Bye-bye .boomer! Blockchain players abandon new gTLD plans
A dozen organizations that were planning to apply to ICANN for a new gTLD next year have abandoned their ambitions.
Unstoppable Domains said recently that 12 partners offering blockchain-based alt-TLDs have confirmed they no longer expect to apply for a matching gTLD when the Next Round opens next year.
The affected blockchain extensions are: .bald, .basenji (formerly .benji), .bay, .boomer, .calicoin, .caw, .cgai, .donut, .mery, .mumu, .nibi and .pendle.
Because some buyers may have hoped to grab the matching DNS domain if and when the matching gTLD got delegated, Unstoppable said it will offer refunds to anyone who registered a name in any of these extensions.
It’s also added “Applying to ICANN 2026” and “Not applying to ICANN 2026” tags to search results on its storefront.
The refunds don’t apply to alt-TLDs that could never have applied to ICANN because the string breaks the rules in some way (for example being numeric or too short).
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