Unstoppable + Polygon: Hello L2, Goodbye Gas Fees!

Today we’re thrilled to announce that after months of careful research and consideration, Unstoppable Domains will soon be moving to Polygon as our Layer 2 (L2) scaling solution. This will allow us to make our Web3 domains free to mint and manage on Polygon starting on November 15th, 2021 with $0 gas fees for transactions on Polygon. 

This decision brings us one step closer to fulfilling our mission to onboard three billion people to the decentralized web by making Web3 domains more accessible for everyone. We’ve long believed that NFTs should be about ownership, not subscriptions, and accessible for all, which is why we’ve never charged our customers renewal fees for their domains. Soon, by joining Polygon, all gas fees for Unstoppable Domains users will also be covered on Polygon’s full-stack scaling solution. This means that Unstoppable Domains customers will be able to buy Web3 domains and make updates to domains without having to pay mint fees, gas fees, and renewal fees on Polygon. 

When picking a technology to build on top of, we consider two primary things - cost of transactions and how easy it is for apps to support. Both are important for a successful naming system. With fees 1000x cheaper than Ethereum and with wide support from wallets, dapps, and exchanges, we believe that building on Polygon will provide the best experience to our customers today.

By using Polygon instead of Ethereum, the average customer will save $165+ in gas fees per year, per domain (assuming you do 10 transactions per year on your domain using average gas prices for 2020). And if the price of gas on ethereum goes up higher you’d potentially save even more.

While the removal of gas fees may seem like a small (but very welcome) update for our customers, the implications for Web3 domains is tremendous.

By removing the transactional costs involved in hosting and managing Web3 domains, a whole new set of capabilities becomes viable for everyday use. In the near future, customers will be able to connect multiple wallets to their domains for payment, host and edit decentralized websites (blogs, NFT galleries, etc) without having to worry about paying gas fees. Developers will be able to design and create new templates, with increased complexity and functionality without the concern that users might not be able to afford to use them. Web3 domains will become a viable alternative to existing web2 single sign-on as well with our newly announced product, Login with Unstoppable. This is just the start. 

We believe the future of Web3 domains and Web3 is brighter than ever. And while it took us much longer to get here than we had hoped or anticipated, we are confident Polygon will help us bring that future forward.

Polygon is the leading platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development. Its growing suite of products offers developers easy access to all major scaling and infrastructure solutions: L2 solutions (ZK Rollups and Optimistic Rollups), sidechains, commit chains, hybrid solutions, stand-alone and enterprise chains, data availability solutions, and more. Polygon’s scaling solutions have seen widespread adoption with 1000+ applications hosted, ~600M total transactions processed, ~100M unique addresses, and $5B+ in assets secured.

As part of this integration, new and existing users will be able to mint and manage their unminted domains for free on Polygon and existing users will be able to move their minted domains from Zilliqa and Ethereum to Polygon as well if they so choose. Users will also benefit from access to Polygon’s growing ecosystem of more than 700+ wallets, exchanges and dapps including Coinbase Wallet, Opensea, MyEtherWallet, Huobi Wallet, imToken, Aavegotchi and others.

Polygon apps will resolve domains by reading smart contracts that are on Polygon. In addition, the Polygon team will be adding Unstoppable Domains resolution to their API and Matic.js library so it will be easy for Polygon apps to use domains for payments in wallets, and for logging in with dapps.

Starting on November 15th, Unstoppable Domains will be rolling out the new cheaper domain system on Polygon. The rollout to Polygon will be broken out into 4 phases: first minting domains, then managing them, then bridging Zilliqa and Ethereum assets, and last moving domains from Polygon to Ethereum if desired.

Before the end of the year, users will be able to mint domains and set up and edit decentralized websites all at zero cost. As part of this change, all of the integrated "apps" will have to update their resolution libraries or API endpoints in order to be able to read and resolve Web3 domains on Polygon. We're going to make this as easy as possible for everyone; however, until such updates occur, domains minted on Polygon may not resolve in all wallets and exchanges and we cannot guarantee a specific timeline for each app as it's at the discretion of each individual product and engineering organization.

Phase 1,  November 15th (Minting onto Polygon) 

• Users can now mint domains on Polygon (ETH and Matic addresses will be auto assigned) 
• Domain management will be available in Phase 2 (not yet)
• Option to move previously minted domains from Ethereum to Polygon will be available in Phase 3 (not yet)
• .zil domains can be minted on Polygon in Phase 4 (not yet)

Phase 2, *Updated* Early December (Managing on Polygon) 

• Users will be able to manage domains on Polygon
• Users will be able to connect to wallet addresses for 275+ cryptocurrencies, host websites, NFT galleries, etc

Note: After Phase 2, new domains can be minted and will be fully manageable on Polygon. Phase 3 and 4 focuses on migrating older infrastructure to work on the new Polygon system.

Phase 3, est. December - February (Moving minted domains from Ethereum to Polygon) 

• Users will be able to move previously minted domains from Ethereum to Polygon
• Users will be able to move previously minted domains from Zilliqa to Polygon

Phase 4, est. end of Q1 2022 (Moving minted domains from Polygon to Ethereum) 

• Users will be able to move domains minted on Polygon to Ethereum

We know this update has taken longer than we had originally anticipated and appreciate our community's patience and support. We’re confident that Polygon is the right choice for our customers. Making Web3 domains more accessible for everyone is an important first step to bringing about greater adoption and we look forward to working with the community to build the future of web3. 

In preparation for the upcoming changes we’ve created a new L2 Help Center page to provide answers to frequently asked questions. As always, our community team will be available to answer questions.