Netki is the brainchild of Justin Newton and a team of former NetZero workers, whose aim is to foster mass adoption for crypto currencies by removing one of the biggest entry barriers for “laymen”, impossible to remember wallet addresses.
Their technology uses the Namecoin blockchain order to map easier to remember names to wallet addresses, which may seem like an unnecessary step for current crypto users, but could be considered a move analog to the mapping of domains to IP addresses that helped to make the internet much easier to navigate.
In an interview with Digital Currency Council, Newton spoke about his background and what led him to become involved with the development of crypto currency applications.
“I had a mentor in the early 90’s who showed me the transformational potential of the Internet, in terms of democratizing information and using the power of open communications to combat tyranny. I realized this was a technology that would literally change the world for the better, so I left Northwestern, where I had been studying physics, and began working full-time on the Internet. After twenty years in that space, I found that much of “changing the world” had been accomplished, and focus had shifted to building big companies, and I felt I needed a change of scenery. I began to explore different ways that I could help solve pressing global issues with technology, so when another entrepreneur took me to my first bitcoin conference, it felt like I had found my first love again. Many people talk about how bitcoin resembles the early Internet: I can tell you from first-hand experience, the resemblance is huge, both viscerally and practically. For me, bitcoin, like the Internet, is a transformational technology that is fundamentally empowering of individuals over institutions, and ultimately provides the most value to those who have the least. Additionally, it has the power to transform aging business models and create entirely new ones.
That said, we are currently in the “squeaky modems” and “busy signals” phase of early bitcoin adoption. In this phase, it is important to develop great reasons for people to use digital currency, as well as reduce the reasons why they would not use it. We at Netki are focused on trying to reduce barriers to mass-market adoption at a platform level across the industry, rather than with a point solution.”
At the moment some platforms have already made public their plans to implement Netki within their systems which will be done automatically:
“Also, because we are built around the DNS system, we allow our partner companies to auto-register Wallet Names under their own name space, without making their users go through any extra steps in the onboarding process. We truly have a zero click setup for users through our partners.”
ChangeTip users would, for example, be able to use addresses connected to their account with the tip.me domain such as: JohnDoe.tip.me
At the moment, you can reserve your own Netki wallet name at their website and at launch they’re planning to offer over top-level domains, ranging from the regular (.name, .com, .org, .biz, .me) to the quirky.
Sadly, WHEREISMY.COFFEE was not available.
You can find a complete list of the available TLDs as well as their individual prices here.
Newton also had the following to say about the challenges the crypto industry currently faces and advice for other entrepreneurs in the area:
“I think one of the greatest challenges that the industry faces right now is patience and synergy. As an industry, we are transforming something as broad as the rails of the financial system, and as much as we want to move quickly, we have to remember that this is going to take time and we shouldn’t expect to be ‘done’ anytime soon. We need to focus our energy on how we are growing the ecosystem together and not on how to kneecap the company adjacent to us.”
ABOUT THE NETKI TEAM
- Justin Newton (CEO/CTO): over 20 years of experience in internet startup businesses, he’s currently also a member of the Board of Directors of Adra Match Software as well as holding and advisory role at VisionFleet.
- Dawn Newton (COO): over 20 years of experience the management of tech startups and an industry expert in scalable support and billing systems. She’s currently a member of the Board of Advisors of the Treshold Foundation.
- Jeff Handler (Business Development Manager): Washington Universe graduate in Political Science, focused on business partnerships and marketing.
- Frank Contreras (Senior Software Engineer): by 15 he was already a worker at NetZero, where he met Justin ad has held positions in Quality Assurance as well as engineering.
- Matt David (Senior Software Engineer): also a former NetZero employee with experience both in Support and managerial positions related to engineering.
- Genevive McLaughlin (Office Manager): UNC-Charlotte graduate in charge of general office operations at the company.
And of course, the hard working support staff must be mentioned as well.
Guess which one was the last employee of the month?
