At Paymagic Labs, we pride ourselves on spotting emerging Web3 use cases and helping them mature and grow through our writing, hackathons, and products we launch.
Summary
Our latest project is Usernames.club which gives a Community Namespace like .eth / .lens / .sol / etc to any crypto L2 rollup, DAO, or community that wants one. These are UsernameNFTs, a new sub-sector of the NFT space. All names are interoperable with ENS via CCIP Read at usr.id but recurring revenue from the NFTs flows back directly to your community. And the entire Usernames.club project is governed by a Nounish DAO on Ethereum.
The Problem
Usernames are application-specific in Web2. @corbin only means something in the context of the app: Twitter, Discord, Slack... Just like how our user data is app-specific, non-portable, and frequently monetized.
But usernames in Web3 are portable. Your same wallet address shows up across all apps. Except public addresses suck as usernames…they’re long, confusing to look at, easy to mistype, and non-descriptive.
So enter ENS and other naming services, which allow:
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👓 Human-readable alt to address hashes
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🌐 Are permissionless digital property
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👯♂️ Lean into the meme/tribal/flexing aspects of the space
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💱 Are tradable/speculative
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💰 Can create recurring cash-flow for projects
Why not just use .eth usernames?
ENS is one of the most successful protocols on Ethereum...it’s a simple yet powerful protocol design, strong business model, enduring meme (.eth), and thriving ecosystem of apps and communities. The protocol started as a decentralized DNS but the vast majority of it’s product-market fit is usernames today. Tradeable usernames for wallets. That’s how it’s used today. Just check ens.vision.
But crypto is much bigger than just Ethereum and Ethereum is much bigger than a single meme today. Many L2 Rollups are launching, hundreds of DAOs are operating, and new protocols are deploying. And they want their own community, meme, and their own usernames. ENS Name Wrapper is one option but so are UsernameNFTs… 🙂
Enter UsernameNFTs
ENS defined the format {username}.{protocol} but not every community wants a .eth suffix. Yet few understand that ENS can be used for any name resolution including DNS, L2 chain namespaces, and off-chain names like Coinbase's cb.id.
As such, we saw many projects wanting to launch their our community namespaces and building it all from scratch themselves. We wanted to make it simple to launch so we created Usernames.club as a DAO to launch namespaces easily for any community. 🤝
After winning an auction, any project can reserve a namespace (.gm / .zkevm / .rekt / etc) that resolves via {namespace}.usr.id and sell usernames to their community, generating recurring revenue for their treasury. Alternatively, the username can resolve to an existing NFT collection like .punk or .ape.
In joining the Usernames.club DAO, a community gets a custom designed UsernameNFT with generative art, can define the business model for selling the usernames (recurring, fixed fee, or free), a branded page to reserve usernames (like zkevm.domains), and voting rights in the DAO. 🤜🤛
Upcoming Launches
Over the coming weeks, the first few Community Namespaces will go live in partnership with zkRollup projects, DAOs, wallets, and protocols. Users will be able to mint a UsernameNFT to describe themselves, showcase their membership, and support the ecosystem with the proceeds. 🌱
Thanks
Thanks to the many folks that helped get Usernames.club from concept to launching our first UsernameNFTs. Particularly thank you to Greg, Vinay, Evan, Kiba, David, and Kevin for your input. Thank you to Mike, David, Rory, and Sam for incredible execution on the project! 💪
To launch a UsernameNFT for your community and join the Usernames.club DAO, you must win an auction.