Resolutions, Evolutions, And Unstoppable Momentum

What. A. Year.

As we jump into the details of what we accomplished in 2021, the first thing to note is that none of it would be possible without the support of the entire UD Fam and our partners!

This past year, we watched what started out as a simple idea — giving people control and ownership of their domains — grow into something much, much more. Domains evolved from their roots as simple websites and emerged as a new identity layer for the decentralized web.

The growth in visibility from this shift was significant, but it was nothing compared to the growth in UD as both a product and a community.

Through your feedback, our incredible partnerships, and everyone’s unstoppable determination, we launched well over 100 product features and improvements in 2021.

Together, we’re not just creating better ways to own your digital identity, we’re unlocking better, faster, and more secure experiences across Web3.

Since every story is better with a bit of context, let’s kick things off by taking a look at Web3 in general.

Industry Recap: Entering Mainstream

It’s been a record year for crypto, which hit a jaw-dropping $3 trillion market cap in November. Here are some of the biggest milestones we achieved as an industry this past year:

• The NFT market had its best year yet with over $23 billion in trading volume following Beeple’s $69M sale.
• El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as legal tender, setting the precedent for other countries around the world.
• The United States approved the first Bitcoin Futures ETF.
• DAOs entered the public eye, with ConstitutionDAO raising over $40M to (almost) buy a copy of the U.S. Constitution.
• 65% of active developers in Web3 joined in 2021.
• VCs deployed $20B+ into crypto startups.

It’s never been clearer that decentralized technologies are here to stay. With that in mind, we couldn’t be more excited to share an update on our part of the story.

Unstoppable’s 2021 By The Numbers

Let’s start with a 30,000 foot view of the major milestones we hit:

We're incredibly proud of these numbers. Not just for the sake of numbers going up, but because they're evidence that we're doing something right. Little by little, we're fulfilling our mission of onboarding the world to Web3.

Celebrating wins like these is important but there's a lot left to do and we're already hard at work on our 2022 plans.

Product Evolution

As we alluded to earlier, our technology teams hustled all year to launch well over 100 distinct product features and improvements. 

Here are some of our favorites:

• More Power, Less Gas: Launching Polygon Layer 2 Scaling Solution
  By adding Polygon support, we’ve saved our community over $100M (and counting!) in gas fees.
• More You-tility: Login With Unstoppable Launch
  We beta launched Login with Unstoppable, the first auth product on Ethereum that lets users port the data they want with the apps they use.
• More Than Magic: Alchemy Integration
  We partnered with Alchemy to launch an API that makes it easier for every wallet, exchange, marketplace or app to support Web3 domains.
• All You. All Yours: Verified NFT Avatars
  We launched NFT Avatars, giving you the ability to connect any of your favorite NFTs (with proof of ownership) to your domain and signal to the world which communities you belong to.

• A Digital Identity That’s More…You: Releasing 8 New Top-Level Domains
  We released 8 new TLDs (.nft, .wallet, .x, etc), so that everyone can choose the identity they resonate with most as they navigate the new web.

Partner Growth

Composability & collaboration are key parts of Web3 and one of the reasons we love working in this community so much.

Here’s a look at how we got by with a little help from our friends.

• Browser Integrations
  We joined forces with Opera and Brave to introduce native browser support for .crypto Web3 domains. This brought tens-of-millions of people one step closer to the next generation of the internet, where control of data and privacy are where they belong...in your hands. 
• Blockchain Association
  We joined the Blockchain Association to work alongside 70+ other industry-leading crypto companies. Together, we'll be advocating for policies that support continued Web3 innovation.
• .Wallet Alliance
  We launched the .Wallet Alliance, a collection of 30+ leading wallets, to standardize the .wallet TLD as the username for peer-to-peer crypto payments.

• More Integrations Across All Of Our TLDs
  With some of the biggest wallets and exchanges (Trust Wallet, Crypto.com, Blockchain.com) integrating with our Web3 domains, we enabled easier access for their tens of millions of members.
• Community Collaborations
  We worked with various NFT projects (World of Women, Deadheads, The Metakey, to name a few), artists, musicians, entertainers, and more - all to make domains more visible and accessible to new parts of the crypto community!

Web3 Is A Global Force…And So Are We.

In this last year alone, our team 4x-ed from 30 to over 100 people spread across 15+ countries. Web3 is a global force…and so are we.

We also welcomed new leadership to the Unstoppable Team, including:

• Ray Utech as our VP of Finance
• Renaud Besnard as our VP of Marketing
• Elizabeth Grabowski as our In-House Counsel
• Ryan Delmaire as our Director of Community
• Sandy Carter as our SVP of Business Development

In fact, we brought on so many exceptional people that The New York Times featured us in an article talking about this wave of execs joining Web3!

If you couldn’t tell, our hiring bar is incredibly high. And as a result, we’re even more prepared this new year as we work towards onboarding 4.8 Billion (yes, that’s a B) internet users to Web3. 

We take hiring seriously, and we’re seriously hiring with dozens of jobs open across all departments. Come join us if you’re interested! (No prior crypto experience necessary)

Just Getting Started: A Look Ahead

It’s fun to look back on everything that we accomplished last year, and we’re even more excited to share what’s coming next!

Although it’s still January, we’ve already crossed a huge milestone by publicly launching Login with Unstoppable, our single sign-on service for Ethereum and Polygon, with over 58 committed partners.

As a refresher from last year, we made it easier for people to mint and manage their domains by moving to our Layer 2 solution and covering all gas fees for members on Polygon.

In the coming weeks, we’ll launch the last phase of our Polygon rollout, a decentralized bridge for people to move their domains between Ethereum to Polygon.

Here’s a sneak peek at some of the things we’re most excited about from our 2022 roadmap:

• Payments: Send And Spend With Confidence
  Simplifying crypto payments for everyone is one of our Web3 domain’s most fundamental benefits. This year, we plan on making that experience even better by adding support for not only more coins, but also coins that exist across multiple chains (e.g. Tether).
• Identity: Be Your Most Authentic Digital Self
  One of the things we love most about Web3 is that it provides so many avenues for us to embrace and share our most authentic selves. The latest features we have in the works around Web3 logins, NFT avatars, reverse resolution, and the ability to verify that you’re…well, you, add new layers of convenience and peace-of-mind to digital experiences.  
• Reputation: Well Respected, Well Connected
  There are perks to being you. Or, at least there should be. Our upcoming proof of humanity functions paired with new incentives and rewards, like badges to reflect your community-building contributions and achievements, bolster your digital reputation with new layers of depth and transparency.  

In Closing

Since day one, our mission has been to return control of digital identity and personal data back to where it belongs…in the hands of the people.

As we look to the year ahead, we’ll keep empowering everyone to own what’s rightfully theirs and help them discover the very best of Web3. Here’s to another year navigating this new era together.

- The Unstoppable Team