Anheuser-Busch InBev now owns the Web3 domain “beer.eth.” Meanwhile, nobody is doing something with Internet 1.0’s beer.com.
Beer.eth sold for 30 ETH on August 12, and AB InBev, which owns Budweiser, Bud Lite and lots of other major beer manufacturers, confirmed to CoinDesk Wednesday that it was the client.
The news seems to have set off a .eth area purchasing spree. Resales of such domains are up more than 300% over the last 24 hours, according to OpenSea data.
The acquisition might symbolize a bet on the future of a decentralized internet. The “.eth” address is a top-level area ruled by the Ethereum Name Service. It represents a way to trustlessly create a pointer on the internet to a website, much like traditional “.com” and “.net” addresses do. ENS addresses are tracked utilizing the non-fungible token (NFT) standard and are bought and sold on OpenSea and other NFT marketplaces.
Not only are a lot of existing ENS domains selling, but a lot of new ones are also being registered each day also. ENS Domains saw registrations in the high lots of every day until about mid-August. Then the rate of new registrations jumped as much as more than 1,000 per day, according to Dune Analytics.
New internet bet
AB Inbev bought its new domain for just about $100,000 at the moment’s prices. It feels like a lot, but it could grow to be a steal if the decentralized internet takes off.
“Web3 is the future of the Internet. It’s sensible for manufacturers to undertake it sooner rather than later since they’ll have to do it will definitely anyway,” said Brantly Millegan, director of operations for ENS Domains, the company that manages the Ethereum Name Service, through Telegram.
Buying beer.eth could be roughly like owning Hotels.com or mp3.com in the early days of the web. Although decentralized domains could prove to be quite valuable, right now, ENS is not supported by the top browsers, a market dominated by Chrome and Safari. Among underdog browsers that may navigate to .eth addresses, Courageous and Opera have millions of users but tiny market shares.
But, even if ENS domains don’t stick, it might still be a good exercise for AB InBev, a company that’s not new to crypto experimentation. Earlier this summertime, it announced a partnership with media entrepreneur, Gary Vaynerchuk, to release NFTs based on the beverage company’s mental property. And in 2018, the company partnered with decentralized identity provider Civic to demo an age-verifying Budweiser vending machine.
