International domain brokerage firm Guta.com has released their latest quarterly Premium Domain Sales Observation Report (.pdf file) covering the first quarter of 2020. With offices in both the U.S. and China, Guta, founded by CEO George Hong, has a great vantage point to see what is happening in the domain aftermarket in both the Eastern and Western hemispheres. Their reports focus primarily on .com domain sales in these categories: 1-4 Numbers, 1-3 Letters, 2 Characters and one-word English dictionary domains. 

As you would expect with China battling the coronavirus  epidemic for the entire quarter and the U.S. doing so in the final month of it, sales activity was negatively impacted. The Guta report tells the story in an extensive series of charts then, in a final summary, notes "relatively low sales volumes across all categories of premium domains. Total sale counts of domains in LL .com, NN .com, NNN .com, NL .com, LN .com categories dived to 9-quarter lows. Total sale counts of domains in NNNN .com and one-word English .com categories fell to the lowest level in 4 quarters."

It goes on to say, "The world is experiencing uncertainty and hardship due to the unprecedented coronavirus pandemic. In Q1 2020, cash was indeed king for many investors, who were selling everything from stocks to bonds to gold to bitcoins aiming to raise cash. Under the circumstance, many premium domain owners were more motivated to sell, however most premium domain buyers suspended their purchases or lowered their budget substantially."

Still the report found some bright spots, adding "The end-user purchase rate of one-word English .com domains showed year-over-year growth." The Guta chart showed this category has rocketed to a 41.67% market share in Q1 2020 after holding just 25.8% of it two years ago. Guta reported that, "End users are still actively buying domain names. Businesses adapt to the pandemic by moving online. There will be a higher demand for premium domains from end-users. The new online businesses probably will start with hand registered domains or low priced aftermarket domains. Some of the companies will choose to upgrade their domain names to premium ones when their online business flourish, and they have money to spend. There is hope ahead!" 

Most of our readers are familiar with the quarterly liquid domain sales reports released by the Lisbon, Portugal based firm LXME that was launched a few years ago by Giuseppe Graziano, the founder of domain brokerage and consulting company GGRG.com. Giuseppe has just dialed things up several notches with LXME, rebranding the service as LMX.com, a now full featured trading platform for liquid domains. 

Graziano defines "liquid domains" as short .com domains comprised of 2-4 letters, 2-5 numbers and a combination of 2-3 characters mixing letters and numbers. He regards them as " liquid" because there are almost always buyers (at least at the wholesale level) for them.

Giuseppe said, "The purpose of LMX is to create a safe environment in which investors are able to trade liquid domains quickly, efficiently and at low fees.  You can now list One Word .com domains if they match certain quality criteria, the most important one being that the domain's Estibot appraised value has to be above $10,000. You can also now list 3-character, 4-letter and 5-number .com domains, as long as they have an appraised value of at least $10,000."

Graziano added, "Platform fees for a transaction are 7.5% (with a $1,000 minimum fee and Escrow.com fees covered by the buyer). However, to incentivize users to list domains, we are offering a reduced 5% fee for each domain listed and activated before the 7th of May 2020." 

Giuseppe Graziano
LMX.com Founder

The LMX.com platform is invitation-only, however, if you own a domain supported by the platform, you can use the self qualification process to create an account. Users are able to create opportunity alerts, so they can get instantly notified when domains that match their criteria are listed. The platform is meant for investors only, so LMX encourage users not to post domains with end user pricing.

ICANN has a long history of ignoring public sentiment. The organization that oversees the domain name system is famous (or I should say infamous) for their public comment periods that are allegedly aimed at gauging community support on various issues. Infamous because time after time, even when the public is overwhelmingly opposed, they simply ignore the comments and institute the unpopular policy anyhow. 

The charade has played out so many times over the years that few expected the result to be any different when ICANN queried the community on allowing ISOC to sell the Public Interest Registry, the administrator or .ORG, to a private equity company, Ethos Capital for $1.135 billion..and in fact, despite a firestorm of widespread public protest, ICANN appeared to be on the verge of doing just that. 

The wind suddenly shifted when California's Attorney General Xavier Becerra wrote ICANN a letter April 15 advising them to reject the deal. With ICANN headquartered in California, Becerra was in a position to hold ICANN's feet to the fire and they buckled late Thursday night (April 30), announcing they would not approve the sale to Ethos. Some think Ethos may now sue, but the immediate threat has been defused.

ICANN said many factors went into their decision - not just the threat from Becerra - but given how quickly his entrance into the fray had them doing a head-spinning 180 degree turn, there is a lot of skepticism about that. Opposition to the deal has been voiced from countless quarters for months now to what seemed to be no avail. As just one example, the Internet Commerce Association wrote a strong letter condemning the deal back in November 2019. 

In our own pages in March, domain industry pioneer Michael Castello (Castello Cities Internet Network) had this to say in an article titled Foxes in the Henhouse - "Many non-profit organizations built their charities over many years to engender trust within the .org sphere. How can ICANN, a “non-profit organization”, allow the .org universe to fall under private control with no true security for its protection into the future? What made the legacy extensions were the people. Now, these people have no rights to their virtual futures. This is akin to allowing the House of Representatives to fall under the control of a company like Amazon. What is next -- .net to Apple, .com to Google? Once that happens, our hope of individual freedoms in the virtual world will be all but gone."

I have often stated a personal fondness for the .org domain. It has a truly unique character and hard earned level of trust that has allowed it to stand out in a sea of meaningless extensions. It took months of hard fighting over rough terrain for the community to preserve that legacy (and this may not be the last battle of the war) but it was good to see community wishes prevail for a change - if that continues in other matters that come before ICANN, it will be a welcome change indeed.