Domain-powered Transfers: Huobi Wallet in Unstoppable Domains Deal (UPDATED)

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Sead Fadilpašić

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Sead Fadilpašić

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Sead specializes in writing factual and informative articles to help the public navigate the ever-changing world of crypto. He has extensive experience in the blockchain industry, where he has served...

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June 26, 2023

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Huobi Group‘s multi-chain Huobi Wallet has teamed up with Unstoppable Domains, a San Francisco-based company that builds domains on blockchain networks, enabling wallet users to transfer their cryptocurrencies using .crypto domains. Besides aiding crypto adoption, say the companies, this will also enable Unstoppable Domains move into the Chinese market.
(Updated on 30 June 2020, 9:20 UTC – Updates in bold.)

Per an emailed press release, long cryptographic addresses have been “hindering mainstream crypto adoption.” And the solution to this, the companies say, is making addresses shorter and simpler – and incorporating standards. Unstopable Domains’ website claims that these domains do away with “worrying about sending to the wrong address.”

Huobi Wallet has thus announced support for .crypto blockchain domains, which means that users can type in another person’s domain – rather than a traditional address – into the send field and send them tokens.

Will Huang, the CEO of Huobi Wallet is quoted as saying that the crypto industry is “still in its infancy” and that “user experience is one of its challenges for mass adoption.” He says that this partnership will help improve user experience “by replacing cryptocurrency addresses with a human readable name.”

English spokesperson, VP of Huobi Global Markets Ciara Sun, told Cryptonews.com that Huobi Wallet is a decentralized wallet and users don’t have to register to access the service.

“As of now, Huobi wallet has about 650,000 uses and all of them are potential users of .crypto blockchain domain,” Sun said.

Huobi Wallet, per its website, supports bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (EHT), ethereum classic (ETC), litecoin (LTC), huobi token (HT) and the stablecoin tether (USDT), as well as other cryptocurrencies.

It also claims that no third parties are involved in management of private keys, and that these remain stay in users’ control.

Domains can be stored in Huobi Wallet, and they’ll be visible in the collectibles section, says the press release.

Besides bringing shorter addresses to the wallet, Unstoppable Domains says that this partnership also allows it to move into China, “which continues to face controversial country-wide censorship.” On the other hand, the press release states that the .crypto blockchain domain registry “enables censorship-resistant websites.”

“Huobi is one of the largest and most important companies in crypto,” Unstoppable Domains co-founder, Brad Kam, told Cryptonews.com.

He added,

“The company’s footprint is global, but in particular, the company has a huge number of users in Asia. This is a sign that the crypto community in Asia is coalescing around blockchain domains as a standard for crypto payments and the decentralized web in general.”

In the press release, Kam also said that Huobi has a global presence and “the power to shape the way cryptocurrency is used around the world.” He stated, “Their support for blockchain domains will help establish domains as the new standard for sending cryptocurrency.”

As previously reported, .crypto domains are developed by the company as smart contracts on the Ethereum network. They are stored in a user’s wallet and can be moved only by that user, the company says.

Unstoppable Domains has also launched a Google Chrome web browser extension, allowing users to type in a .crypto domain into Chrome and browse decentralized websites. It has also launched an integration with Opera Browser.

Kam told Cryptonews.com that the Chrome extension had been downloaded over 4,000 times, although he couldn’t provide numbers for Opera at this point.

The press release says that “thousands of websites have been launched to the decentralized web.” Since March 2019, Unstoppable Domains has registered over 200,000 domains.

Kam also told us that the company is growing much faster since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Unstoppable Domains’ .crypto domain is currently third on Etherscan, showing 1,092 transfers in the last 24 hours and 6,246 in the last week – significant numbers above those behind it.

The company is backed by Draper Associates and Boost VC. It has also been a recipient of grants by the Ethereum Foundation and the Zilliqa Foundation.

Meanwhile, according to the press release, Huobi Global provides services to users in more than 170 countries, while the exchange’s accumulative turnover is over USD 3 trillion.