Domain name > real name

A domain name may be the most useful type of pseudonym.

It pulls up your site as the first hit when punched into a browser; indeed, it bypasses search altogether.

It’s also globally unique, programmable, persistent, and cross-culturally understood.

If you read Seeing Like a State, there’s a sense in which the term “real name” is a misnomer. A better term is a state name — a name which makes you legible to the state.

By analogy, a domain name is a network name. A name which makes you legible to the network.

With decentralized DNS like @ensdomains, @HNS, @unstoppableweb, and more, it starts to get interesting to think about domain names as being the default for decentralized media.

A crypto domain collapses names, usernames, discovery, payment, profiles, & encryption into one thing.

Imagine a social network which only allowed you to sign up with a valid crypto domain name.

Now imagine you didn’t need to sign up at all. Just flip a switch to make your data accessible, so the service can read & write to a subset of your domain. Like http://twitter.yourname.com .

If you get someone’s crypto domain name you can find them on the internet, pay them, and send them an encrypted message, while knowing only what they choose to share.

Globally unique & useful while also being totally pseudonymous. To say the least, state names can’t do this.