In an era where digital real estate is becoming increasingly valuable, the domain industry remains stuck in outdated processes, making it harder to buy and sell domains than physical real estate. The $340 billion domain market faces significant challenges with slow, manual transactions, high broker fees, and trapped liquidity that limits the potential of these digital assets. D3 is revolutionizing this landscape by building the world’s first DomainFi network, designed to tokenize over 362 million existing and future domains as real-world assets. Through their innovative Doma Protocol, a decentralized blockchain infrastructure, D3 bridges traditional Internet domains (.com, .net, .ai, .org) with emerging Web3 domain extensions (.shib, .near, .core, .ape), creating an interoperable ecosystem that modernizes domain ownership and trading. The company’s groundbreaking approach enables new possibilities like fractional ownership, domain-based lending, and enhanced digital identity solutions, while maintaining full compatibility with existing Internet infrastructure.
LA TechWatch sat down with D3 CEO and Founder Fred Hsu to learn more about the business, its future plans, and recent $25M Series A round.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We recently announced the close of a $25M Series A funding round led by Paradigm. The round was also joined by notable investors including Coinbase Ventures, Sandeep Nailwal, cofounder of Polygon Labs, Dharmesh Shah, the founder of HubSpot, and Richard Kirkendall, CEO of Namecheap. We have raised over $30M to date backed by top Web3 investors and key domain industry founders.
Tell us about your product or service.
D3 is a software infrastructure company building the world’s first DomainFi network to tokenize 362M+ existing and future domains as real-world assets. D3 unlocks the financial potential of domains by building on Doma Protocol, a decentralized blockchain infrastructure that bridges traditional Internet domains (.com, .net, .ai, and .org) and future domain extensions from the Web3 world (.shib, .near, .core, and .ape).
What inspired the start of D3?
D3 was inspired by the fact that it’s harder to buy domains as digital real estate than actual real estate. The internet generally works but the business of domains as digital real estate lags far behind. The process of buying and selling domains today is slow and manual. Transactions are often opaque and expensive due to high broker transaction fees. This results in billions of dollars of trapped liquidity in the domain industry. It’s time we modernized and unleashed the financial potential of the asset class through DomainFi!
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
D3’s business is focused on accelerating the growth of domains which is currently a $340B market.
What’s your business model?
D3 generates transaction revenue from the buying and selling of domains, services related to domain operations for partners, and decentralized finance such as fractional ownership and domain-based lending.
How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?
The business of domains is fairly recession resilient. Regardless of economic conditions, businesses still need a web presence to maintain customer connections, their brand, and credibility – all which requires a domain name.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
One of the biggest challenges when raising venture capital is finding investors that have a shared commitment to your vision over the long-term.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
The deep industry expertise of our team combined with our vision for modernizing and transforming the domain industry were critical factors to convince investors to join our recent funding round.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We’re focused on a number of product and go-to-market milestones this year including expanding the capabilities of our blockchain network and signing key partnerships with industry leaders.
What advice can you offer companies in Los Angeles that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Companies should always focus on being agile and responsive to the market and be ready to invest quickly when there’s evidence of predictable outcomes – whether the investment is funded from profits, loans, or venture capital.
What’s your favorite outdoor activity in LA?
Running along the beautiful beaches of LA!
