Around the Block With Jefferson Nunn – Interview With Lisa Deluca at Unstoppable Domains

Jefferson Nunn  0:04   

Live from Crypto.news Global Headquarters. This is “Around the Block with Jefferson Nunn.” And I’m here with Lisa DeLuca. She’s from Unstoppabledomains.com. I love that name. Welcome to the show, Lisa. 

Lisa DeLuca  0:20   

Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here. 

Jefferson Nunn  0:22   

So, yes, just talking a little bit and I wanted to find out a little bit more. How did you find out about Bitcoin and Ethereum? And tell me more about your origin story? 

Lisa DeLuca  0:35 

Sir, you know, I grew up at IBM and kind of chased emerging technologies bounced around all the hot topics, and blockchain was a huge deal for us at IBM. So, I learned a lot about how blockchain works and the technology behind it, but never actually got to play with it in the day-to-day job. And I’ve always been kind of tracking what’s going on with crypto and NFTs and all that cool stuff in the space. But I have never found a way to make it my day job until now. So, I’m really excited to be in and learning as I go. 

Jefferson Nunn  1:05 

Awesome. Awesome. So, when you were over at IBM learning about blockchain, was it just as exotic type AI technology? Or? Or what do you think of it then? 

Lisa DeLuca  1:17   

Yeah, definitely. I mean, use cases we’re evolving. Everything from supply chain and how you can track shipments to more of those industrial use cases of how blockchain can be really important. I’m an inventor. So, I was always thinking about how we could use blockchain and know one of the biggest drawbacks you hear is how expensive it is to write to the blockchain. So, we’ve got a couple of patents around how to know when to write like, is it a very important event where it needs to write to the blockchain? Or can we use a relational traditional database for storage? So, that hybrid approach to on-chain off-chain data has always been of interest to me? 

Jefferson Nunn  1:50   

Yeah, I think there’s a lot to be said for that hybrid approach right now as we’re still developing the technology and so, I think unstoppable domains has been doing some incredible work with that. Can you tell me a little bit more about I mean, it sounds such a cool name unstoppabledomains, tell me more? 

Lisa DeLuca  2:09   

Yeah, it’s a play on blockchain, right and immutable. And the idea that you can’t stop the domains and the really NFTs the domains itself, so they can start out as being your digital identity, and really grow is that profile and information about yourself, either on chain or off chain starts to grow as well. So, I am the Director of Engineering over on our login product, and working very closely with the founders and building out our teams, and to really establish what decentralized identity means and how we can be helping everybody start to adopt web 3.0. 

Jefferson Nunn  2:44   

So, tell me, what if I went on to your website and tried to buy something? What would I be buying? You did a just a domain name? Or is it more than that? 

Lisa DeLuca  2:55   

You know, I, I think that it was genius of the founders to associate unstoppable domains with domains, because in the web 2.0 cents of domains and.com era, there’s this fear of missing out where people feel like they need to go secure their name, their business name.com. And so, I think there’s a little bit of that going on right now in the web three world where people like, I gotta get my name, crypto dot wallet, dot exe, whatever that TLD is. And so, they’re purchasing it not realizing that there’s so much more to it than just a domain. In fact, a lot of the browsers out of the box, don’t support it as a traditional domain name.

So, you have to add an extension people have to know to use something like Opera, or Brave in order to access that domain name through the native browser experience. But it also holds on to it. If you go under the manager domain after you purchase it. That’s when you start to unlock that decentralized identity. So, you can start taking advantage of what the profile could mean, and how you can take yourself with you to all these decentralized applications. 

Jefferson Nunn  4:00   

Yeah, I think it’s a very powerful, even freedom of speech type of thing. I, I’ve noticed that there have been some takedowns of domain names. They’re one of the more famous one, I think for Nissan, right? He was fighting a court battle for years, over his domain name, and it just so happened that he had that name, you know? So, do you think this web 3.0 identity is going to be you know, the future wherever going with everything? 

Lisa DeLuca  4:34   

I do. I do think that and the cool thing about NFT domains is once you purchase them, you own them forever, so no one can take it away from you. It’s yours to do whatever you want with. So, I think we’re going to start seeing more adoption in that regard. And as the value starts being introduced on what you can do with a domain, more people will start to understand it and it’ll be more of a mass adoption as opposed to kind of those people that are playing in early adopters and crypto and in the web 3 space now we’ll start to see it being more that wide adoption. 

Jefferson Nunn  5:06   

Quit right, I think and so what’s this web 3.0 now that we’re going delving into it? Is it a technology that is standard? Or what is it? 

Lisa DeLuca  5:19   

No, I heard someone describing web 1.0, web 2.0 and 3.0 the other day and saw still that, but they described web 2.0 web 1.0 as this idea that everything that we interact with, like publications and newspapers, you can now access on the internet. So, it’s kind of a static, you’re reading, you’re going somewhere, and you’re reading and digesting content as a user. Now, web 2.0 introduces this ability to interact with a website.

So as a user, you can start liking things, right social media becomes popular, commenting on posts, adding rewards, web 3.0 now is supposed to be the website interacting with you. And that’s the part I really like is this idea that you bring yourself to these different websites. And you decide what kind of data about yourself, you’re willing to share and with whom, and then that information can then be used to help to customize and personalize your experience. So right now, in the web 2.0 era, it’s very centralized, you’ve got a company like Facebook, that’s got a lot of data on individuals, and you can almost sell your data in exchange for this experience in the social network. But in web three, you could bring your followers, your, your connections, your people with you as you’re experiencing different websites. So, it’s really cool, this idea of the websites interacting with you. 

Jefferson Nunn  6:30   

Cool, cool. So, yeah, that’s the thing is, it’s been interesting that with web 3.0, I think control reverse of that whole website experience technology content reverts back to the creators, is that right? It’s like, with NFTs. There’s that whole idea that you can now own your content. And if you sell your content, you know, the proof of set up sale, if you will, is on the blockchain right. So now its creator rights revert back to us, right? 

Lisa DeLuca  7:03   

You got it. Yeah, no, I think NFT’s are fascinating, and they’re just gonna increase in adoption. And it’s gonna be interesting to see how those that creator economy, the people that are really innovative and coming up with these new ideas, how they’re going to monetize and kind of be their own person, right? There’s no middleman any anymore. They’re directly engaging with their fan base and creating a community around all the stuff that they’re doing. I mean, NFT’s are way more than just a JPEG, it’s really a whole society is being built around it following and it’s merging the digital and physical worlds access to different events based on your ownership of an NFT. And participation in the product process. It’s, it’s definitely that idea of digital scarcity. And this idea that, you know, you can kind of have a badge of Right, right, like you, you’ve now part of this bigger thing than just the digital space that it currently has. 

Jefferson Nunn  8:04   

Right, right. And so, I think that that almost like that last step is, you know, proof of who we are right and getting that associated with whatever content we’re making. I was just on telegram the other day, just engaging in a chat. And, you know, people were like, oh, he’s just a scammer, and I’m like, wait, no, I’m me. And I felt like scammers have taken my identity, from me, to where I can’t just go anywhere and be me. But now you have a new technology human, right. Can you tell me more about that? 

Lisa DeLuca  8:42   

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, we talked about increasing the value of what it means to have a decentralized identity and unstoppable domains just announced a humanity Check feature. So right within the login area, you could if you were DAPP, you could ask for that humanity check for individuals, the biggest use case we’re hearing is really around reward.

So, making sure that one person gets one reward. Think of it as like a dowel, you could have one person get one vote. If you’re thinking about the NFT world, you can think about mentors and making sure they’re validating that they’re human and an actual person so that if someone were to steal other people’s artwork or copyright and go to sell it, we would know who those people are, and you could trace them back. So, there’s so many different use cases that we’re gonna start to see around humanity check. But like you said, it’s a way of proving that you’re human and reducing scam. 

Jefferson Nunn  9:37   

So, in that case, if I’m on for example, Telegram conceivably, if they’re the humanity, check extension to telegram and I wanted to rather than you know, the anti bot things that never work, right. So if I’m on a channel discussing the latest and Bitcoin wallets, somebody says, Oh, you’re a scammer. I can say no, I’m not Me, and I can hit the humanity check button. Right? 

Lisa DeLuca  10:04   

You got it? Yep. So, you can share that humanity check. And you can even share additional information about your experience in blockchain, what has been on chain and have a reputation that follows you a little bit right. So, you can prove you are you and you’ve been engaging in this community you’re not someone who has bought was just kind of spun up overnight. I think there’s a lot of power in that humanity check. 

Lisa DeLuca  10:54   

Yeah, I know. And the captures are interesting, right? I think that any time we can reduce friction on our experiences as humans, how we’re engaging in websites, like a humanity check like this will help to reduce that friction and make your experience even more enjoyable. So, more

Jefferson Nunn  11:14   

Absolutely. So, what would a more humane internet look like? Tell me what that looks like? 

Lisa DeLuca  11:23   

You know, I, I think one of the things that drew me to web 3.0 is this notion that creatives and this this equal playing ground for, you know, this Greenfield area for people to start innovating. I don’t think there’s one cookie cutter way of what the internet should look like. Instead, it should be just this free place this playground for people to come and create and share their ideas and kind of develop a community and a followership from all the great stuff they do. 

Jefferson Nunn  11:55   

Hmm, that sounds fascinating, because I was speaking with a filmmaker, he was talking about, you know, for example, trying to raise funds for his next project, using Blockchain, rather than to traditional methods, which has all kinds of problems, right? So, do you think there he’d be able to identify, you know, one, verify his identity to create an NFT around his project, and potentially get it out there? 

Lisa DeLuca  12:26   

Definitely, I think we’re starting to see a lot more use cases, in the creative spaces like music like our like film, it, I was just listening to one around basketball, you can create an NFT to use it like, as you win a tournament, you can get an NFT to prove you one kind of that proof of attendance protocols that are out there. It’s just a great way to build up your reputation of something that you’ve done and, and really directly relate to your followers. 

Jefferson Nunn  12:57   

Yeah, that’s great. Well, along with that, what do you what do you think is next for the whole industry? I mean, if it seems like every time, another year goes by, there’s just more innovation coming. And we’re going to curve, right? Adoption increasing. So, what’s next? 

Lisa DeLuca  13:14   

For me, it’s definitely in the decentralized identity space, just because I think we’re just scratching the surface of what that could mean. And we want to make sure that one company doesn’t own decentralized identity, because that’s the whole point is that there is no central ownership. So how do these companies start to play nice with each other? There’s a lot of standards out there that have been discussed and talked about, but in practice, there are not a lot of overlapping community involvement in that space of how do you share data easily between applications? So that’s the piece that I’m going to be exploring and starting to innovate around. But it’ll be interesting to see where people take other spaces. 

Jefferson Nunn  13:53   

Yeah, that’s fine area. That’d be interesting. I was just reading about somebody’s innovations to Ethereum that’s coming right after the next big upgrade, which goes from proof of work to proof of stake. There’s, for example, yeah, T 2535 Diamonds. That says you can have an unlimited sized smart chain smart contract on the blockchain. What do you what do you think beyond that might be aside from like what you mentioned, what do you think of the next for expanding blockchain? What do you think next? 

Lisa DeLuca  14:26   

Hmm, let me think. I mean, that’s, that’s a cool use case. I didn’t frankly know that the limit on how big smart contracts could be right, I guess, thinking of them as pieces of code that could be executed. They could be unlimited in size and functionality and just the benefit that they can bring. We’re gonna see more innovation in the physical and digital worlds that bridging the gap of it and what does it mean? How do you have access to events or purchase products that are both in the digital and physical world? And those products that you purchase, how do they get represented in the metaverse or gaming environment? This is such a fun feel so much innovation coming. 

Jefferson Nunn  15:13   

And so, with that, I mean, I’ve talked to some upcoming developers, you know, granted, they just graduated. But they are seemingly overwhelmed by the size of the field. What would you say to somebody that’s just graduated? They got their bachelor’s or master’s? What would you say to help on ramp them if they wanted to within the cryptocurrency space? 

Lisa DeLuca  15:37   

Don’t be intimidating. I think that there’s a lot of overlap and web 2.0 development, web 3.0 development, right, some commonalities and JavaScript. So, web 2.0 technologies like react, how people are interacting with front end and back end, you still need that in the web 3.0 space. Of course, we’re introducing new stuff like smart contract development, and how you’re engaging with the blockchain. But we’ll just like with anything in any new technology, it just takes experience and playing and trying it out. YouTube’s your best friend, and go and watch some videos and demystify some of the terminology associated with web 3.0. I didn’t know anything, like two months ago. And now I feel like I can hold my own. And it’s just like, as they say, you’re going down the rabbit hole. And as you start learning one thing, it becomes quickly into some new other space that you didn’t even know existed. So have fun with it. 

Jefferson Nunn  16:30   

Cool, cool. Well, what do you think about I just on the fringe, I’ve heard some of this. GitHub automated coding, do you think the robots are gonna take the driving jobs? 

Lisa DeLuca  16:44   

No, I do think programming will be easier. I did a TED talk where I was, I showed a screen where I showed all the code that it took to write a mobile application, and then a single line of code that how it worked. Today, this was in 2017. So, it was quite a while ago, I think coding isn’t going away. But how we engage in that like barrier to entry for individuals and developers to get going with coding is making it a lot easier for anyone to get started and start taking their idea, right? You have this idea? How do you convert it into a working prototype? And that piece is just getting easier as the days go by? 

Jefferson Nunn  17:21   

Hmm, do you think we’ll ever within our lifetime see like the Star Trek style experience in life? 

Lisa DeLuca  17:31   

Ah, I don’t think so. I think that it’s just gonna make our day to day lives easier. Keep reducing friction, more innovation, more fun projects, more ways to engage with each other going to be introduced, but I don’t see robots taking over our lives. 

Jefferson Nunn  17:52   

So, no, living, breathing, thinking computers, telling us what to do that I think that’s good. I think that’s good. Well, it’s been a really fun engaging conversation with you. Do you have any final thoughts or tips or tricks for our listeners? 

Lisa DeLuca  18:10   

You know, reach out, engage with other people in the web 3.0 crypto space, go on Twitter and, and just jump into conversations. Go on Discord, and follow your favorite NFT projects. You know, go on telegram. There are so many different places to insert yourself and just start learning by getting your hands dirty and reach out to other people because it’s a very welcoming and open community once you start jumping in. 

Jefferson Nunn  18:35   

Well, I think unstoppable domains is really at the forefront of that. So, thank you for and your company for their contribution to that space. It’s been incredible to follow. So, thank you. 

Lisa DeLuca  18:47   

Thank you, and thanks for having me on the show. 

Jefferson Nunn  18:50   

Thanks again.