Sandy Carter on Enhancing Web Security with Decentralized Domains

This is Textron tv. Hi everyone. Welcome back here to techron tv.

You know, I, I've been in this business for a minute or two and, and one of the nice things is I get to meet a lot of people as a result of what I do. And over the years, you know, they recycle the names, the names stay the same. The companies change, and, but the smarts don't leave either, right?

Smart people are smart people. And this next person here is one of the smart people I've had the pleasure of meeting over the years in, in my journey. I want to introduce you to Sandy Carter.

Sandy, welcome, welcome back to Text Drunk tv. Alan, it is such an honor to be chatting with you again and, um, you know, seeing what's new and what's interesting to you and your, your listeners. Yeah, no, it's, it's great.

So, well, I have already kind of alluded to it, but Sandy, give people a little bit of your personal journey of your story. Yeah, I guess I would say I am a consummate corporate startup girl. Um, I was at, uh, a startup and then I went into IBM, which is obviously a very large company, uh, led a lot of the work around our ecosystem for, uh, cloud and artificial intelligence.

At that time, we called it Watson. I guess they, we still call it Watson at IBM. Yeah, Watson X, Right?

That's right. Watson X. And, uh, and then I went to another startup, and then I went to Amazon Web Services where I, uh, helped set up the enterprise division there.

And then, uh, worked with a lot of our regulated customers in, uh, again, cloud and AI and all of the new technologies. And now I'm at another startup called Unstoppable Domains. And what we do is a Web3 digital identity platform.

So we keep information, well, we don't keep it. The blockchain has information about you for your digital identity, just like you do for a physical identity. We keep that on blockchain so it stays safe and secure for you, but also verifiable for you, which I think is really, really important.

Absolutely. And, and more important every day, right? Because in this day and age of AI and deep fakes and everything else, we are going to need verifiable identification that is beyond reproach, right?

I, uh, you know, I, I saw some pictures the other day. They were AI photos of, it was kinda Joe Biden and Donald Trump camping together and stuff, and they looked great. I gotta tell you the truth.

They looked really real. But, um, you know, as this stuff becomes more widespread, this becomes more and more important. And Sandy, it's interesting, you've been with some interesting startups like IBM and AWS, but always, always in senior leadership there and always leading, you know, enterprise level type, you know, major, major branches of their businesses, right?

And, and you know, you've built a, a tremendous career on that. Give us a little bit, if you don't mind, a little bit of the history of Unstoppable Domains. Yeah.

So Unstoppable started in 2018, and the premise was really simple. Um, as we moved into Web3, we felt like, uh, that having a human readable, uh, way to communicate would be better, much like we did in web two. com, you actually had to put in a series of numbers to get to your website that expressed that address.

Well, the same thing happens in Web3 when you want to do something in crypto. And that includes, in some cases, Alan just logging in. A lot of people make you put your crypto address in when you log into something.

And that is a series of 21 letters and numbers. So it's really hard to remember. So the first premise of Unstoppable was, let's don't make people remember that long string of numbers.

Let's have a way that you could identify that that long string of numbers represents you. And so we did things like had Sandy X represent that long stream of numbers. That was our very first use case.

Um, it still is our number one use case today, believe it or not. We do 30 million, what we call resolutions. Wow.

Taking Sandy X to that long string of numbers, or taking that long string of letters to numbers back to Sandy X, um, that could be with a crypto transaction or you know, someone using it as a, a, a gamer tag and a leaderboard, or just confirming you know who they are. That's now made much easier with that. Over time, we decided that there was so much more that could be done, because what's in that or what's created on that blockchain is actually verifiable.

So Alan, this is quite interesting. I was just reading an article about LinkedIn, and LinkedIn said that about 36% of people who put on their LinkedIn profile that they went to a certain school never went to that school. Because what, there's nobody who goes in there and verifies that information, right?

Well, if you have a digital identity on chain, that information is verifiable and it is transparent and authentic. So a university, let's take Duke University, um, you know, my favorite undergraduate school, they could provide your diploma on chain, make it soul bound. All soul bound means that it only comes to me.

I can't transfer my diploma to you 'cause you didn't earn it. That sits on chain and then it's verifiable. Like I know that I went to Duke.

And so we started adding new features, you know, verification of education or classes, certifications, um, verification of causes. Another really big thing, um, that companies complain about is that now everybody, if you go out to a LinkedIn profile for a company or you read their press release, everybody's gonna say, I support the climate. But how do you know if they really support the climate?

And so inside of a digital identity, you can actually see on chain, again, soul bound who is making themselves carbon neutral. There are organizations that issue a certificate or a token on chain. And that certifies that you actually did what you said, I actually have one as a person, um, on my account that shows that what I'm doing on chain has been made carbon neutral.

They're planting trees, they're taking care of, ensuring that it's carbon neutral. Um, but there's also other fun things you can do. You can do loyalty programs, uh, by having, you know, maybe your digital ticket, um, inside of that wallet.

So you know that you went to something and the, the event knows that you went to something. Another funny story, um, last year, the Super Bowl was in Phoenix, and I was in Phoenix and I went to a couple of the NFL breakfast and everything. And, uh, I was telling someone, yeah, I'm gonna tweet, you know that I'm here.

And they're like, well, do you know that last year the number of people who tweeted that they were at the Super Bowl, had they really been at the Super Bowl, the stadium would've been five times as big because people are tweeting, I'm at the Super Bowl, and they're not really at the Super Bowl. And so, you know, the NFL did the NFT ticket, which is just a, a digital representation that you were there so that you can now prove. So the real, I think the real benefit here is that you've got verified trust on your digital identity.

You can actually see what people do, not what they say, what they're doing. Um, and in fact, Alan, I had one, um, it was really fascinating. One reporter interviewed me and then he went and looked at his digital identity.

'cause you know, some things pop on there automatically based on your actions. And he said it was the, the most true brand identification of who he was based on what he did, not what he thought he was or what he said he was, but Like the old meme, right? What do, what does my mom think I do?

What do my friends think I do? What do I really do? You, it's that kind of thing.

You know, it's fascinating. First of all, I'm gonna have to go look at my digital identity now, and I'm gonna ask you how to do that because I don't know how, and I want other people. Yeah, I'm sure there are other people out here who don't know how, but before we get to that, man, we should make this mandatory for politicians.

You know, with everything we've read and seen about, you know, people fudging where they went to school and what they've done and what, you know, where they've worked. It would be, it would be a, it would be a, a good thing to have For people. And can I, can I just add one thing onto that?

You know sure. This year we have more elections in the world than we've ever had before. 64 elections.

That doesn't count the EU elections, that it's gonna touch 49% of the world's population. Um, and I think that using blockchain right now to verify, I really said that, that's really my quote, that's really my picture. I think we're gonna see the power of blockchain or the potential of blockchain really emerge in this year in 2024 because of all the elections going on.

Um, I can already see the emergence of a lot of deep fakes happening and, you know, mm-hmm. Using blockchain, it would be easy to verify, like have that verification check on there. Yep.

This is my picture. I really was camping with that person. I really was doing this with that person versus having people not know what is real and what isn't.

It's, it's the number one thing, you know, trust, how do you trust what you're getting is true. And I think your point around politicians, especially this year, is just so important. I, I couldn't agree more and it can't happen fast enough for me.

I'll try. You know, I was at a, uh, lecture a couple of years ago by, um, oh, I forgot the fellow's name. He used to hope he was hosting nbs.

Oh, Chuck Todd NBC's meet depressed. Yeah. And um, and Chuck was saying that the biggest problem, especially in the US that we face people, you know, especially online social media and stuff, they don't know what's real and what's not real anymore.

You know? And it gives rise to all these crazy conspiracies and a lot of the nonsense, the internet, you know, sort of fairy stuff. Sandy, I want to go back a second though.

'cause we've been talking about Web3 and Web3 domains. I'm sure there are some people out here who don't know what we mean when we say that. Can you, you know, I, well, if you wouldn't mind, I, you could do it better than me.

Explain to them what we're talking about. Mm-Hmm. Yeah.

So a Web3 domain is just a representation, a digital representation that sits on the blockchain. Um, and the blockchain's very power is in its security, its programmability, its transparency, it's verification. And so we like to say, you know, what happens on blockchain doesn't stay on blockchain because the transparency in ensures that those transactions are visible and traceable.

And that once something is recorded on chain, it can't be altered, which means that it enhances security and trust. And so if you think about a Web3 domain, which is essentially your representation of your identity that is set up so that you own your data and you own your digital identity. Not someone else, not another entity, not another country, and not another company.

So for instance, today, if you go log into Google, you're gonna use a username and a password that is in essence your digital identity on that platform. But you don't really own that. Like all the data from that is being sold Google by the company, right?

Um, and you don't even own your digital identity. We saw that with, uh, Twitter or now x, where someone had had the X as their digital identity for quite a while that was just swept away and taken from him because you can't, well, in Web3, you can't, like, once we give an a digital identity, let's say we gave Alan X out, I can't go back and say, oh, I didn't mean you Alan, I meant you Alan, let me take it away from you and give it to you. I can't do that because it sits on blockchain.

So now you own that identity. And so it's a really, I think a safer way, um, to do it. It's a way to enhance privacy and security.

It promotes interoperability and it really reduces that kind of single point of failure where one entity, country company controls everything. It makes it more resilient as well. And that's why we believe our mission at Unstoppable is to put a digital identity into the hands of everyone.

We want everyone to have their digital identity. 'cause we believe that is really important as we move forward. Absolutely.

So that begs the question, how do we move forward? How do we go, how does One Go claim their digital identity? Yeah.

com and then you can easily either select what fits you as your identity. Like some, like I have Sandy X, um, some people use a, a nickname like Pink Mamba or something else as their digital identity. If you're struggling with what to do.

We also have brought in ai, we've integrated AI to help you think of something that matches your brand or what you want your brand to be. Um, and then you can go and purchase it, you know, for as little as, uh, we actually have domains for $2 or all the way up, depending upon how fancy you wanna be. Um, my friend, uh, Ray Wang from Constellation, he got RX.

So his is super short and those are more costly than if you had gotten, you know, um, Alan, I don't know what your middle name is, but Alan, middle name, last name, you know, something that's really long. Mm-Hmm. Um, and so that's all you do.

You go and get that and then you can set up your digital identity. Uh, you set up what you want to connect that's non, that's not on chain. Like I can link in Twitter or I could LinkedIn, Reddit, um, into that.

Then you can, you can connect a wallet to it if you want to. You don't have to, you can use like a vault that's super easy and then you can set up that digital identity. It's really, uh, I think so incredibly powerful.

Um, do you want me to pop one up to you so you could see my digital identity or no? Um, Yeah, you would, could you, I mean, I, I'd appre you know, if you can, without making it too much of a trouble, will give it a shot. Let's chop It up.

So this right here, if you can see it is my digital identity. This is Sandy Nft. Pink Mamba.

Yeah, pink Mamba. But my, my domain is actually Sandy nft, which is here. This is an avatar and uh, this avatar, there are over 7,000 metaverses out there.

So if I log in with Sandy nft, which is consistent across all those metaverses, this avatar comes with me. Um, here you can see my wallets that I have verified, but you can also see my reputation. So this score right here says that my wallet is one of the safest wallets, which means I haven't rugged anybody.

The smart contracts I've used are safe. So it enables someone as I log in to say, this is gonna be a good customer. Or let's say Alan, if someone had a score of, you know, very unsafe, you might not let 'em log into your Defi app.

Right? Right. And then here are all these what we call digital collectibles.

So this right here is one from Gary V, so you could use that as a loyalty card. So like, if I have this, then when I'm at a Gary V Con conference, I get in line first for that incredibly powerful Gary V selfie. But you can also do some of the things we just talked about as well.

So you can look at like tickets to sports games. Um, you can look at things like, um, you know, am I able to vote or not? Uh, in a doubt you can look at things like, um, have I been educated?

So you can see here, these are some of my education badges that I have. So there's a whole set of things that I can do. And one of the really powerful things is now I also store all of my community badges.

These are from Unstoppable. So here you can see I got a a, an award for acting like an owner. This is is really cool too because I can choose to share this with everybody or I could hide it.

And then here are some of the communities I belong to. This is a loyalty program from a company called Shop Host. Um, this is a company called Meris.

You can see I use their vehicles to do a race in the Metaverse. And then really powerful one of the apps is I can click on that button and then I can actually chat with everybody in that community. Wow.

So we can form a relationship there. So I can chat with over 4 million unstoppable domain holders, all of the Coinbase wallet holders, all of the Lens Protocol users. So I'm really able to, to do a lot of different things here.

And this is just scratching the surface of what your digital identity can be and will be in the future. Crazy. So Sandy, I know you a long time, you didn't come to Unstoppable Domains to sell these one at a time.

Where's, where's the enterprise play here? So one of the ways that we, um, get the domains into the hands of somebody, you're so smart, Alan, um, is through partners. So we do what we call a B two B2C play.

So when I came on board, we had about 41 partnerships. Now we have over a thousand. So for example, we partnered with the city of Miami, um, and we partnered with them to do education on what is Web3 and how could you use your own digital identity.

We did that in concert with the city of Miami. Um, and that's one way that everybody who took one of those classes was able to get their digital identity. com to also ensure that their users had their own, um, community.

com, there's Sandy dot blockchain. And that gives me special benefits inside of their community, inside of that tribe that I can use and leverage. So you're absolutely right.

This is a major B2B play, B two B2C play, where we actually partner with big companies in order to, uh, ensure that their user base has access and the ability and education to use and leverage their digital identity. So there's so much more we just scratched the surface here. I'd love to have you back on at some point in the future, Sandy, and talk about the blockchain itself and how that gets set up.

'cause it looks like you have a really nice front end, but in the background, it's setting this up in the blockchain. And I, I'd like to share that more with our audience, but I, one last question for you because we are coming on the end of time, but, um, at what point does this reach critical mass you think, where it's like mandatory everyone has to have this? Well, so we've been thinking about how we could make it easier for everybody to have a blockchain enabled digital identity.

com, right? com, which is a website that I've used and leveraged. And so we thought, well, instead of waiting for people to come to Web3, why don't we go to them and show them the power of the outcome, not necessarily the tech.

com on blockchain. com, you'll now have a version of that on the chain. You'll be able to use that as your crypto address.

You'll be able to use that to create that profile. You won't have to come over to Web3 and do all of the Web3 things. You can do it that piece of it in web two.

And we believe that that is one of the ways to bring the masses over to see the impact and the power of having something that is, you know, secure trans, you know, transparent, et cetera. And so that's, that's what we're working on right now. The other thing we did is we put that messaging in there 'cause everybody wants to message in an encrypted fashion and everybody's Yeah, no, that's a winner.

Sure. Yeah. So that's another way we're doing it.

com play will be really interesting to bring over more web to folks to understand the power of blockchain. You can tell I'm a big fan of blockchain. Absolutely.

Well, I don't want to make my own personal stuff part of this, but I'll talk to you when we end Sandy. Okay. I I love this.

It sounds great. As I said, let's come have you back on and let's, you know, maybe jump into the back and of, of how really the blockchain works here. 'cause you have a really nice, as I said, a real pretty face on it, but there's some serious stuff going on there that makes it all secure and, and what it is on the backend.

com is the website. That's right. Yep.

Fantastic. Sandy, thanks so much for coming on. I hope to continue this conversation.

You heard it here. com. We're gonna take a break on Text Drunk tv.

We'll be back in a minute.