Second new gTLD contention set revealed

The first showdown between new gTLD application consultants D3 Global and Unstoppable Domains has emerged, with the announcement this week of a bid for a cartoons-themed gTLD by a D3 client.

D3 said in a press release it has partnered with outfits called Animecoin Foundation and Azuki to apply to ICANN for .anime, representing the Japanese art form, when the next application round opens a bit over a year from now.

Together, the two D3 partners provide a cryptocurrency designed to enable people to trade digital art NFTs, and the NFTs themselves.

But the expected .anime application is not the first to be publicly announced. Last June, Unstoppable said it’s planning to apply for .manga and .anime with a client called Kintsugi Global.

It’s the second likely contention set between publicly announced applicants. Freename.io and 3DNS have both separately announced bids for .chain, of course intended for blockchain-related usage.

The next application window is scheduled to open April 2026 or thereabouts. There are multiple ways contention sets can be resolved under the current rules, but the main one is expected to be an ICANN-managed auction.

Could Musk’s DOGE kill off D3’s .doge?

The creation of the US Department of Government Efficiency raises the possibility of a government objection to .doge, a gTLD that D3 Global has announced it plans to apply for.

D3, a domain name consultancy that is promising to deliver gTLDs in next year’s application round that connect to identities currently only available on blockchains, has said it it working on a bid for .doge.

But that’s an exact match to DOGE, a not-quite “department” of the US government created by President Trump in the last few weeks and headed by megalomaniac billionaire troll Elon Musk.

DOGE is tasked with cutting government spending, waste and fraud, and the department’s devil-may-care modus operandi seems to spawn fresh controversy on an almost hourly basis.

In the D3 context, the word “doge” rather refers to a social media meme from well over a decade ago — a photo of a dog called Kabosu, now dead, used as the mascot of a cryptocurrency called Dogecoin.

D3’s partner on the bid is Own The Doge, a project of PleasrDAO that says it paid $4,240,000 in 2021 for the non-fungible token (NFT) of the original Kabosu photo.

Own The Doge then broke the NFT up into almost 17 billion pieces, which are traded like other digital assets. It also makes money selling Kabosu merch, licensing the image, and selling ownership of single pixels of the original image.

The silly governmental meaning and the silly crypto meaning are linked. Musk, a known fan of Dogecoin, seems to have first proposed DOGE as the name of the agency he proposed to lead as a kind of in-joke.

His first tweet on that topic came August 20 last year, a few weeks before the .doge bid was announced.

Given the timing, the exact-match spelling, and the crossover in the semantic Venn diagram, it seems a .doge gTLD application could present a pretty big target for a formal objection.

If the US decided to start throwing its weight around on ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee, which has substantial powers to scupper gTLD applications, it’s easy to see how it could horse-trade its way to getting a full consensus GAC objection.

But would a Musk-influenced Trump administration choose to object? Or could its mere existence actually prove beneficial to .doge’s future prospects?

We asked D3, and chief marketing officer Mark Trang told us:

While we’re not going to speculate on whether or not the Department of Government Efficiency will affect a future TLD like .doge, anything the current administration does to raise the visibility of domains, cryptocurrencies, and blockchains we view as a positive for our industry.

It almost certainly is far too early to speculate, but that’s never stopped me before.

Quite apart from the .doge issue, the Trump administration has yet to show its hand on how it will interact with internet governance in general and ICANN and the domain name industry in particular.

It looks today, over a year before the next new gTLD application window is scheduled to open, that this kind of thing is pretty far down the Trump administration’s priority list, if it’s even on the radar at all.

The relatively small National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which supplies the US with its civil service GAC representatives, doesn’t even have its politically appointed leadership yet.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, seen by some as Trump’s playbook for government reform, says nothing about ICANN or domain names in its NTIA section (pdf), and even gets the meaning of the A in the name wrong, calling it the “Agency”.

As for Musk, he’s known to be well across domain names as a concept, though he may be a .com fanboy. When he reacquired x.com from PayPal, before subsequently renaming Twitter around the domain, he said it was for sentimental reasons.

While it was pretty much an open secret that the pre-Musk Twitter planned to apply for a .twitter gTLD, the renaming to X of course means that it cannot be a dot-brand under ICANN rules banning single-character Latin TLDs.

But rules don’t seem to matter too much at this moment in history, when the US seems more than ready to dispose of decades-old conventions and use raw financial power to achieve its goals.

So, yeah, it’s pretty much too early to speculate about what .doge and the domain name universe looks like under the Trump/Musk administration, but it’s probably not too early to be worried, or maybe even a little afraid.

D3 announces seventh blockchain gTLD client

D3 Global has announced yet another likely new gTLD applicant from the blockchain space.

The specialist consultancy said it has partnered with MAKE and the Casper Foundation, a software developer and its non-profit backer respectively, to apply for .cspr when ICANN opens its long-awaited next round of new gTLD applications in a couple years.

It’s the seventh such deal D3, which says it can help blockchain companies link their alternative namespaces to the DNS, has announced since its launch late last year.

It is also working with partners to apply for .ape, .core, .vic, .near, .gate, and .shib.

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.

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.

D3 announces fourth crypto new gTLD client

New gTLD consultancy startup D3 Global, which emerged just five months ago, is signing up would-be applicants at a pretty rapid clip, announcing its fourth client today.

The company said it is working with NEAR Foundation, a Swiss non-profit, to apply for .near when ICANN opens up the next application window, which is currently expected in 2026.

NEAR is behind what it calls a Blockchain Operating System, a set of software designed to make it easier for developers to create apps that work across multiple blockchains.

D3’s specialty is working with companies that want to apply for gTLDs that work on both blockchains and the consensus ICANN DNS root.

It’s already announced deals with Gate.io (.gate), Viction (.vic) and Shiba Inu (.shib).

Another crypto firm to apply for a new gTLD

D3 Global, the new gTLD consultancy specializing in cryptocurrency and blockchain clients, has signed up its third public client.

The company plans to help Gate.io apply to ICANN for .gate when the next application round opens, currently expected in 2026, according to a press release today.

Gate.io is a cryptocurrency exchange that claims to have 13 million users worldwide (although it appears to be unavailable in several large markets) that was founded in China 10 years ago.

D3 is a startup founded by some domain industry pioneers that offers companies support with applying for regular gTLDs that can interoperate with blockchain-based naming systems.

It’s already announced deals with companies called Shib and Viction for the strings .shib and .vic.

Shiba Inu outs itself as crypto new gTLD applicant

Shib, the developer behind the Shiba Inu cryptocurrency, said today that it plans to apply to ICANN for the .shib top-level domain.

The idea is to have the domain in the consensus DNS root and also in a blockchain and to make the two interoperable.

The company has partnered with D3 Global, the startup launched in September by industry veterans Fred Hsu, Paul Stahura and Shayan Rostam, to work on the application and interoperability platform.

Shib seems to be the second customer for D3. It’s also working with a blockchain company called Viction on .vic.

Perhaps erring on the side of responsibility, D3 is using an asterisk instead of a dot when offering names prior to ICANN approval, so it’s *shib and *vic instead of .shib and .vic.

The next ICANN application round is not expected to open until early-to-mid-2026.

Blockchain startup gets $5 million to apply for gTLDs

A company backed by some familiar industry names has raised $5 million in seed funding to apply to ICANN for new gTLDs and, it says, bridge the gap between the traditional DNS and blockchain alternate roots.

Las Vegas-based D3 Global is being led by Fred Hsu, one of the founders of aftermarket pioneer Oversee.net. Among its listed founders are Paul Stahura, one of the triumvirate that launched Donuts, now Identity Digital, to apply for hundreds of gTLDs in 2012.

Also listed as founders are Shayan Rostam, who’s currently building Internet Naming Co into a prominent new gTLD portfolio player, former Network Solutions engineer Shay Chinn and investment banker Michael Ho.

These are people with domain industry experience going back in some cases to the 1990s and track records of building successful disrupters, so it’s worth paying attention no matter what you think of blockchain stuff.

D3 says it plans to apply to ICANN for traditional TLDs but will also introduce interoperability with blockchain-based “Web3” naming systems.

Hsu said in a press release: “We are committed to driving forward the convergence of the traditional DNS system and Web3 to make domain names more versatile, secure, and universally accessible.”

It also talks of introducing a marketplace that combines traditional DNS names with blockchain to “significantly reduce the friction traditionally seen in domain name transactions, such as low transparency, high broker fees, transfer delays, and escrow services.”

The funding round was led by Shima Capital with participation from Lightshift, Dispersion Capital, VentureSouq, Infinite Capital, MZ Web3 Fund, Kestrel0x1, Nonagon, C² Ventures, Arthur Hayes’ Maelstrom, Stahura himself.