Two million domains to transition from GoDaddy Registry to Identity Digital. Top level domain name company Identity Digital has won the U.S. government contract to operate the country's .us domain name. Identity Digital will take over for GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY), which inherited the contract when it acquired Neustar's registry business. This is a blow to GoDaddy. With about two million domains and a wholesale price of $6.50 per year, it's about $13 million in lost revenue.

Domain investors are betting on .si. Will businesses, too? Slovenia's .si domain name saw unprecedented growth last month. According to the registry, 46,066 new .si domains were registered in September, and momentum is growing. In the last two days, about 12,000 domains were registered per day. This comes in the wake of Donald Trump saying the U.S. would refer to artificial intelligence as super intelligence during a speech at the United Nations.

Combo of low prices, modern interface, and domain seller platform help registrar eclipse 10 million DUMs in just a few years. Spaceship has eclipsed a major milestone: 10 million domains under management. Namecheap launched the Spaceship brand in 2023. In August of that year, it moved the registrar into an unrestricted open beta and had about 100,000 domains under management.

An air conditioning business, a Russian travel site, and a mirror seller bought domain names. Sedo's top public sale this week was xname.com for €22,000. I believe a domain investor acquired it. Here's a list of the end user domain sales that completed at Sedo over the past week. You can view previous lists like this here. Travelata.com $12,888 – Travelata is a Russian travel site.

All 1,616 applications and replacement strings will be revealed next Thursday. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the day many of you have been waiting for is next week. ICANN's Reveal Day for new TLDs is set for October 7. At 18:00 UTC, the organization will disclose all 1,616 applications for top level domains and their replacement strings. The organization will also disclose all known contention sets and the public portions of each application.

Eighty-nine percent of sales were below $50, but these made up just a third of sales revenue. Domain name registrar Dynadot has shared data from its 54,000 aftermarket sales in Q2. That's a big number, but keep in mind that it includes all of its expired domain sales. Most of the sales are expiry, which is reflected in the median price of $18.87.

Judge says law firm presented "ample evidence" Namecheap violated the ACPA. A law firm is asking a court to let it recover over $50,000 in expenses from Namecheap. Greenberg Gross LLP filed an in rem lawsuit against the domain name GreenbergGrossLLP.com in April 2025. The filing, in U.S. District Court in Arizona (where Namecheap is based), sought transfer of the domain under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA).

Government alleges that domain name was purchased with illicit funds. The U.S. government will soon own the valuable egypt.com domain name. The government filed an in rem lawsuit (pdf) in July to seize the domain name, alleging that it was purchased with illicitly obtained funds. In the suit, the government alleged that the person who operated the darknet marketplace Abacus Market, which facilitated drug trafficking, is the ultimate owner of the domain name.

Trump jumpstarts new growth in Slovenia's ccTLD. The country code domain for Slovenia, .si, has seen a surge in registrations over the past ten days. During a United Nations speech on September 22, Donald Trump said the U.S. government would refer to artificial intelligence as super intelligence going forward. (Never mind that "super intelligence" is an existing term referring to a…

Company expects return from all-cash deal in 6-12 months. Real estate crowdfunding platform Mogul has upgraded its domain name in a big way. The company has moved from mogul.club to mogul.com. It paid $1.3 million for the upgrade. Seller Braden Pollock confirmed to Domain Name Wire that it was an all-cash transaction and said it closed last month. "As Mogul has grown, we knew our online presence needed to match the scale of what we're building," Mogul CEO Alex Blackwood said in a statement sent to Domain Name Wire.

A discussion about integrating existing web3 namespaces with new top level domains. Many top level domains applied for this year have a connection to web3: think .crypto and .nft. But for many years, web3 companies have offered alt-root "domains" matching these top level domains on blockchain-based systems. What happens if one of those alt-root systems wants to integrate with the matching real top level domain?

ICANN demands Netpia pay accreditation fees and bring business into compliance. One of the internet's oldest domain name registrars has received a breach notice from ICANN. Netpia.com is a South Korean domain name registrar with an IANA ID (#130) that's smaller than GoDaddy, MarkMonitor, and about 5,000 others. In a breach notice sent on September 25, ICANN stated that the company is behind on its accreditation fees, hasn't implemented a proper RDAP service, and lacks a valid way for people to request non-public registration data.

ICANN90 will take place in South Australia. ICANN announced this week that it has chosen Adelaide, Australia, as the location for its 2027 Annual General Meeting. The event will take place October 30-November 4, 2027, at the Adelaide Convention Centre. Adelaide is the capital of South Australia, one of the country's six territories. The Adelaide area has about 1.5 million residents.

Domain owners have one fewer step to take if their domains are registered at GoDaddy. Afternic just launched a much-requested feature that makes ownership verification much easier. If your domains are registered in a linked GoDaddy account, you will no longer need to add a TXT or DNS record to verify your domain. It will happen automatically. Previously, even when accounts were linked, users still had to complete the verification process.

Domain used for services for pregnant women now forwards to porn site. The Virginia Department of Health has filed a lawsuit to recover a domain name it inadvertently let lapse. Since 2018, the department has forwarded the domain name VirginiaWIC .com to a section on virginia.gov for its Women, Infants and Children unit. Earlier this year, the employee responsible for renewing the domain left, and the domain expired.

Company aims to determine demand for TLDs, and help connect early registrants with participating registries. Domain company D3 has launched Frontier, a platform that could help registrants get first dibs on new top level domains when they begin to roll out. Through Frontier, D3 hopes to identify which TLDs will be most popular and help registrants get domains on those TLDs before they're generally available.

The Financial Times reports that talks are in the early stages. Gen Digital, the company behind Norton 360 antivirus software, is in talks to acquire GoDaddy. The Financial Times reported that the talks are in an early stage. Gen Digital was formed in 2022 through the merger of NortonLifeLock and Avast. It's a rollup of consumer cybersecurity brands. Before the news broke today, Gen Digital (NASDAQ: GEN) had a market cap of $15.7 billion.

ICANN collected over $350 million in application fees. ICANN has confirmed the final tally of top level domain name applications for the 2016 round: 1,616. The organization said it received 1,663 applications, but not all were paid for. At $227,000 apiece, the application fees totaled more than $350 million after accounting for discounted applications from the Applicant Support Program. Some of the money will be refunded as companies withdraw their applications.

Company's Innovation Labs will become a separate company. Domain name company Identity Digital has spun out its nascent agent identity initiative into a new company called Known. Identity Digital launched a division called Innovation Labs earlier this year. It described its initial initiative, DNSid, as "birth certificates for AI agents." As agents increasingly take over web tasks, many groups are calling for standards that use the DNS for agent identity.

An iGaming company, a rental property business, and an English-learning platform bought domain names. Sedo sold evolution.co.kr and evolution.kr this week for $30,000 and $20,000, respectively. An end user likely bought the domains, but I can't confirm who. Here's a list of the end user domain sales that completed at Sedo over the past week. You can view previous lists like this…

LFG seeks legal relief and asks ICANN to clarify whether the easyGroup conglomerate broke new TLD rules. EasyGroup has threatened applicants for the .easy top level domain, and now one is fighting back in court. The company, known for its easyJet brand, among others, announced a bid for .easy last month. EasyGroup sent a legal threat to Link Freedom Group (LFG), which has also announced an application for the .easy domain.

Reveal Day triggers a lot of deadlines, but applicants still don't know for sure when it will be. One representative of UDRP applicants is urging ICANN to finalize the timeline for the next steps in the process. I doubt he's the only one. Jeffrey Neuman of JNJ Solutions has sent a letter to ICANN asking it to peg down when Reveal Day will be, the dates for the string replacement start and finish, and details on the prioritization draw.

Chris Ambler won't end up running .web, but perhaps .epic. Verisign is introducing .web this year, but the idea for the domain dates back more than three decades. Today's guest was there at the beginning. Chris Ambler, Director of Domains for Registered Agents, Inc., discusses the long and winding history of .web and his role in proposing the domain years ago.

Domain pitched to sports teams, clubs, sailing crews, etc. INWX Domains GmbH, a domain name registrar based in Berlin, announced that it has applied for the .crew top level domains. The company stated the domain is: for groups that achieve things together: esports and gaming teams, film and production crews, clubs and associations, music and creative collectives, sailing crews and sports teams, as well as start-ups and project teams.

The Netherlands will have three local TLDs. Twente, a region in eastern Netherlands, is getting its own top level domain. Dotlocal announced it submitted an application for .twente in this year's top level domain expansion round. Twente has over 600,000 residents. Dotlocal applied for .amsterdam in the last round. That namespace currently has about 18,000 registrations. When the Dutch province of Friesland decided to throw in the towel on its domain .frl, Dotlocal stepped in to take over the domain.

No more manual effort thanks to Claude. A good domain registrar will allow you to export your transfer authorization/EPP codes in bulk. Some don't, however, which adds friction to the process of moving your domains to another registrar. Fortunately, Claude and other AI tools now make it possible to get auth codes for all your domains without the painstaking process of manually getting them one-by-one.

Stolen domain recovered through a cybersquatting claim. Shri Dharmasthala, one of South India's most celebrated and revered religious landmarks with a history spanning over 800 years, has recovered its stolen domain name. Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara Educational Society registered the domain name shridharmasthala.org in 2001. The organization said someone stole the domain earlier this year: On June 10, 2026 the disputed domain name had been fraudulently transferred without the Complainant's knowledge, authorization, or consent.

A major semiconductor company, a Toronto rental property, and a Nigerian real estate firm bought domain names. Mike Mann sold this week's top public sale from Sedo, clocking in at $59,888. Here’s a list of the end user domain sales I could dig up on Sedo's weekly list. You can view previous lists like this here. Fureur.com $59,888 – This domain is French for…

This panelist needs a refresher. A recent UDRP for quobly.com was found in favor of the domain owner. But a dissent in the case is very troubling. Quobly, which uses the domain quobly.io, filed the case. The company wasn't incorporated until November 2022. It changed its name to Quobly in July 2023. Chris Dolland registered the domain in September 2022.

New registration rules for .com.au domains could cause chaos. The board of auDA, the group that oversees the .au namespace, just voted to make a sweeping change to registration rules for .com.au domains. It could mean a million or more domains lose their eligibility in a namespace of 3.3 million. On today's show, Erhan Karabardak, a former auDA board member and IP attorney, joins me.

An RV dealer, a texting app, and a knife seller bought domain names. OK, it's our last belated list of Sedo sales. This officially catches us up on end user sales; later this week, I'll publish the new list for this week. These domains sold during the last week of August. You can view previous lists like this here.

Company filed cybersquatting complaint against domain registered well before it had trademark rights in the term Hudson's Detroit. Bedrock Management Services, LLC has been found to have tried reverse hijacking the domain name HudsonsDetroit.com. The company developed Hudson's Detroit, a mixed-use property on the site of the former J.L. Hudson Department Store. Bedrock uses the domain name Hudsons-Detroit.com for the property's website.

It's Booth's second win in as many months. Domain investor James Booth has fended off a cybersquatting claim on the domain name semify.ai. SEO company Semify, LLC, which uses the domain name semify.com, filed the complaint. A three-person World Intellectual Property Organization panel found in Booth's favor and determined the domain should not be transferred. The case wasn't clear-cut for the panel, however.

Complainant omitted key parts of pre-dispute correspondence in its filing. A German building products company has been found (pdf) to have tried reverse hijacking a domain name. Otto Lehmann GmbH filed a dispute against the domain lehmann.com. The domain is registered to Tucows and is part of its surname portfolio. Tucows offers email addresses for domains in this portfolio. Otto Lehmann and Tucows had pre-dispute correspondence, during which time the complainant tried to acquire the domain.

Major domain and hosting company to trim workforce by over 10%. Domain name and hosting company IONOS (ETR: IOS) today announced plans to reduce its headcount. The company, one of Europe's larger domain providers with customers worldwide, said it will shrink its workforce from 3,800 to 3,350 full-time employees. The reduction will be split about equally between domestic and international operations.

Spaceship's founder called out a fake sales post on X this week. Earlier this week, a user on X posted about a big domain sale on Spaceship. "Tom Adams" claimed to have sold thread .pics for $87,000, and even showed the sales email to prove it: It was a shockingly high sale...and it didn't happen. Spaceship founder Richard Kirkendall commented on Tom's X post, saying there was no such transaction on Spaceship.

Brew some coffee; the drop is going to start early. Drop catchers, start your engines...a bit earlier. Domain registry Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) is changing the time at which .com and .net domain names drop after pending delete. Previously, domains dropped in the evening UTC. Effective October 1, Verisign is moving the drop time to start around 12:00 UTC. This means domain investors will need to place their orders with drop-catching services early.

Company goes after domain registered well before it adopted the matching brand name. NOOUS, SAS, a French human resources consulting company, has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking. The company filed a cybersquatting claim against the domain noous.com. Noous.com was registered well before the consulting company changed its name to NOOUS in 2020. It didn't address this timeline issue in its complaint.

Aruba plans to expand beyond .cloud. Aruba S.p.A., which operates the .cloud top level domain, is expanding its domain portfolio. The company told Domain Name Wire that it applied for 39 top level domains in this year's new TLD round. Aruba surprised many when it topped Amazon, Google, and others in a private auction for .cloud in the 2012 TLD expansion round.

A law firm, a food company, and a scaffolding lead generator bought domain names this week. Sedo's top public sale this week was h2.com for $240,000. A domain investor bought it and has relisted it for $3 million. The second-highest sale is an adult entertainment site for $125,000; I'm not sure if the site was included. Here's a list of the end user domain sales I could dig up.

Board approves changes that would make it difficult, if not impossible, to register generic/dictionary word domains. auDA, the organization that oversees Australia's .au country code domain, is implementing a radical change to registration requirements. The group is removing a clause in the registration agreement that enables people to register generic third-level .com.au and .net.au domain names. While auDA recently launched second-levelau registrations, the vast majority of the 4.4 million domains registered are third-level domains under .com.au and .net.au.

In keeping with its name, ShortDot applies for short top level domains. Top level domain company ShortDot has applied for 40 top level domain names. The company just disclosed its 40 applications and 40 replacement strings. In keeping with its name and strategy, all of the extensions are three or four characters long. ShortDot was not an applicant in the 2012 round, but later acquired and repurposed a handful of strings, including .icu and .cfd.

New site provides registry and registrar data. Ever since nTLDStats stopped updating, I've been waiting for a good data source for top level domain data. It has finally arrived. Domain registrar Porkbun has launched nTLDData, and it covers all top level domains, not just new ones. It also has more statistics than nTLDStats did, so I see it as an upgrade.

New lawsuit is in rem and in a different district. Oath Research, a company that says its domains were stolen from its account at registrar TrustName, has filed a new lawsuit (pdf) to recover its most important domain. The company originally filed a lawsuit in New Jersey against TrustName. The judge in that case denied a motion for a temporary restraining order…

Lawsuit alleges Verisign has maintained an illegal monopoly over the .com registry. A California man has sued Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) and ICANN, alleging that their agreements governing .com have allowed Verisign to maintain an illegal monopoly and charge excessive prices for .com domain names. Plaintiff Jeff Kessler is the registrant of six .com domain names. The lawsuit details the decades-long history of Verisign's contract with ICANN for .com domain names and argues that Verisign coerced ICANN into giving Verisign good terms.

Dissent relies on a very different type of domain dispute. A World Intellectual Property Organization panel has denied (pdf) a complaint against the domain name CactusPartners.com. Even though the majority made the appropriate decision, there is a troubling aspect to this case. Cactus Partners LLP, an investment group in India, filed the dispute against respondent Kwok-on Lo. The respondent acquired the domain name in 2012, when he incorporated Cactus US Holdings Inc.

New TLDs stole the show last month. August was a super busy month in the domain business thanks to the new top level domain application window closing. These were the top stories on Domain Name Wire, ranked by views: 1. Exclusive: Namecheap applies for 40 top level domains - Namecheap's list is decidedly tech-forward. 2. Exclusive: Oinkadot applies for 25 top level domains…

People will soon loses their email addresses and websites. Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) is discontinuing third-level .name domain registrations, which will cause pain for an unspecified number of registrants. The company told ICANN that about 22,000 third-level .name registrations exist, but many of them are unused. ICANN approved (pdf) Verisign's Registry Services Evaluation Policy requests related to terminating the domains earlier this year.

A cosmetic surgeon, an agricultural equipment company, and a huge office furniture business bought domain names. OK, we're almost caught up with Sedo end user sales lists. This one covers sales completed by last week. The list shows how dominant Sedo is in country code domains. The majority of Sedo's public sales last week were non-.com domains. You can view end user articles…

Squarespace keeps growing and is now the fourth-largest registrar for .com domains. ICANN has published the latest registrar-by-registrar data for the .com namespace using official data Verisign provides to ICANN. The data is always three months in arrears; the newest data provided is for May 2026. Some observations from the latest numbers: Squarespace is now the fourth-largest registrar for .com domains, surpassing Tucows…