Unstoppable Domains disables .coin extensions, illustrating an issue with the idea that "you'll always own your NFT"

Unstoppable Domains is in the business of selling "domains" — at least that's what they call them, but they're not the kind of domain that you can plug into your web browser. Instead, they are more like the ENS domains that you may have seen (the ones ending in .eth), and they typically map to a crypto wallet address.

The organization just discovered that they were not the first to go around selling .coin "domains" (represented by NFTs), and were at risk of running into collisions. As a result, they decided to no longer sell these domains, and stop their libraries and services from resolving them.

But fear not, they said, because "Unstoppable domains are self-custodied NFTs, so you still own your .coin domain, but it won't work with our resolution services or integrations."

That's right, folks, you'll still have your .coin NFT! It just won't resolve, or be otherwise useful in any way.

This is much like the argument that has been common in crypto when describing a use case for NFTs: "if it's an NFT, you'll be able to really own your World of Warcraft sword, and Blizzard won't be able to take it away from you if they arbitrarily decide to ban you or remove the item!" This ignores the fact that the existence of an NFT on a blockchain does not ensure that some functionality initially advertised will continue to work in perpetuity, and you might end up with a domain name or a sword that can do nothing more than sit in your crypto wallet collecting dust.

Unstoppable Domains has offered to credit purchasers of .coin domains 3x their purchase price, though this will likely not be as appealing to people who held domains they hoped to flip for much higher than the initial price.