What is DomainFi?

DomainFi, as the name suggests, combines “Domain” and “DeFi.” Like GameFi and SocialFi, it integrates the traditional domain industry with decentralized technology. The goal is to revolutionize the domain market by leveraging blockchain, granting users full control over their domain names while transforming them into digital assets. These tokenized domains can be traded, staked, auctioned, and used in other DeFi applications, unlocking new financial opportunities.

About D3

As the foundational infrastructure provider for DomainFi, D3 is the first DomainFi network, aiming to revolutionize the domain name industry by introducing Doma Protocol—a blockchain specifically designed for internet domain names. By integrating financial tools into the domain ecosystem, D3 seeks to transform domain names into tokenized real-world assets, enabling financial applications such as domain-based lending, fractional ownership, digital identity, and other financial use cases.

Project Background

Founded in 2022, D3 is led by a highly experienced team: Fred Hsu has over 20 years of experience in the domain industry. As the Co-Founder and CTO of Oversee.net, he was key in establishing industry standards for domain aftermarket brokerage, website hosting, ad monetization (domain parking), and other managed services. Fred also founded the mobile ad tech platform Manage.com, which was later acquired by Criteo.

Before co-founding D3, Michael Ho was an early-stage investor at Presight Capital, where he led over 10 seed and Series A investments across Web3, fintech, and consumer sectors. Prior to that, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s investment banking division, where he executed over $15 billion worth of strategic M&A and IPO transactions in the technology sector.

Shay Chinn is D3’s Co-Founder and Chief Architect, as well as the VP of Product at Supernova Brands. With over a decade of engineering experience, he has previously served as CTO and Chief Architect at multiple companies, including Network Solutions, eToys, Oversee.net, and Bridg.

D3 funding poster (Source: D3 Official Website)

In 2023, D3 successfully completed a $5 million seed funding round, led by Shima Capital, with participation from Maelstrom Capital, Dispersion Capital, MZ Web3 Fund, Infinite Capital, Nonagon Capital, and others.

Following the launch of the Doma Protocol in 2025, D3 secured a $25 million Series A funding round led by Paradigm, with additional backing from Coinbase Ventures and prominent angel investors, including Dharmesh Shah (HubSpot), Sandeep Nailwal (Polygon Labs), and Richard Kirkendall (Namecheap).

Doma Protocol

Doma Protocol is a purpose-built blockchain designed to modernize and unlock the liquidity of over 362 million existing and future domain names. It views domain names as the “digital real estate” of the internet world while ensuring full compatibility with the existing domain ecosystem. Unlike traditional Web3 domain protocols, Doma ensures consistency in domain status and ownership through on-chain synchronization, effectively preventing issues such as ownership fragmentation that have plagued past naming systems. On the governance level, Doma extends traditional domain management rules onto the blockchain, leveraging smart contracts to enable operations such as domain asset destruction and transfers. Additionally, Doma provides user-friendly APIs and SDKs for registrars and developers, supporting the assetization and tokenization of domain names, thereby driving the financialization and decentralization of the domain market.

Doma Protocol Official Website (Source: https://doma.xyz/)

Doma Stack

Doma Stack consists of three core layers: the Blockchain Layer, the Tokenization Layer, and the Financialization Layer. The Blockchain Layer is the core infrastructure, providing a specially designed underlying blockchain to support domain names. Above it lies the Tokenization Layer, responsible for securely bringing traditional domain names onto the blockchain and converting them into on-chain assets. The topmost layer is the Financialization Layer, which applies financialization processes to domain name assets through smart contract primitives. Developers can use these primitives like building blocks to create a diverse range of DomainFi applications, unlocking the potential of domain names in financialization and decentralized scenarios.

Doma Stack (Source:@D3Inc/featured"> D3 Inc. YouTube Channel)

Blockchain Layer

The foundational layer of Doma Stack is specifically built for domain name infrastructure, ensuring the security and scalability of domain name assets on-chain. Additionally, it supports smart contract execution and is compatible with the EVM ecosystem, enabling seamless integration with mainstream blockchains. The Doma blockchain adopts an efficient consensus mechanism capable of handling large-scale domain name transactions and financial operations while possessing native cross-chain interoperability. This allows domain name assets to flow freely across multiple blockchain ecosystems. The Blockchain Layer also provides developers with powerful APIs and SDKs to simplify on-chain domain name integration, driving the development of decentralized domain name systems in the Web3 era.

Tokenization Layer

The Tokenization Layer serves as a bridge between traditional domain name infrastructure and Web3. Doma offers an open API that allows domain registrars to tokenize domain names on the blockchain while also supporting on-chain event callback monitoring. This bidirectional bridge helps ensure the synchronization of all domain name metadata and state information. Any changes made by registrars to domain names, as well as updates to the on-chain asset status, are synchronized in real-time, maintaining data consistency and integrity.

Financialization Layer

The Financialization Layer injects DeFi capabilities into the Doma protocol, providing essential financial infrastructure such as liquidity trading, oracles, and lending. However, unlike traditional DeFi, Doma has designed unique financial primitives tailored to the specific characteristics of domain name assets, taking into account factors such as expiration dates and transfer lock-in periods. Additionally, Doma will support cross-chain interoperability, offering native asset bridging functions for mainstream Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchains.

D3 Financialization Layer (Source: @D3Inc/featured"">https://www.youtube.com/@D3Inc/featured)

Building with DNS Connect SDK

The DNS Connect SDK is designed to integrate various Web3 domain resolution services into a unified framework, simplifying the integration process for developers. D3 aims to provide a universal SDK capable of resolving any Web3 name on any blockchain.

The DNS Connect SDK enables developers to seamlessly bridge Web2 internet with Web3 infrastructure, ensuring a smooth transition between traditional domain name systems and decentralized technologies. Its design supports both backward and forward compatibility, allowing it to adapt to future technological advancements and ensuring long-term usability. Through a one-stop integration solution, developers can easily implement domain resolution and management without relying on multiple SDKs or APIs, significantly reducing development complexity. Additionally, the DNS Connect SDK is built on a compliant, secure, and highly accessible infrastructure, providing stable and reliable support for Web3 applications.

D3 supports the following resolution methods, applied in order of priority:

1. DNS resolution
2. (Optional) ENS resolution
3. (Optional) Other resolution services—provided by D3 or the community

Resolution Priority Order Diagram (Source: https://d3.inc/)

The DNS Connect SDK enables developers to easily integrate D3 into wallets or DApps, facilitating seamless interaction within the Web3 ecosystem. As a JavaScript SDK, D3 adopts a modular design, with its core consisting of multiple name resolution modules.

By default, D3 uses its DNS resolution module, resolving Web3 names through DNS text records (TXT records). It is also compatible with other naming systems, such as ENS (Ethereum Name Service), supporting the resolution of .eth domains. When users set up wallet address mapping, the system not only creates a Web3 Connect TXT record readable by D3 Connect but also generates an ENS TXT record to ensure compatibility with existing ENS DApps and wallets. Developers can also write custom name resolution modules and integrate them into D3 Connect to accommodate various Web3 requirements.

To ensure the security of the resolution process, D3 utilizes DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions) in the background to prevent DNS spoofing attacks and data tampering. Additionally, for DNS and TXT records, D3 follows a standardized format to guarantee accuracy and stability in resolution information. The text record format follows a hostname + Web3 Connect + domain name structure, ensuring efficient interconnectivity across different Web3 ecosystems.

Domain Name Marketplace

The D3 Domain Name Marketplace is a decentralized trading platform focused on Web3 domain names. Through domain tokenization and smart contracts, it provides efficient liquidity solutions, enabling seamless integration between the traditional DNS ecosystem and Web3 for both existing and future domain names—totaling 360 million. Users can buy, sell, and list domains such as Shib, Ape, and Core Names on D3. The marketplace facilitates the circulation of tokenized domain assets, enhances transaction transparency, drives long-term revenue generation within the ecosystem, and lowers the entry barriers for acquiring high-value domain names.

Domain Name Marketplace (Source: https://d3.app/search)

Current Challenges

Domain names hold immense market value as digital assets, yet this value remains largely untapped. Additionally, the traditional ownership structure of domain names provides users with limited options for extracting value or liquidity, making the trading and monetization of high-value domains highly restrictive.

To address this issue, DomainFi redefines domain ownership through tokenization, introducing Fractional Ownership, democratizing investment in and access to high-value domains. At the same time, D3’s Doma Protocol is a blockchain specifically designed for domain financialization, offering users expanded liquidity options.

Through tokenization, D3 enables domains to be traded like NFTs, fractionated and even used as collateral assets. Leveraging smart contracts for ownership management, D3 allows valuable domains to be split into multiple tradable shares, similar to Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) operation, making domain investment accessible to a broader range of investors.

Moreover, on-chain transactions bring greater transparency, fairer transaction costs, and faster settlement times, eliminating the need for users to navigate complex processes via traditional Web interfaces. By utilizing D3 and its smart contract ecosystem, the value of domain names can be unlocked more efficiently, propelling the domain industry toward a more decentralized, open, and financialized future.

Future Development and Conclusion

D3 is developing tools for domain-based lending, fractional ownership, digital identity, and other financial use cases. By seamlessly integrating DNS and blockchain technology, D3 aims to enhance the liquidity and utility of domain assets, accelerating their evolution into a trillion-dollar on-chain asset class.

Just as DeFi revolutionized the digital currency market, the D3 team seeks to bring the same disruptive transformation to the domain industry through the Doma Protocol. This would drive the rapid rise of the DomainFi sector and establish domain names as key financial assets in the Web3 world. With blockchain, smart contracts, and decentralized infrastructure, D3 will introduce greater transparency, liquidity, and innovation to the domain name marketplace, laying a solid foundation for the future Web3 economy.