The Lowdown
June 2025 Archive

Welcome to the 
The Lowdown from 
DN Journal - your source for notable news and information from all corners of the global domain name industry! 

The Lowdown is compiled by DN Journal Editor & Publisher 
Ron Jackson.

Domain Summit Founder Announces New Event for Africa to Be Held in Nairobi Next February

Domain Summit Founder Helmuts Meskonis will be staging his 4th annual London conference September 2-3, 2025 with this year's event newly dubbed Domain Summit Europe. The expanded name better reflects the UK event's Euro-centric agenda as well as the composition of its audience that has come from across the continent ever since the show began. 

Now there is yet another reason for adding a geo identifier to the Domain Summit name. Helmuts has decided to take the show on the road with a new Domain Summit Africa conference leading he way. The event will be held February 23-24, 2026 at the Villa Rosa Kempinski in Nairobi, Kenya, with Kenic (the administrator of Kenya's .ke ccTLD) co-hosting the ground-breaking summit.

While many more details will be released in the months ahead, registration is already open with tickets priced at just $50 per person (a hallmark of all of the Domain Summit conferences has been ultra-low ticket prices for attendees with the backing of sponsors making that possible). Domain Summit Africa will also have a discounted block of rooms at the Villa Rosa Kempinski. You can use the Contact the Organizer link on the event website to get a booking link.

(Posted June 30, 2025) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
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ICA Opens Early Bird Ticket Sales for 2026 Annual Las Vegas Meeting to All Members (and Anyone Who Wants to Join Now)

The Internet Commerce Association (ICA) Annual Meeting in Las Vegas has become one of the most important events on the global domain industry calendar. I've always thought this conference was destined to reach that status because supporting it directly benefits everyone in the domain investing and development community. 

The ICA is the non-profit organization that has been successfully fighting to protect domain registrant's rights

for years for almost 20 years now. They have been able to do that thanks to generous contributions from forward-thinking corporate sponsors and reasonably priced individual memberships at multiple levels. The latter are  designed to make it possible for every professional in this business to have a hand in helping both the industry and themselves continue to grow and prosper in the years ahead. 

That is what makes the ICA Annual Member Meeting so unique. Every person there has skin in the game and a vested interest in seeing their fellow members succeed. That makes building meaningful relationships infinitely easier and has created a special bond among those who understand and appreciate what this community can accomplish when we work together. You can get a feel for the ICA Meeting experience in our review of the 2025 event held this past January at Resorts World is Las Vegas. 

With that background, you can understand why the opening of early bird ticket sales for the 2026 Annual Meeting (and the substantial savings they represent) is always a highly anticipated event among members, as well as those want to be (any industry participant can join right now on the ICA website). Early bird pricing will be available until August 15, 2025. As we told you about last month, the 2026 Meeting will he held January 15-17 at a spacious new venue - the Park MGM Hotel, with discounted rooms available both there and at the upscale Nomad Hotel on the same property. The Park MGM (located directly on the Las Vegas Strip) is shown in the photo below. The Nomad Hotel occupies the top four floors of the building, so you are just a quick elevator ride down to the conference floor from all rooms at both hotels.

(Posted June 20, 2025) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
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Dollars.com Sells for $500,000 and Provides Another Example of Why Sedo's Mark Ghoriafi is Known as Mr. Premium 

Sedo Outbound Premum Broker Mark Ghoriafi has made yet another trip to the domain sales mountain top. Mark started the year with a $600,000 sale of Pack.com in January, followed it up with a $980,000 sale of Double.com and just struck gold again by selling Dollars.com at $500,000. As a result he now has three of the top ten publicly recorded sales of the year to date (Dollars.com will be added to the YTD Top 100 when we publish our next bi-weekly domain sales report June 25). 

While Sedo can't disclose who the buyer and seller was in the Dollars.com deal, Mark was able to share some background on how it all came together, as well as how he seized the opportunity to add a sale of Dolars.com to the mix, a purchase that will help the Dollars.com buyer catch what could be a significant amount of traffic that might otherwise have been lost.

As he typically does on the first day of being chosen to represent a premium domain, Mark immediately went to work with social media marketing, preliminary lead generation, and the start of an email outreach campaign. After several weeks of constantly beating the drum, he sent follow-up correspondence to initial leads who had not yet replied, an initiative that generated multiple responses, including one from the party who wound up buying the name. If you need a testament to the importance of persistence and following up, there it is.

Mark said, "We then entered an all-night Saturday negotiation from 1:00AM to 8:00AM, with 19 emails exchanged during that time. Shortly after sunrise we closed the successful negotiation at $500,000. Soon after I was also able offer the buyer Dolars.com (a spelling variation of dollars in several languages, as well as a common English typo) for $25,000 and he was happy to acquire it as well."

Mark "Mr. Premium" Ghoriafi
Sedo Outbound Premium Broker

Mark credited the successful negotiations to all parties seeing the inherent value of prompt and polite communication, a mindset that created a positive flow of conversation and resulted in a smart investment for the buyer and a wheelbarrow full of dollars for the seller.  The fact that Mark stayed up all night to make the deal happen also underscores why the tagline you see in a lot of his outbound marketing - "The internet never stops, and neither does Mr. Premium!" - is more than just talk.

(Posted June 16, 2025) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
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Early Birds Are Lining Up a Perch for Domain Days Dubai 2025 While the DDD Team Makes Plans to Wow the Domain World

After establishing itself as one of the world's premier domain conferences with outstanding events in 2023 and 2024, the Domain Days Dubai conference (DDD) is returning for round 3 October 22-23, 2025 in the magnificent UAE metropolis. The show will again be held at the picturesque Marriott Resort Palm Jumeirah where industry leaders from around the world will gather to explore the latest developments and opportunities in the MEA market (Middle East and Africa). 

The conference was founded by Munir Badir who is currently celebrating the 20th anniversary of another enterprise he founded, AEserver.com, the UAE's largest privately owned domain name registrar & web/cloud hosting company where he also serves as CEO. From the moment Munir envisioned bringing a major domain conference to this thriving market, he approached the task with the same goal he had with AEserver - delivering a world class product built to stand out now and continually improve to ensure it will remain a leader in its space for decades to come. 

That's why Badr and his team is committed to topping themselves and doing it by a wide margin at the 2025 conference. Munir told us, "This year, we started much earlier due to the many events happening and  revolving around similar subjects. There is a true competition for attendees and we want to show everyone why DDD should be circled on their calendar!"

Domain Days Dubai Founder Munir Badr

That desire to get the momentum rolling right away is also why DDD launched a 50% off early bird ticket offer in May. That offer is still available at this writing but it will be ending at the end of June so now is the time to take advantage of it of you want to enjoy the full Dubai experience at a considerably lower cost.

Regarding the event itself, Munir noted that while it's still early in the planning cycle, thoughtfully scaling up the event is a central focus. "The past two editions showed us there’s real demand for a serious, regionally rooted event that brings the global domain and hosting industry together in a unique way," Munir said. "This year, we’re aiming to go even bigger with more curated content, deeper tech tracks, and stronger B2B networking angles – all while keeping that signature Dubai hospitality intact. Also, what I realized after the first two editions is that this event is no longer just about our region, the domain name industry is global at its roots and our event has turned into another important event for the global domain name industry, presented in a luxury environment with a who's who from the global industry in attendance."

Munir Badr with InterNetX CEO Elias Rendon Benger at Domain Days Dubai 2024.

"Domain Days Dubai has definitely helped shine a light on the MEA region – not just in terms of market potential, but as a serious contributor to the global domain ecosystem," Munir continued. "We’ve seen stronger cross-border partnerships form, registrars expanding into the region, and service providers looking to establish a presence here. Several attendees from outside the region have shared how eye-opening it was to experience the energy and business appetite in this part of the world."

While it is a long way to Dubai for many to travel, Domain Days Dubai has again picked dates that will make it easier for attendees to take advantage of key events back to back before heading home. "Yes, we’ve once again managed to align with ICANN, whose next general meeting will be held right after us in Oman and that’s been a huge boost," Munir said. "It helps us bring in top-tier participants who are already planning to travel, and it raises the overall level of discussion and opportunity. Last year’s back-to-back scheduling with ICANN in Istanbul created a natural flow of attendees, and we expect a similar effect this time with ICANN Oman. It’s a win for everyone involved."

A view from the audience of one the dozens of business sessions at DDD 2024.

In closing, Munir said,"On a personal note, I know how busy people are and how important it is to plan to make it convenient for everyone, this shows respect to our attendees, we really care! It also makes perfect sense for our corporate partners and attendees for whom each day away is a a huge investment. This is a testament of our true Middle Eastern hospitality and respect to our attendees. You also have to wonder when another ICANN annual general meeting will be in our part of the world, maybe in 5 or 10 years? So this year, a perfect constellation is lined up that will work in everyone's favor!

(Posted June 13, 2025) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
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Team Internet and Newly Formed Partner Wins 10-Year Contract to Administer .CO Domain Names

For the past 10 years the popular .co top level domain has been administered by GoDaddy. However that contract recently expired and the Colombian Ministerio de Tecnologias de la Informacion y las Comunicaciones (MINTIC) decided to put a new contract out for competitive bidding. Today Team Internet (TI) announced that Consórcio Equipo PuntoCo – a partnership between TI and Central Comercializadora de Internet (CCI) - has been awarded a  a 10-year license from MINTIC to operate the .co TLD.

As most of our readers know, .co is officially the ccTLD for Colombia but years ago it was successfully re-purposed to also serve a broader market -  companies and corporations around the world for whom the CO letters were a natural fit. That strategy has worked very well, making the right to administer .co a prize that several major industry players had hoped to land.

Internet in developing the .co domain, both locally for entrepreneurs and internationally as  one of the most adopted web addresses in the world. The teams working on this represent the best opportunity for the namespace and will definitely be taking the .co domain to a new level over the coming years.”

(Posted June 12, 2025) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
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Trustap Adds Brandon Abbey to a Team Whose Transaction Management Service Makes Secure Buying and Selling a Breeze

Brandon Abbey has been a familiar figure to domain industry veterans since 2004 when he became the President at Escrow.com. Over the next 12 years, Brandon played a central role in helping close over two billion dollars worth of domain sales there. We continued to track Brandon's career when he moved on to Payoneer, then founded his own consulting firm. Most recently, when we heard about an innovative, rapidly growing transaction management firm, Trustap, founded by Conor Lyden, we weren't surprised to learn they had enlisted Brandon to oversee Digital and US Partnerships.

Brandon set up a call with Conor for me so I could learn more about what makes Trustap different from other services available to domain sales platforms as well as individual buyers and sellers. While I was thinking it would an escrow centered offering, it turned out to be much more that. Trustap is an end-to-end transaction management service that covers everything from securing payments made in a diverse range of options (including cryptocurrency), to fulfillment to support and even protecting sellers from chargebacks. Today Trustap, with offices in the US, Ireland (Cork & Dublin),the UK and Europe (Croatia), is being used by over 840,000 individuals and more than 150 marketplaces.

I found it particularly interesting that all of this sprang from a personal problem that Conor wanted to solve for himself. During his college years, as an avid football fan, Lyden was tired of wondering if he would actually get game tickets he tried to buy on the resale market. You had to pay up front but whether or not the stranger on the other end of the transaction would actually deliver them was always in question. That led him to found Trustap in Cork, Ireland in 2017 and the company has been growing and expanding its services ever since (to see exactly how Trustap solved this specific issue with tickets check out this case study (.pdf) of how StudentSeats.com used Trustap to stamp out ticket scams).

Conor told me, "I like to think about Trustap from two perspectives. One, as a solution for an individual wanting to complete a one-off transaction, and two, as a service for a marketplace wanting to offer transactional support to its users."

"For indviduals, the biggest differentiator for Trustap (aside from our lower fees) is our ability to offer a personalized 'White-Glove' offering for large value transactions. Trustap appoints a dedicated transaction manager who will liaise with the buyer and seller to ensure that everything runs as smoothly and securely as possible. On top of this, we offer multiple payment methods, including a wide range of  cryptocurrencies with a strong preference for stablecoins like USDC." Brandon Abbey added, "We can also handle broker transactions, including those involving multiple brokers and, as Conor noted, multiple currencies."

Conor Lyden
Trustap Founder & CEO

Brandon Abbey
Digital & US Partnerships, Trustap

For marketplaces, Lyden said, "The biggest differentiator between Trustap and other solutions is Trustap's holistic approach to end-to-end transactions management as opposed to just handling payment. Trustap assumes the role of the merchant of record for each transaction, which insulates the marketplace from any liability whatsoever, including chargebacks and tax reporting. As the graphic below shows, we manage the entire transaction from start to finish which lets the marketplace focus on what they do best - growing the supply and demand side of the marketplace." 

Click image to see larger version

In closing, Lyden noted, "Nobody starts a marketplace to get bogged down in transaction-related issues. Trustap can handle all that messy stuff and let the marketplace run the rest of their business as profitably as possible."

Trustap is a Stripe Verified Partner, a partnership that ensures Trustap users will get world-class security and that all payments and data are fully protected. You can get more information on their partnership with Stripe as well as Lyden's personal entrepreneurial journey with Trustap here.

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Radix Releases UA Readiness Study of E-Commerce Platforms to Gauge Universal Acceptance for New TLDs

ICANN is preparing to open the door to another round of new gTLDs next year and a lot of people are getting ready to make a run at acquiring and administering a new top level domain of their own (as we told you last month, there is even a new book out explaining how to do it).

Of course, the process of launching new TLDs now has a fairly long history after hundreds hit the Internet over a decade ago. A good thing about that is you can better prepare by studying how previous new TLDs have performed since joining legacy TLDs like .com, .net and .org on the web. On that front, Radix, one of the most successful operators of multiple new TLDs from the first wave, just released a study detailing how new gTLDs have fared by one critical measure - Universal Acceptance (UA).

Image from Bigstock

If you want to sell new TLD domain registrations your customers are going to want know that any any enterprise they build on your new extension will work as flawlessly as possible on the web. To find out how the original new TLDs have done in meeting that objective Radix evaluated how well e-commerce platforms support domain names and email addresses that use new top-level domains.  

Driven by Radix’s commitment to improving user experience across modern domain formats, the study highlights the progress made, as well as the gaps that remain. The findings support the broader industry goal championed by the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG), which aims to make the internet more inclusive and accessible for all users.

Radix evaluated 145 e-commerce platforms across 16 categories, including website builders, payment providers, email services, and social media management tools. The study tested whether email addresses using new short TLDs (three characters or fewer, for example, .fun and .uno), new long TLDs (four characters or more, for example, .online and .website), and Internationalized Domain Names were accepted during standard sign-up processes.

Key Findings:  

1) 14 out of 16 e-commerce platform categories showed full acceptance of new short and new long TLDs during user sign-ups.  

2) New short and new long TLDs achieved a combined acceptance rate of 98.6% across all platforms tested, indicating strong overall support for these domain types in sign-up workflows.  

3) IDN-based email addresses had an average acceptance rate of 39.31% across all platforms tested, indicating significantly lower support compared to new short and new long TLDs.  

(Posted June 6, 2025) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
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