By
Steve Muchoki
April 18th, 2024
In addition to discontinuing .coin domain sales, Unstoppable Domains is also refunding affected users three times their purchase price.
Unstoppable Domains has stopped selling and servicing its .coin domains after realizing that these domains existed earlier. Reports state that the blockchain domain seller discovered that another blockchain company, called Emercoin, had previously offered its own .coin domains. After discovering that Emercoin has been selling similar NFT-based domains since 2014, Unstoppable Domains decided to back off. The San Francisco-based company also plans TO issue refunds.
Unstoppable Domains Discovers Similar Emercoin Offering the Year after Launching Its Own
Although Unstoppable Domains launched its own .coin initiative last year, it did not realize Emercoin’s until roughly a year later. Since announcing this week that it would no longer sell .coin domains, Unstoppable Domains has also taken operational action. The blockchain-linked domain name extension provider discontinued services that allow existing .coin domains to function. The company did this to avoid potential conflicts with Emercoin’s similar Web3 version. According to the company:
“Emercoin, the platform issuing .coin domains, hadn’t marketed their [top-level domain] extensively, making it difficult to find. As soon as this collision came to our attention, we stopped selling .coin domains while we investigated the issue.”
Expressing remorse on the naming development, Unstoppable Domains also added:
“The Emercoin team are pioneers in our industry and we regret that we weren’t aware of this naming collision earlier.”
Unstoppable Domains also intends to refund affected buyers in credits, with three times as much as they paid. This allows users to apply such credits to other domains of their choosing.
What Unstoppable Domains .Coin Discontinuation Means for Affected Users
The implication of Unstoppable Domains’ remedial actions now renders its .coin domains functionally useless. However, users will still have ownership over these aforementioned domains. This could be in the form of an NFT or a blockchain token representing ownership of a unique item. Furthermore, despite deactivating these services, the NFTs remain within the self-custodied wallet of affected users.
Unstoppable Domains highlighted the inherent danger of naming collisions and how it can adversely impact users. According to the billion-dollar platform, this could lead to users inadvertently sending crypto funds to an incorrect wallet, thereby losing those assets forever. Unstoppable Domains explained:
“Multiple versions of a [top-level domain] could cause chaos. Imagine sending Bitcoin to the wrong nora.nft, or connecting your wallet to uniswap.crypto and getting a scammer’s website instead of the real one.”
Preemptive Measures
Unstoppable Domains is also reportedly taking proactive measures to avert a similar naming collision occurrence down the road. The leading blockchain domain seller is implementing more comprehensive methods for tracking down likely conflicts with other domain offerings.
Currently, Unstoppable Domains mints on the Polygon network. The company offers an array of NFT-based domain names associated with Web3 paraphernalia. These include crypto wallets, profile pages, and decentralized websites viewable in certain browsers.