Introducing Stringtel, my new free new gTLD tool

I’ve launched Stringtel, a free, industry-first string discovery and risk mitigation tool for new gTLD applicants.

Stringtel is designed to help applicants reduce the risk of their chosen gTLD strings being banned or incurring extra costs during the application process, as well as helping them discover potentially valuable undelegated strings.

The TL;DR

Stringtel gives you data that will help you pick a good string to apply for, and tells you some of the risks that string might present during the application process.

The goal is to help applicants avoid wasting tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on crappy applications.

Risk mitigation

Stringtel implements the string-related rules in the latest version of ICANN’s New gTLD Applicant Guidebook, along with other risk factors, leveraging a database of almost a million possibly problematic strings, to offer applicants a quick look into issues that could kill or complicate their applications.

Enter a string and Stringtel will tell you if it would be blocked outright under AGB rules, or could trigger additional analysis, objections, fees, or contention with other applicants.

Stringtel does dozens of risk checks, along with countless associated string similarity checks, to give you a shortlist of the most likely reasons your application might fail.

Opportunity identification

New gTLDs might have a better chance of succeeding when they reflect how domains are already being used.

Stringtel analyzes over 180 million domains across .com, .net and .org, counting how often specific strings appear immediately to the left of the dot.

If a string is already widely used as a domain ending, that’s a signal of existing demand. For example, if tens of thousands of domains already end in “bakery”, that suggests a .bakery gTLD could have a ready-made market.

Essentially, Stringtel shows you where registrants are already behaving as if the dot were somewhere else — and where a new gTLD could turn that behavior into shorter domains.

It also helps filter out strings that look appealing but have little real-world usage, reducing the risk of applying for a gTLD nobody actually wants.

And because everyone keeps asking…

No, Stringtel does not record your searches. The data would be useless. I have no visibility whatsoever into what you’re searching for. Neither does anybody else.

Thanks to the sponsors

Many thanks go to Stringtel’s two launch sponsors: Hello Registry and John Matson Consulting.

Hello Registry, a venture of leading ccTLD registries CIRA (.ca) and SIDN (.nl) hosted a webinar on March 31 explaining how to apply for and operate a new gTLD.

Matson has launched TLD.fit, a financial modelling tool that helps new gTLD applicants build their business cases before they pull the trigger on an application.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs, next round, stringtel

GlobalBlock signs the two best deals it will ever get

Trademark-blocking service GlobalBlock has added the world’s second and third-largest TLDs to its roster.

China’s .cn and Germany’s .de are now among the hundreds of TLDs, pseudo-TLDs and blockchain namespaces that are covered by the service, which is run by the GoDaddy-managed Brand Safety Alliance.

.cn usually has north of 20 million domains in its zone and .de is currently at around 17.8 million, making them second only to .com in terms of pure domain volume.

These deals are probably the best GlobalBlock will ever get — I can’t see a compelling business case for Verisign to voluntarily sign up .com to the system any time soon.

The next obvious targets would be .uk, .ru, and .nl, the next-largest in the ccTLD space. Several of the larger portfolio gTLD registries such as Radix and XYZ have also yet to join the program.

Nevertheless, GlobalBlock said that it’s recently added 70 “extensions” to the platform, bringing its total to 780.

The outfit says it has blocked five million domains from being registered and recovered over 10,000 domains via Priority AutoCatch, which prevents brand-match names dropping after they expire.

Comment Tagged: .cn, .de, globalblock

Seven registrars get terminated

ICANN has terminated the accreditations of seven registrars for not paying their fees.

Haveaname, InstantNames, MisterNIC, NetEstate, Neudomain, OpenName, and TopSystem — all under common ownership in the US — have all been given their marching orders, effective April 17.

While Compliance said it will transfer the registrars’ domains to another registrar, in practice it seems that none of them actually have any remaining domains under management.

As I previously blogged, the seven all appear to have sacrificed their DUM when they lost their .com accreditations in late 2024. That’s about the same time as ICANN stopped receiving its fees.

Comment Tagged: compliance, ICANN, termination

GoDaddy launches DomainMaxxing to optimize your domains

GoDaddy has unveiled a suite of new premium product features designed to help its customers realize the full value of their domains in increasingly competitive marketplaces.

DomainMaxxing was developed on the premise that domains aren’t merely technical assets anymore, they’re performative status objects, the company explained in a press release.

The subscription-based service adds several string-optimization techniques to the registration path, including semantic resonance analysis, geo-cultural prestige calibration and Alpha-syllable dominance enforcement, the company said.

The basic $9.99-a-month DomainMaxxing tier includes a premium serif pack, a typographic enhancement layer that renders serifs at the DNS level, as well as kerning optimization, for improved cognitive flow in the browser address bar.

“While sans-serif domains resolve 12% faster, they also convert 62% worse in enterprise contexts,” GoDaddy vice president Nick Eldime told DI.

The tier also bundles an “Awareness Pack”, also available at $1.99 a month separately, in which GoDaddy will remind registrants when their domains are about to auto-renew.

A new character integrity verification option ensures your domain “continues to contain the same letters over time”, the company said.

Pricier DomainMaxxing tiers automatically subscribe domain investors into a broker-assisted offer normalization service, built on an adaptive negotiation tone engine, to maximize domain resale value via strategic buyer discouragement.

This may include mild ridicule, disbelief, and in some cases, personalised remarks about the buyer’s net worth, social status, or spouse, Eldime explained.

Also included at the top end is a new “valet” domain parking service, where your domains are professionally escorted to their nameservers by an obsequious, white-gloved AI agent.

“Domains enrolled in DomainMaxxing are no longer merely delegated, but presented,” Eldime said.

Early beta users reported a 47% increase in inbound offers and a noticeable improvement in jawline definition, he said.

Existing GoDaddy customers will be automatically enrolled in DomainMaxxing starting April 1.

Comment Tagged: april 1

.latino gTLD to launch soon

The long-dormant .latino gTLD is set to launch soon, targeting the global Spanish-speaking diaspora.

Registry DISH DBS had originally planned for .latino to be a dot-brand for its Spanish-language satellite TV services, but it’s had a change of heart and now expects it to launch fully open and unrestricted.

General availability has been pencilled in for June 12, according to the registry’s web site and ICANN documents, with sunrise running for the 30 days immediately prior.

It will be the registry’s second launch this year. It went to GA with .mobile last month, so far racking up a modest roughly 4,000 registrations.

.latino will compete against .lat, part of XYZ.com’s stable, which sells for under $2 for a first-year reg and currently has about 125,000 names in its zone.

Comment Tagged: .latino, dish dbs, ga, launch, new gTLDs, sunrise

Amazon readies .pay gTLD

Amazon’s gradual trickle of gTLD releases nlooks set to continue this year, with the company publishing plans for .pay this week.

But it appears that the space will be strictly controlled at first, with general availability not coming until well into 2027.

Amazon’s planning to take .pay to its obligatory 30-day sunrise period, where only registered trademark holders may register names, from April 13, according to ICANN documentation.

From May 13, the company is planning a Limited Registration Period, during which eligibility is restricted to those “that conduct payment transactions online using an approved Payment Service Provider or Third-Party Payment Processor.”

Registrants will have to use their domains “in connection with payment-related services, including but not limited to processing payments, facilitating e-commerce transactions, or providing payment gateway services” or risk suspension.

General availability is not expected until February next year.

Comment Tagged: amazon, launch, new gTLDs, pay, sunrise

Nominet reveals first DNS tech funding recipients

Nominet has revealed the five organizations set to receive a share of up to half a million dollars of grants to fund their DNS software projects.

The recipients of the “up to £370,000” tranche of funding are all infrastructure plays that provide foundational infrastructure but generally find it difficult to find financial backing.

Nominet said the funded projects, many of which will be very familiar names to those in the industry, are:

• Internet Systems Consortium. The money will be used to improve performance and scalability of the popular BIND 9 name server software.
• OARC . The money will fund development of the Validns zone file validator.
• OpenSSL Foundation. Funding will steer development of the OpenSSL open-source library.
• NLnet Labs. The cash will help fund development of Cascade, a DNSSEC signing package currently in alpha.
• Quad9. The funding will help pay for the operation of the Quad9 recursive DNS service.

Nominet has previously said that its DNS Fund, paid for out of .uk domain sales revenue as part of the registry’s public benefit commitments, will operate in multiple rounds, but dates for subsequent rounds are not yet published.

Comment Tagged: nominet

ICANN hit with tinfoil-hat lawsuit

ICANN has been sued by a Louisiana woman who thinks the Org is surveilling her.

Wendy Renee’ Carlton (sic) filed a bizarre lawsuit last month claiming she “has experienced persistent and patterned interference affecting her cognitive processes, bodily integrity, and personal autonomy”.

Google, Microsoft, Wal-Mart and some John Does are also listed as defendants.

It’s difficult to describe the complaint (pdf), but here’s a chunk of it for flavor:

Plaintiff alleges that she has experienced persistent and patterned interference affecting her cognitive processes, bodily integrity, and personal autonomy, and that such interference is systemic in nature.

Plaintiff alleges that Defendants’ conduct resulted in the exploitation or misuse of her personal data and behavioral patterns, restricting her liberty interests and decision-making autonomy without notice, consent, or lawful authorization.

Plaintiff further alleges that Defendants collected, processed, analyzed, and/or derived her biometric, anatomical, and/or cognitive data through technological, commercial, and/or institutional frameworks without informed consent or procedural safeguards.

Plaintiff alleges that she experienced persistent surveillance, monitoring, and identity interference resulting in observable physical, cognitive, and biometric effects, including involuntary physiological responses and interference with normal bodily functions, consistent with assessment- or monitoring-based activity.

Carlton’s probably not far off — Google’s whole empire is based on mass surveillance after all — but it’s difficult to see what roles ICANN or Wal-Mart have in that enterprise.

The complaint doesn’t get into any factual specifics of what ICANN or any other defendant is supposed to have done, or what the effects on the complainant were.

ICANN has filed a motion to dismiss, claiming lack of jurisdiction and failure to state a claim.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, lawsuit

.pn relaunches — you’ll never guess what they say it means

Two years after Nominet took over the management of the Pitcairn Islands’ ccTLD, .pn, the domain has modernized and is ready to relaunch, with a predictably inventive take on what the two-letter domain could, if you squint, represent.

.pn domains are to go on sale today from 1200 UTC, according to one of the registrars signed up to sell them, repurposed as a global generic along the same lines as .ai, .io, .tv and .co.

But what are the letters PN supposed to represent? Pretty much anything you want, provided it has a connection to cutting-edge technologies such as crypto, AI, or quantum computing.

Registrar EnCirca, which is strongly promoting the relaunch, suggests the following: Prompt Network, Protocol Native, Payment Node, Photonic Network, Peer Network, Private Node, Precision Numerics, Pioneer, and Panem.

(That last one is a reference to the fictional country from the popular Hunger Games books and movies. Some existing .pn domains are used for that purpose already.)

As far as I can tell, none of those backronyms is in common usage, but I guess it’s not impossible one or more could catch on. We seem to be in “professional web” rather than “artificial intelligence” territory here, however.

While .pn has been around since the 1990s, registration was a painful manual process. But since Nominet took over in 2023, the registry infrastructure and policy framework has been modernized.

The ccTLD now operates on an automated EPP platform and has a standard registration lifecycle that incorporates policies such as the UDRP, as well as Nominet quirks such as a prohibition on names that imply sexual violence.

Domains are available at the second level or third (under .co.pn, .org.pn and .net.pn) with no local presence requirements.

For Pitcairn, a British island territory in the Pacific with fewer than 40 (not a typo) inhabitants, the relaunch has the potential to be transformative, due to its tiny size and the relatively high registration fees.

The islands have a GDP of the equivalent of just $127,000, according to Wikipedia, much of which comes from selling postage stamps to overseas collectors.

Nominet is charging $100 a year at the second level and $50 at the third. EnCirca is charging $129 retail. While Pitcairn’s cut is not public, it seems likely only a few thousand names would need to be sold to double the territory’s GDP in a very short space of time.

“Premium pricing keeps speculative bulk registration out and maintains namespace quality,” EnCirca CEO Tom Barrett said.

Pitcairn is probably best-known for being the place where the mutineers from the eighteenth-century “mutiny on the Bounty” incident, made famous by the 1984 Mel Gibson movie, sought refuge with a group of Tahitians. Most residents today are descended from these original settlers.

EnCirca has put together a lengthy (if somewhat sanitized) history of the territory and the ccTLD at about.pn.

Comment Tagged: .pn, encirca, nominet, pitcairn

Unstoppable focuses on proper domains, admits crypto was “craze”

Unstoppable Domains is steering away from so-called “Web 3” blockchain-based naming to focus on the consensus DNS, according to a social media post from the company’s CEO.

Matt Gould tweeted on Twitter last week that the names were “part of the crypto craze in 2021” that “did not cross the chasm into mainstream usage”. Unstoppable will increase its focus on traditional domains, he wrote.

DNS domains now compose 90%+ of our business, and as we move to get several of our TLDs also listed in ICANN over the next few years our focus will continue to grow on the DNS and traditional internet market. We expect that 2-3 years from now DNS and the traditional web will be…

— Matthew Gould (@mattgould) March 16, 2026

The company’s web site now comes across like a traditional registrar. Blockchain names — once front-and-center — are still sold there, but as a non-default option in the storefront’s search results that describes such names as “wallet identifiers”.

Unstoppable says it has sold over four million blockchain names since it launched, in extensions such as .nft, .crypto and .wallet. Twitter users responding to Gould’s tweet wondered whether Unstoppable could now be described as a “grift”, “rug-pull” or “scam”.

The company has increasingly been moving towards real domains for some time, becoming accredited as an ICANN registrar in August 2024 and just last month receiving approval to act as a registry service provider in the new gTLD program.

Comment Tagged: blockchain, crypto, unstoppable