By The Editor In Chief

The future of web3 domains is here and it’s called Freename. Federico Costa is the 26 year old dev and CTO of the disruptive Swiss based company. They are revolutionizing Web3 Tlds and domains.

In my last interview I spoke with Freename CEO, Mr Davide Vicini.

Now I am introducing you his partner in disruption, Mr Federico Costa, the creative entrepreneur and web3 revolutionary.

This is his first web3 exclusive interview and we are truly honored to present to you this handsome Venetian genius. Indeed, he is a native of the ancient technological city of Venice!

Freename is disrupting the Nft domains space with a TLD ownership and royalties model. How did Freename originate and what was your role in its founding?

Freename Idea came up in the first quarter of 2022 in a discussion with Davide about NFT domains, after the airdrop of ENS tokens. We said: “why should there be only some specific TLDs in the web3 ecosystem?”. We thought that giving the web3 user the ability to become a Registrar like ENS or UnstoppableDomains was something incredible!

So, we started discussing the idea: how we could enable users to easily create and mint their TLDs and domains, how they can truly earn value from it and other essential needs to enable other developers (like myself) to build something over the technology.

That’s how the Freename idea was born.

The word on the Nft domains street is that Freename is working with TLD owners on a BILL OF RIGHTS FOR FREENAME TLD OWNERS. Can you please comment on this historic move, as no other NFT domains player has such a BILL OF RIGHTS FOR Domain owners?

The idea comes from the Web3 Philosophy: “the ownership”. We truly believe that this kind of approach is revolutionary in many industries and sectors. So when we said, “Why don’t we enable users to own tlds?” we actually realized that it was natural to enable them to earn royalties for what they own.

You have an interesting background in acting, theater and software development. Were you always interested in art and technology and does Web3 present to you a golden opportunity to merge these passions of yours?

Ahaha you got me. Actually, I was not (merging the passions) from the beginning, but I’ve realized the need of expressing myself in different ways. Acting, the theater (and also dancing) was something for me that gave me energy when I was practicing it.

Technology has been a passion since I was a child. Right now, with Web3 I see opportunities for entire communities to merge their own hobbies and passions, get connected with each other and create value from what they do. Because Web3 means that everyone, every single human being (and also machine) can own something and make a value from it.

You are based in Venice, the ancient city of innovation and culture. How do you think ancient Venetians would have reacted to NFT art and blockchain technology?

Maybe the first thing for ancient Venetians is to translate the word NFT to something much nearer to their language (which was not Italian by the way). Probably they would have asked me why they need it. But if I would have explained it as something tradable maybe they would have actually started to sell it immediately without precisely knowing how revolutionary it is. 🙂

Freename TLD owners would like to know the future plans of Freename. What do you have in store?

We have a public roadmap of the next steps we are taking. However, I can share with you that we are working as much as we can to build an entire ecosystem of apps and platforms that support the Freename domains to enable all TLDs owners to have a full infrastructure that supports their TLDs. We are doing this through collaborations, integrations and by internally building some technologies for the public.

Freename allows TLD owners to mint their TLD on a Blockchain of their choice. You are the first company in Web3 to offer this. How did this concept come about?

We believe in a multichain future, there is not a single blockchain that will be the “winner”. Thinking of this, a TLD owner can have their TLD for multiple reasons, some of them can be related to their business. If their business is on a BSC (Binance Smart Chain), then it’s good they can mint their TLD only on the BSC blockchain. We want to support TLD owners to give to their community the right tools to enhance what they are building.

Offering 50% Royalties to TLD owners is also revolutionary. How did this business concept come about?

As I said before, if you are the owner of a TLD, it’s important that you take a chance like Freename to be part of this revolution with the right royalties 🙂

Some TLD owners say that 50% royalties is a lot considering Apple store takes 30% cut from app owners. Will you revise the royalty percentage in the future?

It’s not on our plan. What we aim is to create a Strong Innovative Platform that breaks the rules of the current Web2 System.

Regarding Apple, we provide the entire technology and the ecosystem, so we belive that success of what we are creating needs to be equally split between the TLD owner and Freename.

Is Freename a Data Harvesting company or are you purely an NFT domains company?

ABSOLUTELY NO. The only information we ask is the one needed by the law to be compliant with the in-app-payments. Nothing more. We don’t care about user Data. It’s a business model of Web2 that we don’t want to take part of.

How do you see NFT domains in say 10 years from now?

Wow that’s a quite huge span! Well surely, we are looking for something that will change shapes and will evolve lots of time in the future.

But what I think NFT domains will be in 10 years is something like being the building blocks of the new Web3 Infrastructure that is under development. 

So right now, owning a Web3 domain or TLD means taking the first building blocks of a multi-party infrastructure, decentralized, user centric and cross-border.