Unstoppable Domains raises $65 million in Series A round, reaching unicorn status

Unstoppable Domains raised $65 million in Series A funding, reaching a $1 billion valuation. The firm plans to use the funds to reduce the friction of crypto payments between applications and build reputation-based Web3 reward programs.

Unstoppable Domains, a firm building digital identity markers as NFTs, announced on July 27 that it raised $65 million in Series A funding.

The funding round led by Pantera Capital raised additional investments from Mayfield, Gaingels, Alchemy Ventures, Spartan Group, OKG Investments, Polygon, Redbeard Ventures, CoinDCX, CoinGecko, and others. According to a release, prior investors in Unstoppable Domains also participated in this funding round.

Unstoppable Domains now has reached a $1 billion valuation, intending to use the funds to reduce the friction of crypto payments between applications and build out infrastructure for a loyalty reward program within the crypto ecosystem based on a user’s reputation. Also, this new funding round gives Unstoppable Domains more than three years of runway to build out its product, the release said.

“We are on a mission to create user-owned and controlled identity for everybody on the planet; we actually think that NFT domains are going to be the technology that makes this happen,” Matthew Gould, Unstoppable Domains co-founder and CEO, told The Block.

Unstoppable Domains allows users to register domain names for a one-time fee. These domains can then act as a personal identifier for a user among different crypto applications, helping users maintain a consistent online reputation using Web3 technology.

Gould explains that to verify users, Unstoppable Domains asks them to provide hundreds, if not thousands, of pieces of additional information about themselves so that “your identity is emergent.”

As per Gould, digital worlds miss a personal reputation element experienced in every life. He explains in a hypothetical example that if a person were to sell fake items on Amazon and get caught, they could then move to a different platform such as eBay and commit the same scam. “But if you have a consistent reputation across these places, you can’t do that.”

“We think that having a consistent name across the internet will be a way for you to plant your flag in the digital world and say who you are, and then also help you build a consistent reputation across all the different applications that you interact with,” Gould said, adding:

“​Our vision is for the three billion people who have a cell phone to also have an NFT domain in the future. Regardless of the short-term hiccups in the space, that’s ultimately what we’re trying to get to.”

Earlier this year, Pantera had set out its plan to raise a $200 million fund dubbed the Pantera Select Fund. At the time, it said it had invested in an “unnamed company which produces NFT domain names.”

Image Source: https://stephenajulu.com/blog/how-to-buy-your-first-nft-web-3.0-domain/