Decentralized web registry Unstoppable Domains announced that its .crypto domain names are now accessible through the two of the largest desktop web browsers after a single setting change.
The ability to bring decentralized websites onto Google Chrome and Firefox, as well as several other web browsers is the result of a move to integrate blockchain-based .crypto domains into web infrastructure giant Cloudflare’s Distributed Web Resolver. A dedicated guide to making the change also covers Brave, Opera, and Microsoft’s Edge, as well as the iOS version of Apple’s Safari browser.
More than 500,000 domain names have been registered on Unstoppable Domains’ Ethereum-based system. Making them accessible without having to install a dedicated browser extension makes them that much more accessible.
That said, it’s not as easy as just clicking on a button, so at least a reasonable amount of tech confidence is needed. In Chrome, for example, the instruction is: “From the Settings menu select Privacy and security > Security > Advanced section and set Custom URL as https://resolver.unstoppable.io/dns-query.”
As Modern Consensus reported at the end of March last year, major internet browser Opera integrated Unstoppable Domains into its mobile app, allowing an estimated 80 million people to access decentralized domains the same way they access traditional domains. Still, Opera currently has only 1.5% of the web browser market. Chrome has 65%, Safari 17%, and Firefox just 4%, according to W3Counter. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Edge have a combined 5.6% market share.
In June, the startup also launched a blog service that it claims is uncensorable, hosted on the decentralized, peer-to-peer web hosting protocol InterPlanetary File System.
“In a time when data breaches have become commonplace, while privacy and ownership over an individual’s own digital assets is paramount, centralized control has been called into question by many forward-thinking people and companies, this new system is different,” said Unstoppable Domains CEO Matthew Gould in a Feb. 16 announcement. “It puts the control back where it should be, back in the hands of the user.”
Unstoppable Domains’ decentralized domains “are controlled only by the owner of the domain, and are not subject to renewal fees or price increases” like traditional domains are, the company said. Unlike websites hosted on .com, .org, and other traditional top-level domains, Unstoppable Domains sites are stored in a wallet controlled by the owner, while the decentralized websites they connect to are stored on peer-to-peer networks.
Without a centralized authority controlling them, Unstoppable Domains says they are protected them from phishing scams, censorship, and privacy breaches. It also makes .crypto websites “uncensorable,” the company said.
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