Impervious, Unstoppable & IndieScammers

Hey there 👋,

In this week’s Alts by Flippa newsletter I discuss:

• The clash of alternative web3 TLDs
• Don’t fall for SaaS IndieScammers
• Shopify invests in Klaviyo and the platform problem
• NFT volume stalling, blue chip floors down

Every heading is a discussion channel in the Alts by Flippa discord community – come join over 1600 of us.

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#domains

Flippa Featured Domains

1stop.nft | lahomes.io | epichomes.io

DentistAppointments.com | Tires.biz

carefulmedia.com | asia.info | knifi.com

It’s been a big week in the world of web3 domains.

Last week (post on Substack) I discussed how Impervious had launched it’s Decentralized Registry where you can stake your Handshake TLDs (locking them up forever) so you can sell decentralized SLDs.

They’ve just deployed a new version:

We've deployed a new version of the Impervious Registry – you can now update pricing, withdraw earnings, lock your TLD, view dashboard statistics and more! We've updated the pricing for .www ; $10 for all registrations, regardless of length. https://t.co/0lTH5DGkag pic.twitter.com/uHM6h3QepQ

— impervious (@impervious) August 1, 2022

I was considering doing this, but the forever part (which needs to be in place otherwise you can rug your SLD owners) was a bit too much for me, seeing as I spent 50K $HNS ($8K at the time) buying a premium one word .lazy/ TLD (Lazy Domains). I really want to not only recoup this investment, but create a cashflowing asset which is currently only possible by renting SLDs at the Namebase Registry, that can be sold on Namecheap.

I had decided that this was the path for me, but then though Aaron Oxborrow just released a proposal for Handshake Decentralized SLDs:

A proposal for Handshake Decentralized SLDs.

Feeling Optimistic ✨🔴_🔴✨https://t.co/n68s6uVNyZ

— aox (@aoxborrow) August 1, 2022

This has me thinking should I wait for this to become a reality, as it offers awesome benefits to Handshake TLD owners:

• TLD owners get full control of pricing and distribution methods
• TLD owners can benefit from sales by traditional registrars
• TLD owners get recurring SLD fees streamed directly to their wallet
• TLD owners can configure SLD aftermarket royalties using EIP-2981
• TLD owners do not have to lock their TLDs forever, preventing upgrades

However, I feel I need to start selling / marketing my .lazy domain sooner than later, to claim exclusive rights to the name, in case there’s ever a dispute…

Unstoppable Domains (UD) just announced it has reached unicorn status ($1B valuation) due to a $65M series A round.

I’m a fan of UD and own a couple of their .crypto NFT domains. It’s clear they are leading in app integrations / use cases.

So it was a shock to see Andrew Allemann at Domain Name Wire report that a Handshake registrar appears to have shut down in face of a lawsuit from UD.

In the article it states that Gateway.io (where I purchased my patey.c domain – Clay Collins owns the c/ TLD) appears to have shut down as it is unable to pay the legal fees necessary to fight the lawsuit:

Unstoppable Domains sued Gateway.io and its owner, James Stevens, for offering second level .wallet domains under a Handshake top level domain name. Unstoppable offers a competing .wallet address on its own blockchain-based naming system. The company claims that the first company to begin offering second level domains on a blockchain top level domain should have exclusive rights to the name.

As such, I’m likely now going to be spinning up a new company to sign the staking agreement with Namebase, unless a billionaire shark is interested:

Hey @mcuban big fan. I bought the .lazy TLD (@LazyDomains) extension on @HNS as work hard to be lazy, and love the @LazyLionsNFT

I’m looking to stake the domain on @NamebaseHQ so @Namecheap can sell names (SLDs) on it – I wouldn’t be able to then sell if wanted it for @LazyNFTs

— patey.sol (@RichardPatey) August 2, 2022

#SaaS

Reilly Chase just dropped a twitter thread about a scam he saw on MicroAcquire for a low value asset, where the seller faked the MRR and requested a wire transfer:

Watch out for this @MicroAcquire scam, happened to a friend:

• Buyer made an offer for $5K on an uptime monitoring site with $200 MRR
• Seller requested wire transfer instead of escrow

Buyer began digging through the code and that's when it got weird…

— Reilly Chase (@_rchase_) August 2, 2022

The seller has apparently tried this several times, ripping code from existing SaaS tools:

https://twitter.com/_rchase_/status/1554493490624712711

The thread then goes deep on trying to find the identity of the seller.

The TLDR is do your due diligence and always use escrow.

#ecommerce

I first used Klaviyo, the ecommerce marketing automation platform, back in 2016 when I had a Shopify store and did a bit of sales funnel consulting on other people’s stores (including Andrew Youderian‘s back in the day).

But no-one I know has been as early to this space as Kurt Elster, host of the Unofficial Shopify Podcast (which I was on talking about funnels also back in the day) who reports that Shopify has made an investment in Klaviyo:

•Shopify has "made an investment" in Klaviyo.
•Klaviyo is now the recommended solution for Shopify Plus customers globally. https://t.co/GWFKXN5XPN

— Kurt Elster (@kurtinc) August 2, 2022

In doing so, Klaviyo has just become the recommended solution for Shopify’s bigger ‘Plus’ customers. I’d hate to have been a competitor in the ecommerce marketing automation space on hearing this announcement.

If you’re an app dependent on a platform, such as Shopify, you really dread either a competitor being bought and integrated, or Shopify launching core functionality (or withdrawing it) themselves.

A great post on this is by Jordan Gal, who founded CartHook and is now at Rallyon (headless 1-click checkout) where he talks about the platform problem in ecommerce.

#NFTs

Bluechip NFT floors have been dropping significantly since I exited my Moonbird two weeks ago at a 23 ETH floor. And the Opensea site is currently timing out which is never a good sign in bear markets.

Apes are now at 82ETH, Mutants at 16TH and Moonbirds at 18ETH.

And I still feel like ETH hasn’t seen the final bottom – if it drops by 50-80% again, then you may be able to buy a Moonbird at less than mint (here’s hoping).