Since its launch, the total transaction volume is only 40,000 USD. What is the value of the Unisat domain name?
This is not the first domain name system based on Bitcoin.Author: Loopy Lu
On the last day of May, Unisat officially launched domain trading, supporting two types of domains: .sat and .unisat. This feature, which has been circulating in the community for a long time, has finally made its official debut to users. This domain asset based on the Bitcoin network has also become a "local hotspot" within the BTC ecosystem.
However, unlike the previous hype surrounding BRC-20 and Bitcoin NFTs, investors' interest in trading domain assets seems to be significantly lower. Now that it has been online for several days, how is its data performance, and is it worth investing in?
1. Less than 500 transactions, with a trading volume of only $40,000
As of now, the transaction records in the Unisat market show that a total of 398 transactions have been made for .sats domains, and 55 transactions for .unisat.
After being online for 5 days, this dismal number inevitably raises concerns among investors. Specifically regarding the transaction amount, it appears even more sluggish. Taking the more active .sats domains as an example, Odaily Planet Daily found that the total transaction amount is currently only $40,100, with 79% of domain transaction prices being below $30.
What about the ENS trading data on Ethereum? According to NFTGo data, the transaction amount for ENS during the same period was 92.55 ETH, approximately $174,000.
Of course, as a well-known established project, such a comparison is not entirely fair to .sats domains, but this data can serve as a perspective for horizontal observation.
From the supply side, there are currently 18,232 .sats domains listed in the market, which is already 45 times the total number of transactions.
However, this data does not hold much reference value. Due to the high customizability of domains, various domain assets across chains have long existed with a large number of long-tail domains, which may never see a single transaction throughout their entire lifespan.
Currently, the more active .sats domains are short pure numeric domains.
The Unisat market has roughly categorized domains into 6 types: pure numeric under 100, pure numeric under 1000, 1 letter and 1 number combinations, 2 letters, 3 letters, and complex combinations.
2. Fair domain sale, but limited application scenarios
The Sats Names domain system aims to build a Bitcoin domain ecosystem developed entirely on Bitcoin by Bitcoin users.
According to the official documentation, since the domain uses Ordinals to store on the Bitcoin network, all name states are stored on Bitcoin. From a narrative perspective, this domain may have a more "orthodox" character. There is no need for other databases or networks to obtain the status of the domain; any client can independently calculate the true state of all names.
One notable feature that distinguishes Sats Names from other domain systems is that it does not have a smart contract acting as an administrator, nor does it have token economics, pre-mining, governance, or incentives.
Interestingly, the registration fees for domains will be provided to Bitcoin miners, and the domain issuer does not earn income from domain sales. This also differs significantly from some common domain projects.
Currently, this domain system can be used in Nostr or as a Lightning Network address.
The Bitcoin-themed domain system is not the first to appear in the crypto world. There are already two projects for the .btc domain.
Previously, the Bitcoin smart contract platform Stacks launched the .btc domain. Stacks has been around since 2018, utilizing PoX consensus to link the Stacks blockchain with Bitcoin, empowering developers with the ability to create smart contracts and perform computations on the Stacks network. The BTCDomain project has also created another .btc domain system based on Ordinals. Odaily Planet Daily briefly introduced this project in the article "At What Stage Has the Bitcoin Ecosystem Developed Amidst the Surge?"
Unlike mainstream public chains, dApps on the BTC network are not very active, and the application scenarios for domains are currently quite limited. The decentralized Bitcoin network also makes this market more free and open, and there are no "semi-official" domain services with official backgrounds from public chains on the Bitcoin network. Therefore, each domain system has almost equal opportunities, and we can predict that more Bitcoin domain services may join the market competition in the future.
Currently, the development of Bitcoin domains is still in its early stages, with both infrastructure and use cases being incomplete. As the Bitcoin ecosystem evolves, where domain services will head, and which solutions will dominate the Bitcoin network's domain market, remains to be seen over time.
