Unstoppable Domains, with the support of several smaller market players, announced the creation of the Web3 Domain Alliance. The initiators of the project set themselves two main goals: preventing name conflicts in blockchain domain zones and developing copyright protection mechanisms in such domains. Both goals are as important as they are elusive, Domain Name Wire notes in announcing the news.
Currently, there are simply no mechanisms for regulating alternative domain zones. Unstoppable Domains advocates that the structure that was the first to bring this or that blockchain domain to the market would receive exclusive rights to it. Demonstrating its commitment to this principle, the company has already sued Handshake, which launched its .WALLET blockchain domain later than Unstoppable Domains itself did. At the same time, she abandoned the .COIN domain, having learned that it had already been brought to the market by another company. Unstoppable Domains also tried to obtain from the US authorities the right to register blockchain domains as trademarks. However, this did not bring success, since in the United States even traditional gTLDs are not considered as trademarks.
The stated goals of the Web3 Domain Alliance are hampered primarily by the very nature of blockchain domains as decentralized and often anonymous. Many of them are managed by many different structures and individuals, not always known. For this reason, reaching consensus on issues of governance and compliance with the rules is already quite difficult. In addition, each domain name in blockchain domains is the property of the owner, which makes copyright enforcement extremely difficult. However, this problem needs to be addressed, since copyright holders are one of the most influential players in the domain market, and without their favor, blockchain domains can hardly count on widespread recognition.
In a sense, the formation of the Web3 Domain Alliance can be viewed as an attempt to create an analogue of the ICANN for alternative domain zones. How successful this attempt will be, only time will tell.
