The Lowdown

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.

Radix Reports Their Best Six-Month Stretch of Premium Domain Registrations to Date

If you have been following our bi-weekly domain sales reports this year, you already know the domain aftermarket has been on fire. However, that's not the only sector where sales are exploding. Radix (the administrator of ten new gTLDs including .tech, .fun, .online and .store among others) just announced the number of premium domain registrations they had in the 1st Half of 2025 (.pdf) soared 50% higher than the same half last year. 

The Radix onslaught was led by an eye-popping expansion in .tech registrations as they rocketed 70% above the previous half (2H-2024). In the latest half alone .tech had 32 registrations at $5,000 a year, 10 at $10,000 a year a single-character reg at $25,000 a year (the renewal cost for premiums is the same as the initial fee).

While .tech enjoyed the highest rate of growth, .fun was also busy having a good time as they brought in highest overall number of premium Radix registrations as shown in the table below:

Though the cost for premium domains is substantial, Radix saw solid renewal numbers for theirs. 57% renewed after the first year. The percentage of those who renewed for a second time rose to 73% and once they reached a third renewal (and subsequent ones), 85% of the registrants re-upped. There are more interesting details in the full report that you can read here.

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India's DOMAINX Conference is Back! After 6 Successful Events Followed By a 6-Year Hiatus the Curtain is Going Back Up in New Delhi

India has always had one of the most passionate and productive communities in the global domain industry. In every field - investing, developing, legal services, social media, entrepreneurial ventures and more - the country is well represented at the head of the class. Back in the early 2000s, when the domain business was starting to explode,  people were speculating about who among them might become the industry's first billionaire. As it turned out it would be the first two billionaires - India's personable Turakhia brothers, Divyank and Bhavin, who founded Directi and went on to create many other wildly successful enterprises.

So, in 2014 we were already paying attention when a new India-centric conference, DomainX, was organized by its current CEO, Manmeet Pal Singh, and fellow movers and shakers in that country. The event was held in Hyderabad and, though I wasn't there in person, I participated remotely by doing a live video interview with Michael Castello for the audience. The next year, ten years ago this month, I flew over to speak at the 2015 event in Bangalore. The event, people and country were amazing and many great relationships came out of that unique opportunity to connect with everyone face to face.

The DomainX train kept right on rolling until the last edition in New Delhi in 2019. At the time, no one had any idea that would be the last DomainX for years to come but, as we all know now, 2020 and the global Covid pandemic, disrupted everyone's plans. Thankfully, those days are behind us now and the DomainX curtain will rise again when the show returns to New Delhi for an August 30 & 31, 2025 event at the Radisson Blu Plaza Hotel, Delhi Airport. As was the case with all previous DomainX events, guests will hear from an outstanding line up of speakers and enjoy a diverse business and social agenda.

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PIR to Distribute Over $200,000 to Newly Named 2025 .ORG  Impact Awards Finalists at Ceremony Featuring Celebrity Host Common

Public Interest Registry (PIR), the people behind the .ORG domain, have named 35 finalists for the 7th annual .ORG Impact Awards. These special awards recognize outstanding mission-driven individuals and organizations from around the world for their positive contributions to society. The honorees were chosen from seven different categories with five finalists selected in each category. 

All finalists, which range from a women-led nonprofit transforming lives in East Africa, to an organization recycling hair into tools to help the environment, to a .ORG using AI to teach sign language across Latin America, will receive donations of $2,500 each and that will be just the beginning for many of them. The winner in each category will receive an additional $10,000 and the .ORG of the Year award winner will take home a $50,000 donation. 

Beyond the cash donations, being named winners in these award categories and the prestigious .ORG of the Year, will help raise the profile of  the honorees, ultimately driving donations, funding, talent acquisition, partnership development, and increasing audience reach. 

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Sedo's Mark Ghoriafi Closes Law.ai Sale in One of the Biggest .AI Transactions to Date

In our latest bi-weekly domain sales report that came out last night (August 13), the main takeaway was how thoroughly .com and .ai were now dominating the high end of the domain aftermarket. On our latest Top 20 Sales Chart every entry except one was either a .com or a .ai. So, it wasn't a big surprise to learn less than 24 hours later that Law.ai has just changed hands for $350,000 in the 3rd highest .ai sale ever reported, exceeded only by You.ai at $700,000 in 2023 and Cloud.ai at $600,000 last month.  

The person who brokered the Law.ai sale - Sedo's Mark "Mr. Premium" Ghoriafi, was not a surprise either. Mark already held three of the Top 20 publicly reported sales year to date in

Image from Bigstock

Double.com ($980,000), Pack.com ($600,000) and Dollars.com ($500,000). Now he has four with Law.ai to be added to our YTD Top 100 when we publish our next bi-weekly update August 27.

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Titan Teams Up With GoDaddy to Give Small Businesses in Developing Markets Email Tools Designed to Spur Growth 

Shortly after the initial press release came out his morning, I got on a call with Bhavin, Ninad Raval (Titan VP, Product & Design, who Bhavin credits with building a world class product in Titan) and Anuj Gupta (Titan Senior Director, Strategic Partnerships) to get some more information on the GoDaddy partnership as well as how much Titan's service has grown since they first appeared on our radar. Titan's growth has been fueled by a unique suite of features designed to elevate business communications, including: 

• AI-powered email composition and response capabilities 

• Professional email design tools and branded templates 

• Advanced tracking for email opens, attachments, and links 

• Automated appointment scheduling 

• Streamlined email campaign management 

• Robust security features 

• Industry-leading uptime and email deliverability rates

While you can point to the Titan feature set and say that it is better and will improve numbers - nothing speaks louder than data and Anuj Gupta pointed out a treasure trove of it that was compiled in a case study of their 4-month pilot project with GoDaddy in developing markets. It found that Titan delivered a 76% increase in Average Revenue Per User and a 65% uplift in customer Net Promoter Score (a metric used to gauge customer loyalty and satisfaction ) compared to their legacy email solution. Now the service will be rolled out to GoDaddy customers across developing markets globally, with initial deployment scheduled in the current Q3-2025 quarter.

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The Domain Industry Gets a Valuable New Resource with Freename's Launch of The Domain Standard

The domain industry has enjoyed extraordinary growth over the first quarter of this century but judging from all of the new applications sprouting from the foundation laid by .com and the other original domain assets, it's starting to look like we haven't seen anything yet. At the same time that top tier legacy domains are exploding in value, Web3 innovations are opening the door to a new world of "Domain Finance" where domains can be used in additional ways that seek to make them even more valuable and indispensable in our professional and personal lives.

This metamorphosis is creating a landscape where it is increasingly difficult to keep up with everything going on around us. The good news is that the number of resources needed to cover it all is growing too. One of the best we've seen to date is a free publication from Freename dubbed The Domain Standard. The first quarterly issue has just come out in print and digital form. The glossy print edition will primarily be distributed at events but anyone can download the digital edition

that is so polished even it looks glossy online. The publication is loaded with excellent articles, interviews with industry leaders, charts and graphs that dissect every aspect of the business (old and new) that make it much easier to take in what is happening in a digital financial universe that seems to be continually expanding outward from the Big Bang ignited by .com. 

Among those featured in the inaugural issue are veteran domain investors like Braden Pollock and Mike Mann who share long list of example sales they have made in recent years. There are top brokers like Giuseppe Graziano (GGRG.com) and Jack Dai (DN.com) and corporate leaders like InterNetX CEO Elias Rendón Benger, Todd Han, Founder of one of the world's fastest growing registrars - Dynadot, and AEServer.com Founder Munir Badr who also founded the Domain Days Dubai conference. These are just a few of the featured names most of you will already know. Equally important are the Web3 leaders, like Freename CEO Davide Vicini and his team, who are playing an integral role in efforts to open up new ways to monetize and utilize domains (fractional ownership being one big example).

You will also find a variety of timely articles led by the cover piece on The Rise of Domain Finance. Then there is The Role of AI in Shaping the Domain Industry by InterNetX's Simone Catania, and other enlightening details on the ongoing .ai boom. All of the bases are covered, including .com, new TLD and ccTLD sales and trends.

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D3 Mission to Supercharge Domains With Web3 Fuel Gets Major Boost from InterNetX Partnership 

At the start of this year we published a profile of D3, a new company founded by domain industry pioneers Paul Stahura and Fred Hsu (the company's CEO), that set out with the ambitious goal of merging the Web2 and Web 3 domain worlds. The reason that is such an appealing prospect to so many is that it would let legacy domains take advantage of some unique features made possible by their Web3 counterparts. 

One of the most enticing of those is the ability to tokenize existing and future domains. That would make them more like other financial assets that can fractionalized, staked, or bundled into different financial products, enhancing the financial utility and accessibility of domain ownership. Decentralized Web3 domains are also one-time purchases with no renewal fees.

D3 Co-Founders Fred Hsu and Paul Stahura

With this partnership bringing Fred Hsu and his team a big step closer to realizing their vision, Fed added "InterNetX's massive scale and commitment to innovation make them the ideal partner to demonstrate the transformative potential of DomainFi, Doma Protocol, and the ecosystem of registrars, investors, and users around it.“

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Dave Evanson Closes $1 Million Sale of ZH.com for Sedo Giving Them 8 of Top 20 Sales Reported Year to Date

Sedo's Senior Sales and Brokerage Consultant Dave Evanson has been ringing up big money domain sales for the past 20 years and he is still hitting them out of the park. His latest towering blast, just closed today, was a $1,000,000 sale of ZH.com on behalf of a U.S. seller who has owned the domain since 1994. The buyer was undisclosed but given the fact that ZH is the ISO code for Chinese language, it looks like a natural for any major investor/developer in China.

Dave has brokered many two-letter .coms over the years with most falling in  a range between $1 million and just under $5 million. He is representing another one right now in QW.com. Even though two-letter .coms are trophy assets it can take a lot of work to close a sale at 

this level and ZH.com was no exception. Dave told us, "It took five months to find the right buyer.  I reached out globally and extensively about ZH.com by email, phone, X, LI and Meta.  Then I heard from Jim at DDD.com who found the buyer." 

This is the 7th publicly reported seven-figure or higher sale reported year to date. We will be adding ZH.com to our YTD Top 100 Sales Chart when it is updated August 13, the release date for our next bi-weekly domain sales report. As of this writing, ZH.com gives Sedo 8 of the top 20 positions, including another in 7-figures in GX.com at $1,200,000. Even without ZH, Sedo already has three in the top 10 right now. 

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Worldwide Domain Registrations Pass the 371 Million Mark - New Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief Breaks Down the Latest Numbers

VeriSign, (the administrator of the .com and .net TLDs) has released their latest quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief (DNIB) covering the 2nd quarter of 2025. This update showed the total number of domain registrations across all TLDs worldwide ended the most recent quarter at 371.1 million. That is up 9.3 million domains from a year earlier, representing a 2.6% year-over-year increase.

.Com, the dominant TLD on the Internet, reversed what has been a recent slow decline in total registrations by closing the quarter at 157.9 registrations. That was just slightly above the year ago figure of 157.6 million but it put .com back on its historically positive path. .Net however went the opposite direction, slipping to 12.6 million registrations at the end of the most recent quarter from 13.1 million at this point last year,  a 3.1% decline.

The ccTLDs ended 2Q-2025 with 143.5 million domains registered. That is up 3.5 million from last year, a growth rate of 2.5% that is right in line with the rate reported for all domains combined.

The new gTLDs, working from a smaller base, continued to show the highest rate of growth in percentage terms. They ended the last quarter with 39.5 million registrations, up 4.9 million from a year ago, representing a healthy 14.2% gain. There is much more interesting data you can review in the full brief.

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With NamesCon Global 2025 in Miami Drawing Near Now is the Time to Beat a Ticket Price Increase Coming August 1 

Veteran conference attendees know early birds get the best ticket prices. The cost typically increases in multiple stages right up to opening day when the full fare is in effect. That will be the case with the industry's biggest annual event, NamesCon Global, that will be staged in Florida for the first time when a highly-anticipated show will take place at the Ice Palace in Miami on November 5 & 6, 2025. With the event barely 3 months away, prices will be going up on August 1. If you act before then you can still get tickets at the current price of $649 and NamesCon is offering our readers 20% off that rate if the you use the promo code DNJ20 when you register.

As you would expect, conference organizers have been busy working on the Miami event ever since the 10th anniversary edition of NamesCon Global concluded in Austin, Texas last summer. In fact they already have the Mainstage Agenda completed for the upcoming show in Miami. It is an outstanding line up of speakers, fireside chats, panel discussions and special events that are sure to make the Florida event stand out in what has been more than a decade of consistently productive meetings that have given attendees the opportunity to meet directly with industry leaders from around the world. 

In the weeks ahead, we'll keep you up to date on the still expanding agenda (a second stage will be running concurrently with the Main Stage), as well as additions to the roster of speakers, range of topics and array of social activities (some of which we touched on a few weeks ago, shortly after Miami was announced as the 2025 conference location). For now, we just wanted to alert you to the impending price increase so you can save some money on tickets if you plan to join the festivities in Florida this fall. We hope to see you there.

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Six Industry Experts Tackle Key Topics in Ionos Podcast and .ART Announces a Webinar and Live Tour of Their New Gallery in the Metaverse

Earlier this month we shared some photos and highlights with you from the 2025 InterNetX Domain Summit that was held in Frankfurt, Germany June 25-26. The event attracted leading domain experts from across Europe and beyond. Now, thanks to the wonderful world of podcasting, you can listen to one of this year's most interesting sessions.

In a special edition of the Inside Ionos podcast co-hosts Thilo Haertel and Simone Catania drew insight into the latest industry trends from guests Chris Mondini (ICANN), Polina Malaja (CENTR), Stephen Nyhan (Sectigo) and Abe Storey (Entri).

Chris, who is the ICANN VP for Stakeholder Engagement Europe, presented key details you need to know about ICANN's next round of new gTLDs that are headed our way in 2026. He spoke about the goals of the program and what the next big steps will be as the process continues to unfold. Polina, the Policy Director at CENTR, explained the intricacies of digital sovereignty and how evolving European domain policies could impact businesses and users worldwide. Stephen, Director of Global Sales Engineering at Sectigo, unpacked current encryption trends and the long-term implications of quantum computing on cybersecurity to help everyone take steps needed not to ensure future readiness. Abe, the CEO at Entri, laid out his groundbreaking approach to building domain API solutions tailored for SaaS platforms with additional tips on new ways of optimizing domain-related solutions for modern digital infrastructure.

As you would expect from this group, a remarkable about of actionable information in packed into the concise 34-minute program and you can hear it all here. 

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Atom.com Unveils New AI Semantic Search Path Designed to Improve Domain Discovery

No matter how good your domain name is, if people can't find it you're not going to be able to sell it. With millions of domain names available on the aftermarket, businesses have some very deep water to wade through in search of the right name for their enterprise. Odds are there are several domains out there that would be great choices for them (including some they hadn't even thought of) if they could just sift the gems out of the ocean of names they have no use for.

Many are expecting AI to come to the rescue in that regard and rapidly growing aftermarket platform Atom.com just announced they are putting it to use in a new semantic search tool. Atom Founder and CEO Darpan Munjal noted, "Many domain names don’t sell 

because no one ever sees them.  Not because they’re bad. Not because they’re overpriced. Just because the right buyer never finds them."

Convinced that Domain Search is broken, Darpan and his team have spent the past several months working on an "AI-powered search assistant that helps you find a domain by talking through what you’re building, the same way you’d explain it to a friend, a co-founder, or a brand strategist."

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Sword.com Sells for $1.5 Million in Another Big Win for ATM Holdings/ Hilco Digital and Braden Pollock With a Key Assist from Brannans.com

Fireworks weren't confined to the sky over America's 4th of July holiday weekend. The domain aftermarket was getting lit up too with the biggest blast coming Sunday morning when we learned that ATM Holdings/Hilco Digital brokered a $1.5 million sale of Sword.com for Braden Pollock (LegalBrandMarketing.com). Hilco Digital's Managing Director, super broker Andrew Miller, included the news in his popular weekly Random Sunday Thoughts post  on LinkedIn (#170 in the must read series) this morning. Andrew didn't mention the seller's name but I wasn't surprised to get a note soon after from Braden that ATM/HD had sold the domain for him, with Brannans.com representing the buyer (whose identity was not disclosed).

Image from Bigstock

brighter as it gives them three of the top four, including #1 Icon.com, a $12 million sale they closed in conjunction with buyer's representative Lumis.com in April.

As if the Sword.com sale wasn't enough, Braden also let me know about two huge .org sales he has closed - R.org at $375,000 and Forward.org at $100,000. Those are the two biggest .org sales reported year to date and we will be charting them Wednesday evening as well. Very impressive sales from several other corners have come in too. I remember when summer was a slow time for domain sales but there no longer seems to be an off season of any kind in this business, for which we can all be thankful.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2025/dailyposts/0613.htm

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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:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2025/dailyposts/0612.htm

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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.

(Posted June 10, 2025) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2025/dailyposts/0610.htm

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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:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2025/dailyposts/0606.htm

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