CoinDaddy Launches WHOIS-Style Search Engine for Digital Assets

A slew of services have emerged in recent months that allow bitcoin enthusiasts the ability to use bitcoin and other digital currencies to create tradeable assets.

What these systems lack, according to the developer behind crypto 2.0 services provider CoinDaddy, Jeremy "J-Dog" Johnson, is a location where these assets can be traded easily, a central database that allows users to tie information to assets and prove their authenticity.

CoinDaddy launched what it calls its WHOIS for assets this week, a blockchain version of the query and response protocols that allow anyone to look up the identities of those who own domain names and Internet assets.

Johnson sees CoinDaddy as a step in the direction of such a service, one that includes a number of features that improve the trading of assets on Counterparty and Dogeparty, its two supported protocols.

An early dogecoin miner, Johnson said he was drawn to the concept of digital assets by the project Dogeparty, which built an asset transfer layer on top of the dogecoin protocol.

To begin, there is its Asset Registration service, where users can register their assets by creating a wallet, naming an asset and provide basic information about that asset.

Free to use already are CoinDaddy's block explorers, which visualize assets on the Counterparty and Dogeparty protocols.

The Asset WHOIS will be aimed at serious buyers and sellers of digital assets, while hopefully enabling those who may be experimenting with the tech to access these users.

"There are a few projects that are starting to use assets, but the system was meant for people to use assets for anything, like starting an 'allowance coin' for parents. Nobody's building exciting apps like that, that's where I would like to see it," he said.

CoinDaddy charges a flat $5 fee for each element of its service - registration, asset enhancement and broadcast enhancement, payable in bitcoin, litecoin or dogecoin, as part of what it calls its "Fair Pricing Policy".