Recent Posts
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- Epik gets acquired again! The plot thickens…
- Airline gTLD crashes and burns
- First chunks of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook drop
- Epik to reveal its owners soon
- Another crypto firm to apply for a new gTLD
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- First bits of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook expected next week
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- Registries and registrars vote ‘Yes’ to new DNS abuse rules
- ICANN predicts flattish 2025 for domain industry
- Fast-growing Gname buys another 150 registrars
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- ICANN picks Istanbul for 2024 meeting
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- .blackfriday is still a bit rubbish
- Internet Naming Co acquires five more gTLDs
- Domain universe grows despite .com drag
Group crowdfunding crypto to apply to ICANN for blockchain gTLD
Do we have our first confirmed blockchain-themed new gTLD application? Looks like it.
A group of pseudonymous individuals have announced plans to apply to ICANN for .dao in the next round, and are currently crowdfunding the project by asking for donations in the Ethereum cryptocurrency.
Going by the name DomainDAO, they say they’ve raised 230 ETH so far, which appears to be worth over $430,000 at today’s rates, already probably enough for a bare-bones new gTLD application.
They want to apply for .dao, an acronym for “decentralized autonomous organization”, a type of entity where token-owning participants set the direction of the DAO via rules laid down in software and votes encoded into a blockchain.
DomainDAO’s web site takes a few pops at the likes of Verisign and Identity Digital owner Ethos Capital for alleged unethical practices and says the goal is for .dao to one day “supersede” .com.
The concept differs from other blockchain-based TLD projects, such as Unstoppable Domains, in that it’s not alt-root. The plan is to apply to ICANN to get into the authoritative, consensus DNS root, so that .dao domains can be used by all.
Unstoppable already runs .dao in its own alt-root, selling domains for $20, and has recently proven litigious when it smells a collision from a competing project.
But the main roadblock to the root may well be ICANN itself.
While the rules governing the next round of gTLD applications are not yet set in stone, it strikes me as incredibly unlikely that ICANN will entertain a bid from an applicant that is not a recognized legal entity with a named board of directors that can be subjected to background screening.
DomainDAO is itself a DAO, and the DAO concept is reportedly prone to corruption and hacking, which could make ICANN nervous.
In addition, people funding DomainDAO today are offered crypto tokens that can be redeemed for second-level domains if the TLD eventually goes live — it’s essentially already selling pre-registrations — which could interfere with rights protection mechanisms, depending on implementation.
But DomainDAO claims to have an industry Greybeard on the payroll, a senior advisor going by the handle “Speech-less”, an “Executive with 20+ years experience in domain and ICANN”.
If that’s you, we probably already know each other. Why not get in touch to tell me why this thing is going to work?
ICANN will not approve an application for a TLD that does not implement all five critical registry services (EPP, Whois/RDAP, DNSSEC, DNS, data escrow), plus the established rightsholder protection mechanisms (spec 5 reserved names, sunrise, claims notices, URS, etc) which are utterly incompatible with the concept of a decentralised, permissionless, censorship-resistent (i.e. abuse-friendly) blockchain-based naming system. So this is either dead on arrival* or will eventually turn up on the pages of web3isgoinggreat.com.
* DAO=DOA, heh.
The web3isgoinggreat.com cracked me up and made my day. Thanks Gavin 😂
Take permissionless out of the description and everything works fine. Including using reasonable amounts of electricity. Current ecosystem of DNS caches at recursive servers plus DNS authoritative servers is not that far off from a permissioned blockchain, since it’s most decentralised (and relying on that decentralisation).
From looking into it, they don’t even want to run this as a blockchain system, just something more akin to a closed community TLD of sorts, they don’t seem to have any industry knowledge however which is going to be their biggest barrier to success.
Well, maybe this could open a “diplomatic” way to engage with this concept.
We could expect – sooner or later – BC TLDs in the market.