide engineering not surprisingly to I can’t tell these that have special requirements and so on the exclusive

04:17
registrar for DOT CPA dot realtor uh I love it when we get contacted by a CPA wanting to transfer their name to GoDaddy and we say sorry GoDaddy doesn’t support CPA but you can move your your.com over to us so very active and I can uh just uh finished a five-year stint as chair of the icann dominating committee review which appoints half of the icad board I’m also very active in uh what’s called the name Collision advisory process which by the way is not looking at alternative routes at all so they’re always looking at uh the web

04:55
2 collisions uh and then of course I also wear this hat for the international trademark Association grab the chair of the blockchain subcommittee so I have 20 trademark lawyers on my committee and last summer I launched altruge.com which is a trademark search engine for web3 domains and so we have all ten thousand plus handshake glds we have three million eat names we’ve got all the Unstoppable names we have decentral web and I’ll explain later uh what how we’re going to be using some of that data

05:30
so web3 continues to show some great growth you know handshakes over 10 million uh I really I love the launch of superlake.me with their surname business I actually have launched uh three surname based businesses my own in the past we do support today 2350 handshake Registries via name base and as many of you know I don’t do marketing I’m an engineer but I do provide tools so that you can on your own website do your own marketing and facilitate sales of slds obviously you guys know about Unstoppable uh I will point out that the

06:15
800 pound gorilla is Els so they have a 1 billion plus treasury which is twice the size of icat so just rock that a little bit they have a treasury twice the size of our cat and they have 65 million dollars in recurring Revenue last year don’t forget has no recurring Revenue today and they will have to Pivot to find a business model that would be surprised if they they pivot this year so what will it take to go from your current community onto uh cross this Chasm into the mainstream and you know I was at East Denver last

06:57
week and this was basically the the topic I heard five times was onboarding web 2 to web3 that’s what everyone’s trying to figure out so I’m gonna give you I was at uh an I can meeting back in November it’s called jisper Contracting parties and one of the entrepreneurs there uh guy called Paul strahora who started Edom out of his garage sell that offer of tens of millions of dollars and then he started Donuts which he sold off for hundreds of millions of dollars and he and I both basically have

07:34
been doing this for 20 plus years and I’m paraphrasing him but he said I’m really concerned that the blockchain will destroy the consumer trust and Goodwill that icann has built up over the last 25 years all right that is what drives uh resistance to a lot of what’s happening at the blockchain today and so I think we need to be sensitive to that and when I what I take away and say well what does that really mean I I come back to uh the word civility right civility is claiming and caring for one’s identity needs and beliefs

08:17
without degrading someone else’s in the process I think that’s non-controversial and when I look at handshake you know we you all have acceptable use in your Discord in your Telegram you know the Google saying do you know do no evil but you know there’s a lot of code of conduct that people have you may not violate anyone’s privacy you may not impersonate others you may not falsely imply you are affiliated with or endorsed by anyone and so I look at the handshake terms of use and right in the right on the

08:55
handshake.org website if you have misrepresented yourself that they may delete your account the handshake Discord you know this is this is a fist full of ass uh they’ve got all kinds of rules for how you guys interact with each other and you get four strikes and you’re out ens Dow has the same thing right they’ve got a es Dao form code of conduct on how you’re supposed to behave with each other and they have a much more comprehensive list of acceptable use that again the same thing that we saw earlier

09:35
you know you will you will not impersonate someone else through the form so fairly odd non-controversial stuff in terms of how we’re going to interact with each other Unstoppable is the same thing right don’t impersonate others with your post profile or username so these are all non-controversial values in three different web three naming services but I see two challenges for web 3 to be accepted and one is DNS collisions and one is trademarked abuse I know you guys have already talked about Unstoppable earlier about their

10:18
web3 domain Alliance there’s two other efforts that I’m aware of the D DNS Dao which is on the hadera blockchain and freename.io which is doing its own Oracle so all these are trying to manage collisions I’m not going to talk about collisions today what I’m going to talk about is something else but again the Collision front real quick handshake with it’s 10 million tlds um in the next round with you know the price has gone up from 185 000 to 250 000.

10:55
there will be maybe 2 000 applications most of those are going to come out of the handshake reserved website list because they’re going to be trademarks so I don’t think there’ll be a lot of collisions but they’ll be it’ll be non-zero and so the ecosystem will have to decide how to handle a non-zero number of collisions but what I want to talk about which I think is just as important is that because because there’s no I can for the web 3.

11:29
none of the protections that address trademark abuse are available on web3 so and and you know so the option is either government intervention we’re seeing that suit with cryptocurrency or the IP intellectual property industry starts engaging in whack-a-mole litigation uh to take down uh content or domain names that are infringing their trademarks the preferred option obviously is industry self-governance that’s basically what I can did uh and and as part of that self-governance you first need to agree what are your acceptable

12:09
use standards right I already showed you uh what you have for your Discord I already showed you what ens Dow does and Unstoppable so you’ve got acceptable use in terms of how you deal with each other but acceptable use equates to Consumer safety so you need to figure out how not only how you deal with each other in terms of acceptable use you need to figure out how you’re going to deal with third parties in terms of acceptable use so the prerequisites for Consumer safety is the Community First needs to agree

12:45
for example impersonation impersonation is not to be tolerated we already saw a fistful of ass and DNS down on stop we’ll already say that in their discords and their telegrams but you need to extend that same acceptable use to your domain names otherwise you’re being hypocritical if the acceptable use only applies to how the developers interact with each other it also has to apply to how the how you basically interact with the greater world so let me give you an example alt Roots is its database as I mentioned

13:22
earlier I do a search on Google handshake reserve the top 100 000 websites so obviously dot Google is on that list but when I search handshake today I find 500 handshake tlds that contain the word Google and many many more that contain typos or variants of Google now that doesn’t mean they’re all bad there could be some non-commercial fair use in there there could be some non-infringing use but you know look at some of these hits in handshake and in for example dot Google and you can see it’s not ASCII characters right it’s

14:04
some sort of purely code representing.google so the users are a non-ascii language script so as a community you need to decide if that is acceptable use because they are attracted to impersonate Google and this is just one example um I could probably find hundreds of examples like this so just as you have acceptable use about how you interact with each other you need to have acceptable use about how whether or not you’re impersonating another celebrity or another brand so the ecosystems basically need to do

14:41
more if they want to have an obvious on-ramp for web 2. it’s not enough to Simply reserve the top 100 000 websites or exact trademark experience as Unstoppable has done and all the all these glds by the way uh a scramble has the same problem God Heath has the same problem also 500 .

15:06
heath names contained Google so every one of these naming services have to figure out their acceptable use standard not only for their each within the developer Community but how they treat the outside world So my answer to this I think there’s going to be a web 3 firewall because we want to bring Grandma on board and her grandchildren and there needs to be a way for make sure that it’s safe web3 is safe for Grandma and the only way to do that is you give trademark orders and other folks the ability to block the abuse of their trademarks that

15:41
might be impersonating them and deceiving uh consumers so the likely outcome here uh if you’ve got an impersonating name on handshake you can keep it right but the ecosystem will have an acceptable use standard to make sure they’re not usable and I believe the the first web3 ecosystem that applies these acceptable use standards outside of their developer Community to protect consumers and basically take home all the marbles and dominate as a web 3 naming service so thank you for your attention and I’d

16:22
love to hear some questions did I lose everybody I have to put my glasses on hold on joking well thanks thanks Tom yeah you get a lot of positive feedback uh from your talk so thank you for that um just real quick I I don’t I phrase this so I don’t think it’s a heavy lift right we’re not we’re not talking we’re just talking about what are your examples you should be able to spend a day in Discord and come up with your acceptable use it’s you know go look at the Ed escal that’s a good starting point but then

17:12
figure out how you apply it outside your developers okay um I’ll go there’s chats maybe I’ll share on stage this Ben Jay he says answer is simple you put acceptable use onto the user not the owner of the trade or trademark holders I don’t know what you think of that because you’re dealing with this all the time as a register you want to you want to trust the the person who registered Google in foreign characters right but but the problem with that is as you know the blockchain is structured so that is

17:49
immutable right and so it obviously be very controversial if if there’s a way to claw back registrations so you really can’t hold the owner of the name accountable with today’s uh structure uh but certainly you can make their name worthless so and I’m not just talking about browsers I’m talking about marketplaces I’m talking about ipfs I believe the entire uh some some web3 ecosystem is all going to get on board with this and make it safe for consumers to use and those are the folks that uh the rest of

18:24
the world will embrace okay uh name our tips uh Chris Neal I think you’ve maybe if you’ve seen him around he’s pretty active he asks great to have you speaking Tom would you mind providing your perspective on go days recent launch of their payable domains endeavor you know I really don’t know anything about it I don’t either I saw him mention it once already today I I haven’t I don’t know when okay no problem no problem I don’t know either um uh Nathan Woodburn think you also know

19:00
him um he’s asking can you add a link to the handshake or Community standards well I don’t think anything yeah you you have something where you enjoy the Discord you might have something on telegram but it’s not as structured as like the ens Dow that has a document it says code of conduct so I don’t think it exists today for handshake it’s very informal yeah the Discord um so Nevada or Vijay she’s also been active over the years uh she says even though someone might own the name of Google is it right that they still

19:42
wouldn’t be able to use it commercially if they are trying to impersonate Google why should that be tolerated by the community yeah I think you know that maybe she’s meaning because in trademark or copyright betray Mark you could have two Google like one Google’s for internet and the other Google’s for uh absolutely a restaurant yeah so it’s based on use trademark infringement is based on use uh so the question is how are they using today are they pretending to be Google or do they have something that says Hey

20:19
Google complaint site Google sucks clearly non-commercial use and and by the way if it’s non-commercial then they don’t use it commercially otherwise they’re trading off the Goodwill of a third party right and that should be part of your acceptable use as well right if you’re if you have some something by Google you’re trying to piggyback on the equity of Google and the question is is that acceptable use okay I think that’s clear thank you Tom um so makes machine Alex uh asks how do you propose

20:55
regulating for this goes against the fundamental agents in a way um who would be the gatekeeper or firewall browsers I mean that’s a point you know I I wanna before you answer if I don’t mind I mean there’s parental control on YouTube like I have two children seven and nine right I and when I signed them up for YouTube I say their children when you post on YouTube you say is this video for children I don’t know if people use YouTube but when I publish a video I have to say is this a children’s video

21:24
or an adult video not porn I don’t do porn I don’t have glasses but I don’t I don’t do porn but you know it’s adult video or child video but meaning you don’t want to like Target children or they want the content to Target children so I think that’s kind of what I see it right or on my TV on my remote control I can program it to be child safety on the channels I see it personally but Tom I don’t know if you have a different idea yeah I think it’s key when people talk about the fundamentals of hls it’s also

21:57
the fundamentals of anything on the blockchain right there’s a reason why they call themselves Unstoppable debates right they think that they’re Unstoppable well they’re not all right you guys are naive if you think uh that the mainstream Society you know once you guys get any traction will allow you to continue you know they’ve they’ve been so many people have tried this in the past and they will find a way to shut it down so you do not want VIP Lobby to come after you uh you do not want

22:28
government laws they they will not just be us-based it’ll be global so I think you need to look at self-regulation and it’s just a matter of fact my original premise what is your acceptable use you already talk about the fact you cannot impersonate someone in Discord why doesn’t that apply to the demand names you register is that simple how is that consistent okay we have about seven or eight minutes left and back to your earlier question I do think that um this firewall I’m actually working on the

23:04
firewall of some news about that in a few months uh there needs to be again if you’ve ever been involved in icad there are policies that need to be developed in terms of what constitutes uh trademark abuse how that’s adjudicated or not there’s an appeal process so all those sort of things can be worked out so that it’s fair uh but I think in the end uh I believe every web 3 ecosystem player will buy into this because it it lowers their legal cost for one thing um they get a lot of of this letters but

23:41
they also get to embrace the mainstream internet I mean I’ve also witnessed a firewall I lived in China for many years so I’ve I’ve I’ve witnessed censorship and firewalls um so there’s good and bad on both sides um this one’s a long one Collins always got really insightful questions he I mean we can read it but I’ll read it out loud thanks you and says um decentralized nature of handshake what parties are able to do this you know implement this kind of rules or uh uh standards uh well think of all the browsers that

24:16
you guys want to support so be kid Brave Opera they all could have a you know use a firewall to decide what they serve up to their end users as far as the use the the rules or the the I’m forgetting blanking right now on the other side the policy side he’s saying I think he means on the policy side not the firewall side okay so I you know it’s not I don’t think it’s something that you solve just internally I think you invite uh the intellectual property industry to the table uh and you have a conversation right

24:52
this is what how iCare works I can doesn’t make any decisions but they bring together these different stakeholder groups and they hash out a policy they all can live with um and so I’m I’m the chair of the blockchain committee for it so we pretty much represent the trademark Association uh I’ve got contacts at the world intellectual property organization they all realize that udrp is not going to work uh but they definitely want to participate in helping to cut down on trademark abuse okay so I was wrong on the aid it was

25:24
more like four and so we’re at time but I’ve seen this D dot DW a couple questions I’m trying to pick one trying to cover there’s lots of questions this time I think you did a great job um got a lot of people thinking I’m not even sure if I fully understand some of this and uh what honorable actions in the way of educating opening opportunities will be mandated in marginalized Community specific and Melanie melanated which I don’t know what that is so um yeah so I think that yeah I I see the feed on Twitter of all

25:54
the new handshake slds and I see trademarks fly by right certainly the registrars could stop those lame cheap could stop those right so those parties certainly could decide at least warn them hey it looks like you’re registered to trademark uh do you do you promise you’re not going to impersonate these people and try to deceive Edge users so there’s certainly different ways that you can warn people who might be naive and don’t fully appreciate how they they’re actually harming consumer safety by by

26:24
impersonating well-known brands foreign and I think we’re even cutting breaks out because of time um I see some great ones you know this is dot domains d-o-t-t uh pay I think you know you know sld Intruders sld and there’s tlds right I mean there’s a there’s a it’s but yeah I don’t know if you want to add a little comment on yeah we are both sure so the slds within handshake specifically with a name base or normal DNS so the ikit rules actually apply for slds if you have a name based TLD right and I would I would expect

27:06
Dave Jeep will support uh like udrp from Wipeout at some point but when you go on chain like impervious then you’re you’re getting into an issue which again udrpg isn’t helpful and they’ll have to figure out somewhere some other way to address it okay I think that’s a great way to wrap up I think we’ll maybe have to get you on maybe do uh you know invite you on the sky include Channel we could do a longer one or we could take some questions here um but yeah I think everyone agrees that

27:36
we really appreciate you engaging with the handshake community and and providing opportunities to uh to us to um if anyone hears something that they they’d like to uh participate in feel free to reach out to me I’m on LinkedIn uh I’ll be at iCare next week I’ll be at namescon in Austin the end of May I’ll be in Singapore for Inta also in May so feel free to reach out to me if you’d like to understand how you can incorporate something into your tlds I understand yeah and I just want to

28:12
also thank you you know your supporting sponsor again this year you you know you you reached out to support um so what we also appreciate you at handycon here um as well so yeah you’re very approachable many people here have reached out to you um and I know you’ve you’ve entertained a majority of that so so thank you again Tom uh have a great night good luck with your travels yes okay so we’re going to another session honestly I can’t keep track and help me out but we’re gonna move to the next

28:39
session right away I think we’re skipping breaks [Music]