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.

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!

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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.”

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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.  

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NamesCon Global Provides a Peak Into Social Activities Planned for 2025 Conference in Miami

As we told you in our last post, the NamesCon Global conference is moving to Miami for their 2025 show. The event, centered around the downtown Ice Palace special events center, will get underway with social events on November 4, followed by two full business days November 5 & 6. In our previous post we told you about some of the first Main Stage business sessions to be announced. Now, Namescon is also spreading the news what they have planned for the social side of the big show.

Most people will be arriving in Miami on November 4 to get settled in at the anchor hotel, the Miami Marriott Biscayne Bay. After you check in, you might want to beat the crowd by picking up your badge then joining fellow attendees who opt in for a Wynwood Buggies Tour of Miami's famous grafitti-art district. At 7pm the Namescon Welcome Party at "The Deck" is the place to be. There you will find a sonic DJ, beer and wine, food trucks and the first-ever Namescon Pickleball Tournament.

The next morning (November 5), the networking will start early when you jump on one of the buses that will shuttle attendees to opening day at the NamesCon festival grounds. After the morning business sessions, you'll find more fun outside where food trucks

A scene from the Wynwood Buggies Tour in Miami

and lawn games will be the center attention. Others will stay inside for the annual Women of the Web Lunch. Later in the day, a major highlight will be the RightoftheDot Digital Assets Auction and an All-American picnic on the Festival Grounds complete with burgers, dogs, beer, wine, DJ and dancing.

On day 2 (November 6), early bird fitness fans can get a jump on the day by joining the Namescon Fun Run. Then, after another productive day of business sessions on multiple stages, the switch flips back to some unique entertainment - the inaugural NamesCon Server Throwing Competition. Capping it all off that evening will be a special appearance from the Serial Killerz in concert at Miami's legendary Wynwood Walls outdoor gallery. 

A scene from a Wynwood Walls concert in Miami

In re-imagining what NamesCon Global can be, the conference's new U.S. based management team has come up with a B2B tropical vacation experience that is tailor made for their shiny new home in Miami. Many more details to come in the weeks and months ahead.

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Main Stage Agenda Released for 2025 NamesCon Global Conference in Miami - Early Bird Ticket Offer Expires May 30

Anticipation continues to build for the NamesCon Global conference's move to Miami that is  now just a few months away. The domain industry's big event will be held in Florida for the first time November 5-6, 2025 at the Ice Palace special events venue in downtown Miami. You will probably want to get into town November 4 though to catch some cool pre-show activities including an art district tour, a pickleball tournament and a 7pm NamesCon Welcome Party at The Deck.

The two-day business agenda is also taking shape with the Main Stage schedule just released (additional sessions will be held on multiple side stages with details on those coming in the weeks ahead).

Image from Bigstock

In the first two hours alone, opening day attendees will hear from Andrew Miller (Hilco Digital) and Braden Pollock (who just completed a $2.1 million sale of Fuse.com), industry pioneer, DomainMarket.com Founder and Florida resident Michael Mann and Atom.com Founder & CEO Darpan Munjal. In the afternoon, MedaOptions Founder and CEO Andrew Rosener will be on stage and at 4pm living legend Monte Cahn will be running the traditional NamesCon RightOfTheDot Digital Asset Auction. Opening day will conclude with a big Party on the Festival Grounds and the hits just keep on coming on Day 2.

For those who want to save a substantial amount of money on tickets, the key detail to focus on now is that Friday, May 30 will be the last day you can get the discounted Early Bird tickets. 

For those who haven't been to a NamesCon Global event before, you can get a good idea of what the experience is like from our comprehensive review of last year's conference in Austin, Texas. Some major developments beyond the the move to South Florida (where the first major domain conference was held back in 2004) have happened in the past year. Those have included a change in ownership of the NamesCon conference itself with Opus Origin buying NamesCon, Cloudfest Global and Cloudfest USA (an event that runs concurrently with NamesCon Global conferences) from WHD Events. 

While these changes will give NamesCon Global a major refresh, it was also good to learn that several of the people responsible for the success of previous events will still be there helping take NamesCon to the next level. Those include Soeren von Varchmin (now dubbed NamesCon's Chief Evangelist) who remains responsible for assembling the outstanding content NamesCon has built its reputation on. Christian Jaeger, who served as NamesCon CEO prior to the sale of WHD Events, will stay involved too, providing valuable input for the NamesCon Advisory Board while continuing to serve as CEO of the giant Cloudfest global conference in Germany.

Having been at the first major domain conference in Delray Beach, Florida back in 2004 and every one of the NamesCon conferences since they began in 2014, it is very fulfilling to see NamesCon bringing leaders of the global domain industry back to the Sunshine State where it all started - definitely a full circle moment of the best kind. 

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Andrew Miller and Braden Pollock Ignite Another Skyrocket with $2.1 Million+ Sale of Fuse.com

When it comes to domain aftermarket fireworks, super broker Andrew Miller at Hilco Digital Assets and veteran domain investor Braden Pollock are often the guys lighting the fuse. So it was especially fitting to learn today that it was they who lit the match on a newly announced $2,129,509 sale of Fuse.com. Andrew had the exclusive listing of this gem from Braden's world class portfolio and once again made the magic happen. 

Andrew had already brokered the biggest publicly reported sale of the year to date in Icon.com at $12 million. With Fuse.com he has given Hilco Digital #3 as well (we will be charting the sale and adding it to our YTD Top 100 Chart when our next bi-weekly domain sales report comes out Wednesday evening, May 28). 

Image from Bigstock

Credit also goes to QEIP.com where the buyer first requested help in locating and acquiring a top tier domain for their enterprise. It turned out that Andrew and Hilco Digital were representing a domain that was a perfect fit in Fuse.com (the fact that it was one of Braden's names is not surprising given the quality of the assets he holds).  

This is the fourth publicly reported seven-figure or higher sale thus far in 2025. Another legendary broker, Larry Fischer, rang the bell with #2 Commerce.com at $2.2 million in February and Sedo did it with GX.com at $1.2 million in March. Everyone should keep in mind that publicly reported sales are just the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of sales at the high end of the market are made under NDAs and never disclosed. The ones that parties to the sale allow to be publicized do give us important insight into how highly valued these premier digital assets are though and for that we are always grateful.

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Public Interest Registry Wants Nominations for 7th Annual .ORG Impact Awards - $180,000 in Prize Money To Be Distributed With $50,000 Going to .ORG of the Year

Public Interest Registry (PIR), the nonprofit stewards of the .ORG domain has issued a call for nominations for their 7th annual .ORG Impact Awards. The awards program was created to recognize outstanding mission-driven individuals and organizations from the global .ORG Community for their positive contributions to society. The winners from seven categories will split a prize pool totaling $180,000 with $50,000 of that going to the grand prize winner that will be named the .ORG of the Year.

Over the past six years, the .ORG Impact Awards have recognized 226 outstanding .ORGs from over 87 countries. Through the Awards, Public Interest Registry has donated $685,000 for transformative work taking place around the world. 

As in past years,  any person or organization with a .ORG domain is welcome to apply for the 2025 awards free of charge.  Just be sure you get your application/nomination in before the deadline - June 4, 2025. Organizations may apply for multiple categories of awards if more than one category is a good fit. The entries will be evaluated by a judging panel of leaders in the Internet, nonprofit, and marketing sectors.  

Categories for the 2025 awards include:

• Health and Healing

• Quality Education for All

• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

• Environmental Stewardship

• Hunger and Poverty

• Community Building

• Rising Star (For the first time ever, PIR has increased the age limit for the “Rising Star” category from 25 to under 30, offering even more young changemakers making a difference in the world the chance to apply).

35 finalists (five from each category) will be invited on a sponsored trip to Washington, D.C. with opportunities to meet with nonprofit leaders, culminating in the final award ceremony with a surprise celebrity host on October 7, 2025. Winners will be announced at the award ceremony, honoring their work to make the world a better place. Additional event details will be released in the coming months. 

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How to Get Your Own Top Level Domain - New Book from Joe Alagna & Andrey Insarov Will Help You Prepare For the Next Round of New TLDs

Earlier today I posted an article about the .ART registry celebrating their 8th anniversary this week. They are one of the more successful new top level domains to come out of ICANN's first wave of new gTLDs that brought hundreds of new extensions to the Internet. Now ICANN is preparing to launch the second wave of new gTLDs in 2026 and a lot of people will be vying to own a top level domain of their own. As attractive as that prospect appears on the surface, creating a successful new TLD is a lot more difficult than most people might imagine.

In the article about .ART we focused on what the founders did after winning their  TLD to attract hundreds of thousands of loyal supporters. Thanks to a new book, How to Get Your Own Top Level Domain, that has just been released by industry veterans Joe Alagna and Andrey Insarov, you can learn what has to be done before you can take the reins of your own new domain registry.

Joe Alagna (CSO, it.com Domains) and Andrey Insarov (Founder & CEO, it.com Domains)

There are few people in the industry that have more experience in acquiring new top level domains than Joe Alagna. He spent almost 13 years immersed in the process of helping new domains come into existence during the first wave of new TLDs.  Almost 2,000 applications were received during that "gold rush" and Joe worked on about 60 of the applications that were successful. With a massive second round of new gTLDs on the horizon, Joe decided it was time to share what he learned from his experiences on the new TLD battlefield. 

That war zone is a busy one because the potential payoff is tantalizing. Joe explained, "A top-level domain like .realty or .art isn’t just a string. It’s a platform – a naming ecosystem that can host millions of second-level domains beneath it, each potentially worth hundreds, thousands, or sometimes millions of dollars individually. The operator controls pricing, policy, partnerships, and access. Operators of TLDs like .xyz, .io, and .ai have built multi-million-dollar enterprises by monetizing naming rights across niches. Verisign, which operates .com and .net, has become a $20+ billion company doing exactly this."

Joe's co-author, Intis Telecom Founder Andrey Insarov, is already running his own domain registry at it.com Domains. It is  the latest enterprise in what has been an extraordinarily successful entrepreneurial career that we detailed in a July 2022 Cover Story about Andrey. He gives the new book a first hand account of running a new domain registry, along with world class business advice that you can apply to any enterprise. If you are giving any thought at all to applying for a new gTLD next year, getting a copy of How to Get Your Own Top Level Domain would be a great place to start.

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The .ART Registry is Celebrating Its 8th Anniversary and Expanding Its Reach With a Comprehensive Commercially Released Artist Handbook 

The .ART Registry is celebrating its 8th anniversary this week. Since launching May 10, 2017 .ART has become a digital home to nearly 300,000 creatives in over 170 countries. They have gotten there by constant community building efforts both online and off. Those have included q popular webinar series featuring art and tech leaders, its Open Call offerings, and continued backing of the Healing Power of Art Initiative, including a $1 million endowment for fellowships in Art Therapy graduate studies at The George Washington University.

For this year's anniversary the registry is putting its brand into more hands offline with the commercial release of the comprehensive new Artist Handbook by .ART. The softcover book ($19.95 at Amazon) was developed with input from artists, curators, and professionals working at the intersection of art, law, tech, and funding. The publication was put together by .ART Founder Ulvi Kasimov, Editors Jeff Sass and Anastasia Sukhanov, Illustrator Medina Kasimova and six contributors.

In its 15 chapters, the Artist Handbook covers everything from developing your visual identity to licensing, contracts, grant writing, and building your presence online and in Web3. Contributors include Anna Fischer, a legal advisor specializing in intellectual property and blockchain; Lara Monro, a funding consultant who helps artists secure grants and navigate access support; and Arthur Steiner, a cultural strategist focused on funding innovation in the arts, and many others. 

The artworks featured in the handbook were selected through an Open Call at HUG.art, making this a truly collaborative publication based on the experiences and aesthetics of artists from the global .ART community. Founder Ulvi Kasimov said, “As we mark eight years of serving the global creative community, we wanted to offer something lasting and practical. This handbook reflects our belief that artists need more than inspiration—they need access, support, and tools to thrive.”

Recent highlights from the .ART community include teamLab’s record-breaking immersive exhibition in Abu Dhabi, Sharon Stone’s upcoming solo show in Rome and the launch of the Mediterranean-focused VIMA Art Fair. These are just a few examples of .ART’s efforts to empower artists, institutions, and forward-thinking brands so they can gain visibility and connect with audiences worldwide. 

ICANN is expected to open another of new TLDs next year. Hundreds of new TLDs were added to the Internet in the last wave but only a small percentage of those have thrived - those being, in almost every case, the ones that have heavily invested in time, money and resources to build a loyal following. With the next wave of new TLDs schedule to begin rolling out next year, .ART is one that serves as a reminder to potential operators that making a registry successful requires a lot more than the initial acquisition cost of a TLD. 

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Media.Options.com CEO Andrew Rosener Racks Up 7th Straight #1 Finish on Escrow.com's Annual Master of Domains Honor Roll

For the past nine years, Escrow.com has been shining a light on many of the top domain brokers in the industry through their annual Master of Domains Awards program. The honors go to the top ten brokers, based on total dollar value of transactions closed on the Escrow.com platform. When the 2025 winners were announced today, MediaOptions.com CEO Andrew Rosener broke his own record by collecting a 7th consecutive #1 MOD Award. Just making the list is an honor and that is something Andrew has done in every year of the program's existence. 

Here is the complete 2025 Top Ten: 

1. Andrew Rosener - Media Options 
2. Keith Richter - Lumis Group 
3. Jason Miner - Name Advisor 
4. Brent Oxley 
5. Ryan McKegney - DomainAgents 
6. Steve Miholovich - Name Arena 
7. Jeffrey Gabriel - Saw.com 
8. James Booth - DomainBooth.com 
9. Brian Harbin - Grit Brokerage 
10. Mark Daniel - Domain Holdings Group

In the past the MOD winners have been revealed at the annual NamesCon conference (the photo of Andrew at right is from the June 2024 NamesCon event in Austin where he picked up his 6th #1 plaque). However, this year NameCon shifted its usual summer dates to November when it will be held in Miami. As a result the 2025 honor roll was released online today instead.

MediaOptions CEO Andrew Rosener

Escrow.com CEO Matt Barrie said, “We’re thrilled to present the ninth edition of our Master of Domains award. Congratulations to Andrew Rosener for his continued dominance as our 2025 Master of Domains. We also commend Keith Richter and our new entrant in 2025, Jason Minor, for their remarkable achievements. All winners should be proud of their 2024 transactions, delivering tremendous value for your clients and continuing to be consistent forces in the industry.”

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ICA Announces New Venue, Dates and Expanded Schedule for 2026 Annual Meeting in Las Vegas

The Internet Commerce Association (ICA), the non-profit organization that fights to protect domain registrant's rights, has announced some major changes for their next Annual Member's Meeting in Las Vegas. Those include a new venue for the 2026 event and the addition of a third day to the rapidly growing conference's schedule. After running at the huge Resorts World complex for the past three years, the meeting is moving to another popular location on the Las Vegas Strip - the Park MGM - for an

event that will run January 15-17, 2026. Those dates come immediately after Affiliate Summit West which will make them especially convenient for the many members who attend both.

The Park MGM location comes with several advantages including rooms (both at the Park MGM and at an upscale option, NoMad Hotels) that are much closer to the conference spaces - just a short elevator ride down (the NoMad suites occupy the top four floors of the building and have a separate lobby).  For those who don't smoke another huge plus is the fact the Park MGM is the only hotel on the entire strip with a No Smoking policy, including the casino. The Park MGM, formerly known as the Monte Carlo, has 3,000 newly renovated rooms and a variety of popular dining options onsite and next door (the Park is connected to Aria by a walkway and also has a  tram connection to the Bellagio).

The Park MGM sits in the middle of all of the action on the Las Vegas Strip.

Registration will be opening soon with early bird pricing, so keep an eye out for that. The main thing the ICA wanted to do now was get the dates and other major change information out there so you can save the dates. If you haven't been to an ICA meeting you are missing out on what has become one of the most informative, entertaining and productive events on the global conference calendar. You can get a good idea of what the experience entails from our review of this year's conference held this past January. You do need to be an ICA member to attend, and if you are a professional in this industry, you definitely should consider joining!

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Free May 8 Webinar Featuring InterNetX and Sedo Experts Will Take You on a Deep Dive Into Today's Global Domain Industry

A few weeks ago we told you about the release of the 2025 Global Domain Report from  InterNetX and Sedo The two industry leaders have been publishing this extraordinarily comprehensive report annually since 2020 and it has been providing invaluable insight into the worldwide domain business ever since.

Now, they're taking this outstanding resource up another level with a free webinar that will feature two of the key experts behind the report - InterNetX's Simone Catania and Sedo's Semra Koerner. The webinar, hosted by eco - the Association of the Internet Industry, will be presented Thursday, May 8, starting at 11am US Eastern Daylight time (15:00 PM UTC / 17:00 PM CEST). Anyone who wants to attend can register here.

In addition to giving you a first hand account of findings from the Global Domain Report, the webinar, presented in English, will cover these topics:

Simone Catania (left) and Semra Koerner will host the
 Global Domain Report Webinar Thursday, May 8.

• A comprehensive domain industry status quo

• Key insights from the primary and aftermarkets

• Popular TLDs, SLDs, and keyword trends

• A closer look at AI trends, domain security, Web3 domains, NIS2 and new gTLD program

• Essential sales data from the aftermarket

In order to put this year's Global Domain Report together, InterNetX and Sedo interviewed experts from around the world to gather the most up-to-date and most relevant insight, so you can expect this hour to be some of the most informative time you'll spend this year.

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