WTF Is .xyz? (techcrunch.com)
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"If you've visited a crypto company's website recently, you've probably visited a URL ending in .xyz instead of its cheugier counterpart, .com," writes Anita Ramaswamy via TechCrunch. "From fintech Block, formerly known as Square, to venture firm Paradigm, to blockchain startups like Mirror, .xyz has become the go-to URL ending for many web3 companies. But what does it mean, and why has it caught on in the web3 space?" An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: .xyz, released to the public in 2014, first surged in popularity one year later when Google parent Alphabet decided to use it for their rebranded website. The internet behemoth had run into an increasingly widespread problem -- the .com URLs for their brand were already taken, with BMW's fleet management division using alphabet.com and American Broadcasting Corporation at abc.com. So Alphabet decided to open up shop at abc.xyz, which presented an "unlimited branding opportunity" for its "futuristic company," Daniel Negari, .xyz's 36-year-old founder and CEO, told TechCrunch in an email. Now, .xyz may be one of the top five top-level domains (TLDs) in the world by traffic, according to the company's own DNS data.
.xyz was created to "provide users around the world competition and choice when it comes to their domain name," and is "the first truly generic domain extension with no inherent meaning," according to Negari. While .com was meant for commercial use, .net for networks and .org for organizations, Negari envisioned .xyz as the TLD choice for users who felt they did not fit neatly into one of these categories or wanted to stand out. "I firmly believe the market has adopted our mantra of 'for every website everywhere,'" Negari said. "Our mantra of openness and inclusion for everyone and everything has bled through into a community of creative thinkers that has embraced .xyz as their domain." Negari is an active crypto investor with "numerous" investments in the space, including Gemini, MoonPay and BlockFi, he said. Because of his interest in crypto, he reached out to Ethereum Name Service (ENS) creator Nick Johnson to pitch him a collaboration. "That historic collaboration allowed early adopters to use a .xyz domain as their wallet address," Negari said.
ENS allows users to create a universal nickname for all their crypto addresses, providing a searchable database to make crypto wallets and transactions, which otherwise reside on a variety of different platforms, more easily accessible. Users can now create profiles to share their social media handles or other personal information in ENS using its native .eth domain or on a .xyz domain. .xyz has continued to find ways to collaborate with ENS and work with the crypto community. It announced this week that it launched its "eth.xyz" service, allowing users to search individual ENS profiles simply by adding ".xyz" to the end of their .eth name rather than having to go to the ENS database to look them up, Negari said. By allowing cryptocurrency holders to buy domains in their preferred names using Ethereum, ENS has creatively monetized users' desire to leverage the internet as an identity-building tool. Although .xyz domains are managed by ICANN, "several parties are now working to develop a decentralized alternative to this system to underpin web3," the report adds. ".xyz's strategy to align itself proactively with web3 companies could present a host of new monetization opportunities based on identity and ownership in a decentralized web as this generation of internet users stakes new claims on domains."
It's also worth noting that these .xyz domains "tend to be more affordable compared to their alternatives."
.xyz was created to "provide users around the world competition and choice when it comes to their domain name," and is "the first truly generic domain extension with no inherent meaning," according to Negari. While .com was meant for commercial use, .net for networks and .org for organizations, Negari envisioned .xyz as the TLD choice for users who felt they did not fit neatly into one of these categories or wanted to stand out. "I firmly believe the market has adopted our mantra of 'for every website everywhere,'" Negari said. "Our mantra of openness and inclusion for everyone and everything has bled through into a community of creative thinkers that has embraced .xyz as their domain." Negari is an active crypto investor with "numerous" investments in the space, including Gemini, MoonPay and BlockFi, he said. Because of his interest in crypto, he reached out to Ethereum Name Service (ENS) creator Nick Johnson to pitch him a collaboration. "That historic collaboration allowed early adopters to use a .xyz domain as their wallet address," Negari said.
ENS allows users to create a universal nickname for all their crypto addresses, providing a searchable database to make crypto wallets and transactions, which otherwise reside on a variety of different platforms, more easily accessible. Users can now create profiles to share their social media handles or other personal information in ENS using its native .eth domain or on a .xyz domain. .xyz has continued to find ways to collaborate with ENS and work with the crypto community. It announced this week that it launched its "eth.xyz" service, allowing users to search individual ENS profiles simply by adding ".xyz" to the end of their .eth name rather than having to go to the ENS database to look them up, Negari said. By allowing cryptocurrency holders to buy domains in their preferred names using Ethereum, ENS has creatively monetized users' desire to leverage the internet as an identity-building tool. Although .xyz domains are managed by ICANN, "several parties are now working to develop a decentralized alternative to this system to underpin web3," the report adds. ".xyz's strategy to align itself proactively with web3 companies could present a host of new monetization opportunities based on identity and ownership in a decentralized web as this generation of internet users stakes new claims on domains."
It's also worth noting that these .xyz domains "tend to be more affordable compared to their alternatives."
wtf.xyz (Score:5, Funny)
wtf.xyz [wtf.xyz] is unfortunately just a broken S3 web server 404 page.
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"Cheugy" is a word that young female airheads use on Buzzfeed to make them seem "hip". Apparently, Anita did not realize that she was writing for TechCrunch, and the site lacks an editor, much like slashdot.
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It's like covfefe (Score:2)
cheugier Is evidently a distortion of Cheugy which is some gen Z buzzword like "groovy" or "suave" . It is gibberish meant to make the speaker sound like they have superior than this aesthetic insight
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How do you pronounce it? choogee-er?
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Re: wtf.xyz (Score:2)
Children make up words all the time. Somehow this one went viral on TikTok. /grumpy-old-man
It's supposed to be a non-judgemental way of saying something is past itâ(TM)s prime, a bit dated or basic.
The Web3 Fraud (Score:4, Insightful)
What is .xyz?
Hype.
"So why this hype? Because the cryptocurrency space, at heart, is simply a giant ponzi scheme where the only way early participants make money is if there are further suckers entering the space. The only âoeutilityâ for a cryptocurrency (outside criminal transactions and financial frauds) is what someone else will pay for it and anything to pretend a possible real-word utility exists to help find new suckers."
https://www.usenix.org/publica... [usenix.org]
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Crypto is nothing like a Ponzi scheme. Ponzi means your actual investments are hidden and you rely on someone to tell you the performance. You know exactly what you’re buying with crypto.
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You think crypto-currencies are holding their value because of a few articles on slashdot?
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Re:The Web3 Fraud (Score:5, Interesting)
I have my inbound SMTP server configured to reject ALL of these junk TLDs. Anyone seriously using these for e-mail is an idiot who should be filtered anyhow. I also reject all .us domains except for two that I have whitelisted for people that I've met in person.
Basically, quite a few years ago (maybe 5 or 6 years baack), e-mail spammers stopped using (or hijacking) classic TLDs, and registered actual domains for their spam operations on these junk TLDs. I guess it was just easier to configure their mailer software. That certainly made it a lot easier to filter out 90%+ of spam! Late last year or early this year there was an increase in spam using traditional domains, but that stopped 2-3 months ago. Now I'm back to one or two a day, just enough to let me know that my mail server is still working.
Re:The Web3 Fraud (Score:4, Interesting)
Hell, I don't know about you, but anything that isn't a two-letter country code or com/net/org/gov and the like immediately brings up red flags. I don't care if it's .xyz or whatever - anything "funny" looking is an immediate red flag for scams, fraud or other thing.
About the only one that's legit would be .aero, and that's because it's hellishly expensive ($100/year) and restricted in who could actually get a domain Enough so that many companies maintain a .com as well
But still, they show up so infrequently they're unusual looking and considering the class of people who obtain these alternative domains, extremely questionable. I often wonder if any legit companies even bother considering them because you never see it used anywhere.
Re: The Web3 Fraud (Score:2)
I think the one single legitimate exception for funny-looking TLDs are big banks. I mean, one I use decided to own ".bankname" (and yes, it's that long), redirect everything they had to different "something.bankname", and use those exclusively. Since registering your own TLD is extremely expensive that makes these few instances actually a good security measure, as no phisher can actually pay for one.
da fuq?! (Score:2, Informative)
Seriously. Everyone in tech / Slashdot included knows what da fuq a TLD is geez
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You forget
Computer patent.. Add in mobile = new invention
An existing.tld and mention web3 with it = new thing on the internet and not the same as just existing.tld by itself.
WTF is Brawndo? (Score:5, Funny)
So, Web3 seems to be about monetization after all (Score:2)
Snore... (Score:4, Insightful)
Wake me up when ".wtf" becomes a TLD and I'll register a domain.
I'd ask to be awoken when Slashdot editors finally understand they can't use Unicode on the site they're responsible for - but then I'd be sleeping until my death.
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Re:Snore... (Score:5, Informative)
It's been active since 2014 [icann.org].
Re: Snore... (Score:2)
It is. Maybe you missed it because you were asleep ;)
cheugier (Score:3)
Really?
You're supposedly a fucking JOURNALIST. You don't know the word 'prosaic'?
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"Cheugy" is a perfectly cromulent word, you kwyjibo.
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I wish I could mod you up.
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Since we're nitpicking "journalists". I've seen a number of headlines on Lifehacker like:
How to Host Your In-Laws Without Losing Your Goddamn Mind (by Sarah Showfety)
How to Throw a Party Like a Real Goddamn Adult (by Amanda Blum)
The word is goddamned.
People like to state that language is fluid, dynamic, and changes over the course of time. That is true. It's especially true if you don't make any attempt to use existing words properly in the first place. It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy like that.
Ad not Article (Score:2)
You're supposedly a fucking JOURNALIST.
Why would you suppose that? The "article" is clearly a paid advert for the company running the TLD and it's a poorly disguised and written one at that.
tl;dr it's another TLD and marketing types want it (Score:2)
n/t
Closing in on #1 for malware served. (Score:2)
seems to match quite well with their user base. [bleepingcomputer.com]
FIFY (Score:2)
WTF Is web3?
Fixed it for you. But this quote is interesting:
ENS allows users to create a universal nickname for all their crypto addresses, providing a searchable database to make crypto wallets and transactions...
Wow I really want to do that with my crypto. Can't wait for this, N. Korea will love it.
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Can't wait for this, Banking regulators will love it.
FTFY.
its a popular domain for phishers (Score:2)
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Yep. I block this domain suffix. I don't know anyone who uses it.
slashdot.xyz (Score:2)
slashvertisement at its finest.
Something for our future selves to laugh at (Score:1, Insightful)
.xyz has become the go-to URL ending for many web3 companies. But what does it mean, and why has it caught on in the web3 space?"
Simple - in 5/10 years' time, it'll give us something to look back on a laugh at once it's totally become a fiasco. Similar to how in about 5 years' time we'll look back at "the notch" on Apple devices how how stupid it all was too.
Re: Something for our future selves to laugh at (Score:2, Redundant)
^^^ FANBOI ALERT!!!! ^^^ (Score:1)
This is so fetch (Score:3)
Stop trying to make "Web 3" happen. It's not going to happen.
For "tech nerd" and editors who only use Google.. (Score:2)
Because there is no country but the USA (Score:2)
"If you've visited a crypto company's website recently, you've probably visited a URL ending in .xyz instead of its cheugier counterpart, .com," Does this writer think all URLs otherwise end in .com? How long ago did they last visit the internet?
Better question (Score:3)
Everyone should know what a TLD is and how it functions.
But what the actual fuck is "web3 space"?
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But what the actual fuck is "web3 space"?
Decentralized, encrypted, uncensorable
Spam-tastic (Score:2)
.xyz domains give me nothing except spam and phishing links.
It's 100% useless. Even the abc.xyz site doesn't actually tell you anything about Alphabet Inc.
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Not quite all. Try http://sinfest.xyz/ [sinfest.xyz].
Just a simple cartoon and I don't know why the artist bothered.
The problem with a lot of these TLDs is that the usual suspects screw it up for everyone else. Don't discard something on generalizations like that, it is no better than saying, "All Chinese are communists", which is provably untrue.
Where's the story? (Score:2)
These types of TLD's have been available for years, there's a truck load of them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Registries and Registrars got their knickers in a twist some years back, expecting a new "gold rush" in domain name registrations.
ICANN were only too happy to get in on the act and regulations were loosened and it became a free for all.
Sadly, there was one rather large piece of the puzzle missing - nobody really wanted them.
There wasn't any burning desire to actually give a shit what suffix was
Stop trying to make Fetch happen (Score:3)
"Web3" is not going to happen. It doesn't even make any sense. Web 2.0 meant interactive websites that leveraged javascript. Web3 supposedly means "something to do with blockchain and nft". Which are all scams. I'll say it again, Blockchain based technologies are all scams. They add nothing of substance to the economy or the world for that matter but manage to convince idiots to spend insane amounts of money on them.
Until (Score:1)
To the jackassmobile! (Score:2)
Being born in 1970, I had to look up "cheugier". I generally write off anything Gen-Z comes up with. After all, they're the group that feels so superior because they think they use things other generations designed "better". And, to be fair, their contributions are still to come. But as self-elevating dismissals go, this one is...weak. Like almost everything else I've seen from Gen-Z. For my money, a decade from now we'll be looking at that generation as the least useful group in my lifetime...
I generally d
WTF is cheugier? (Score:2)
WTF is cheugier?
It was always stupid (Score:2)
Random letter combinations.
Top level domains that were country codes made sense (I have a .us, given that I'm not a company, nor am I an organization). But the rest, please, my hosting provider really, really wants me to pay them to register mydomain.ninja.
X Y and Zee (Score:2)
I am he who is X Y and Zee
I carry no card, my life is cheap
I have no worries, I do not fret
Some may have what I'm yet to get
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]