Is this the first Next Round new gTLD contention battle?
It had to happen sooner or later. With a few dozen would-be new gTLD applicants breaking cover over the last year or so, we seem to have our first clash and our first potential 2026-round contention set.
The sought-after contested gTLD is .chain, which now has two announced hopefuls after blockchain-based alternative naming system Freename.io yesterday revealed it wants the string.
“The company intends to apply for .chain, .token, .metaverse and a variety of other gTLDs,” Freename said. “Freename will also submit applications on behalf of third-party customers in this new gTLDs round.”
Freename, if it follows through, is likely to face competition from at least one other applicant, a company called 3DNS, which in June announced plans to apply for .chain and .super.
3DNS has Intercap as its registry partner, while Freename is partnered with registry ShortDot on a joint venture called WebUnited.
Freename already sells blockchain-based names that use .chain as an extension, while 3DNS sells third-level DNS domains under .chain.box that it hopes to upgrade to second-level names should it win the ICANN contest.
In truth, I’d be incredibly surprised if these are the only two companies to apply for .chain, which is a shortened version of “blockchain” and likely to be an attractive string with the whole crypto/”Web3″ crowd.
Under ICANN’s under-development rules, the exact process for resolving contention sets is still up in the air, with more clarity hoped for over the next few months.
ICANN has confirmed that it intends to ban private auctions in the next round, but has also come up with a new second-choice alternate string option that is already causing grumbling in the policy-making community.
Unstoppable announces another new gTLD bid
In the run-up to the 2012 new gTLD application round, we were hard-pressed to find a company willing to announce an application. This time around, announcements are coming out of the blockchain world at the rate of about one a week.
Unstoppable Domains has announced that it’s working with Raiinmaker Network to operate .raiin, first as a blockchain-only namespace and later as a new gTLD hopeful.
Raiinmaker says it developers a blockchain protocol that “utilizes decentralized AI and scalable Web3 powered infrastructure to transform the distribution of value tied to authentic identity, data and behavior.”
No, me neither.
Unstoppable said it “will be planning and strategizing with Raiinmaker Network for the next ICANN gTLD application to further solidify its place in the digital landscape.”
It’s the tenth potential application the company has publicly revealed.
Secret new gTLD application revealed
Unstoppable Domains has revealed the next partner with which it intends to apply to ICANN for a new gTLD two years from now.
It’s linked up with Secret Network Foundation to apply for .secret and in the meantime to flog .secret names that only work on its Polygon blockchain naming system.
Secret is a startup that develops privacy-oriented, blockchain based applications.
It’s the sixth likely new gTLD application Unstoppable has announced this year.
D3 to get $5 million in crypto to apply for .ape gTLD
New gTLD consultancy D3 Global has inked a deal to apply for the .ape gTLD on behalf of the ApeCoin community.
The company said in a blog post that it will receive three million $APE — cryptocurrency coins currently worth about $5 million, according to Coinbase — in order to apply to ICANN for, operate and market .ape domains.
As it has with other clients, it will first launch *ape names that can only be used on the relevant blockchain to address crypto wallets and such. D3 uses an asterisk to differentiate blockchain names from real domains.
The deal came about after D3 submitted a proposal to the ApeCoin DAO. That’s a Decentralized Autonomous Organization that allows any ApeCoin holder to have a vote in the development of the ApeCoin ecosystem. They voted overwhelmingly in favor of D3’s proposal.
The DAO will receive 50% of gross revenue from *ape and .ape sales under the deal, but D3 says it will retain exclusive rights to .ape. Presumably this is because there’s no way in hell ICANN’s lawyers are going to allow it sign a registry contract with a DAO.
The business plan proposal is quite detailed for a public document, containing stuff like revenue projections that ICANN will redact from published gTLD applications. D3 reckons it could be turning over about $8 million with 90,000 registered .ape names by its fourth year.
“It’s simple, Ape Names are built by Apes, for Apes,” D3 said. As well as quite the most ludicrous quote I’ve used in a considerable while, it also happens to be Technically The Truth when said of any TLD, when you think about it.
But it’s actually a reference to the fact that a few of the D3 C-suite are owners of Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFTs — those expensive little crypto chimp avatars that people sometimes use in their social media bios.
D3 CEO Fred Hsu apparently owns this ape picture, which is “worth” almost $37,000. Fellow co-founder Paul Stahura has a whole collection.
In other news, there’s still no cure for cancer.
New Vegas conference “Davos for Web3 interoperability”
Specialist new gTLD consultancy D3 is to hold a two-day conference in Las Vegas at the end of the month it’s describing as the “Davos for Web3 interoperability”.
Imposingly named Dominion, it’s due to take place at the Cesar’s Palace hotel from April 29 to 30. The theme is the interoperability between the traditional domain name system and newer blockchain-based naming systems.
Organizers says it’s invite-only, and limited to about 125 attendees, but an invitation can be requested from the event’s web site.
Keynote speakers include Lily Liu (president of the Solana Foundation) and Fred Gregaard (CEO of the Cardano Foundation) on the blockchain side of things, and Matt Overman of Identity Digital on the domain name side, as well as D3 CEO Fred Hsu.
D3 specializes in arranging gTLD applications for blockchain firms and has five announced clients so far.
.austin names launch on blockchain
A city gTLD launching exclusively on a blockchain alternative naming system? It’s happened, with the announcement of .austin at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas.
The extension is already on sale at $10 a name via Unstoppable Domains, in partnership with the Greater Austin Asian Chamber of Commerce.
The organizations said the names will serve 2.4 million residents of the Austin area. The extension appears on the Polygon blockchain.
There are plenty of city name gTLDs in the regular DNS, but .austin is believed to be the first blockchain-exclusive (excluding perhaps Handshake, where there are no doubt a great many).
The GAACC claims, without citation, that .austin is “far more secure than the four US city traditional TLDs that exist so far”, which is probably true — domains that don’t resolve for most people can’t be as easily abused.
There’s no word in the Unstoppable or GAACC announcements whether the plan is to apply to ICANN for .austin in the proper DNS in 2026 and mirror the two namespaces, but GAACC will face some administrative hurdles if it wishes to do so.
Under the current draft of the next round’s Applicant Guidebook, applicants need formal endorsement from the local government when applying for “a city name, where the applicant declares that it intends to use the gTLD for purposes associated with the city name.”
If the City of Austin were to apply to ICANN separately, there would no doubt be friction.
Freename tries to bridge DNS and blockchain
Swiss blockchain naming startup Freename has released a service it says it hopes will help make blockchain-based naming systems easier to integrate with the traditional DNS.
It’s called NOTO, and it has launched in closed beta this week.
Freename says NOTO crawls blockchain naming systems (currently its own Freename service, Ethereum Name Service, Handshake Name Service and Unstoppable) to compile lists of domains, and then making those lists of domains available to developers either via an API or downloadable zone files that look like regular zone files.
The idea seems to be that developers using traditional DNS can stay in their comfort zone and don’t have to do the work of figuring out complexities of the blockchain. It hopes makers of browsers, search engines, DNS resolution services and such will be able to more easily add “Web3” support to their software.
Freename also reckons there’s an intellectual property protection story, with trademark owners potentially more easily able to monitor blockchain naming services for abuse.
D3 signs up crypto gTLD client number five
New gTLD consultancy D3 Global has signed up its fifth blockchain gTLD client since launching last September.
The company today announced a deal with Core Chain to apply for .core when ICANN next opens a new gTLD application window, currently expected mid-2026.
Core Chain makes a software platform for developers that want to building decentralized applications on blockchains. It says it has over five million connected cryptocurrency wallets.
D3 has recently announced similar partnerships with NEAR Foundation (.near), Gate.io (.gate), Viction (.vic) and Shiba Inu (.shib).
The company says its mission is to help blockchain companies operate on the traditional DNS as well as the blockchain-based alternate naming systems.
WebUnited inks deal to “mirror” country’s TLD in the blockchain
Blockchain domains startup WebUnited says it has signed up its first registry client to a service that allows domain names to be “mirrored” on a blockchain naming service.
The company has inked a deal with Global Domains International, the registry for Samoa’s .ws ccTLD (sometimes marketed as a generic for “web site”), that will let its registrars up-sell matching .ws names on the Polygon blockchain.
WebUnited, a Swiss-based joint venture of domain registry ShortDot and “Web3” naming player Freename, says registrants will be able to use their mirrored .ws names to address cryptocurrency wallets, for example.
The company essentially acts as a registry service provider for its registry clients in much the same way as regular RSPs do now, except instead of putting domains into EPP databases and the consensus DNS, it adds them to a blockchain.
Registrars that choose to sign up to the service will use an “EPP-like” API to access the registry, ShortDot COO Kevin Kopas said. He expects .ws to charge about five bucks a year for the blockchain add-on domains.
Kopas said WebUnited is also mirroring policies found in regular domain names, so if somebody loses their domain in a UDRP case, for example, they also lose their matching blockchain name.
After .ws, ShortDot’s own TLDs — .bond, .sbs, .icu, .cyou and .cfd — are also expected to offer the mirroring service. Because these are gTLDs governed by ICANN contracts, ShortDot first has to go through the Registry Service Evaluation Process for approval.
Kopas said that once ShortDot has completed its RSEP it will be able to supply gTLD clients with template language to get their own RSEPs approved. He said WebUnited has a pipeline of potential ccTLD and gTLD registries that have expressed an interest in the service.
GoDaddy offers free Ethereum blockchain integration
GoDaddy has updated its domain management platform to allow users to add their Ethereum blockchain wallet addresses to their domains for free.
The registrar said it has partnered with Ethereum Name Service to offer the service, which will enable mutual customers to transact with ETH cryptocurrency using regular domain names instead of the massive gibberish strings crypto wallets usually use.
It’s free, due to ENS’s release last week of gasless DNSSEC, which links Ethereum to DNS by placing wallet addresses in the TXT records of domain names.
Before this update, ENS said the crypto transaction fees (“gas fees”) involved in validating domain ownership could reach as high as 0.5 ETH, which is over $1,100 at today’s prices.
The GoDaddy integration means the process of adding the TXT records has been simplified and can the accomplished in just a few clicks via the usual domain management interface.
Using ENS with your domain does require turning on DNSSEC, which adds some security benefits but also carries a downtime risk over the long term.
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