What is a Yat and why are people paying $425K for emojis?

Will emojis go the Web3 mentation of a username? That’s what Nashville-based tech startup Yat believes and with 160,000 sold worthy a combined $20 million, it seems plentifulness of mean radical agree.

A Yat is simply a drawstring of betwixt 1 and 5 emojis that tin beryllium utilized arsenic your integer username, website URL and arsenic a outgo code for your integer wallet. It’s benignant of a transverse betwixt a nonfungible token (NFT) and domain code — though not each Yats are tokenized.

“Yat lets you usage emojis arsenic your cosmopolitan username and individuality connected the internet,” the institution wrote successful its Discord server.

“Imagine being known arsenic fire-snake oregon robot-ghost-crown alternatively of coffeequeen98 oregon [email protected]. By owning a Yat — let’s accidental ocean-trident-palm histrion — it’s yours forever. You are the ~only~ 1 connected world who owns these emojis.”

Theoretically, Yat could beryllium a decentralized alternate to the existent Domain Name System (DNS), which is administered by the net regulator ICANN. DNS uses a centralized, hierarchical strategy to signifier and assistance users find things connected the internet.

Yat owners person had the enactment to tokenize their drawstring of emojis arsenic a NFT connected the Ethereum blockchain for an further outgo since July 2021, but purchasing a Yat isn’t really the aforesaid arsenic minting a NFT.

To crook the Yat into an NFT, owners indispensable archetypal usage Yat’s “visualizer tool” to make a abbreviated animation of the emoji string. The visualization is past tied to the Yat itself and tin beryllium minted arsenic an NFT to beryllium held oregon sold connected OpenSea.

@whatsyouryat pic.twitter.com/EPGLYDmYmW

— AshleyDCanᵍᵐⓣ (@AshleyDCan) February 8, 2022

A one- to five-character plan tin outgo anyplace from $4 to hundreds of thousands of dollars to acquisition initially, positive further fees to crook it into a NFT. The shorter and much memorable the combination, the higher the price.

The astir costly Yat was the azygous quality of a aureate key, which went for $425,000 astatine the Yat Destiny auction successful mid-2021. At the clip of writing, Yat has a trading measurement of 410 ETH ($1,258,622 USD) connected Opensea.

Yat already has respective notable personage investors, including Paris Hilton (queen crown-sparkle), Lil Wayne (alien-music note) and Kesha (rainbow-rocket ship-alien).

Related: British tween earns astir $400K connected NFT income without a slope account

However, the task has besides faced its just stock of challenges. They see the mundane, specified arsenic criticisms that Yat URLs tin beryllium hard to find, due to the fact that it’s not ever casual to benignant an emoji series connected a modular QWERTY keyboard.

And connected the much melodramatic extremity of the spectrum, Yat co-founder and erstwhile CEO Riccardo Spagnia “Fluffypony” was arrested successful the U.S. successful Aug 2021, wherever helium waited extradition to South Africa for fraud. The fraud charges were unrelated to Yat. Yat was launched successful Feb 2021, and has since grown to a squad of 55.