Now you can plant “for sale” signs directly into your domains

In what could prove to be a game-changer for the domain industry aftermarket, domain investors can now place “for sale” signs directly into their DNS records, potentially bypassing middlemen such as brokers.

The Internet Engineering Task Force has published an informational technical standard that allows any registrant to flag their domains as available for sale, along with contact information and a price, without having to list them on a marketplace.

They would do so by adding a specially crafted TXT field to their DNS record, easily discoverable by relatively simple software and pretty much readable by humans.

The IETF standard is called RFC10023 or “The _for-sale Underscored and Globally Scoped DNS Node Name” and was written by Marco Davids of SIDN Labs, part of the Dutch ccTLD registry manager.

SIDN has been piloting the technology with its own registrars since last year, saying it has the aim of “helping to make the domain name market more transparent and accessible, so that domain names can be traded more quickly, fairly and effectively.”

SIDN said last year:

We want to provide registrants with an easy way of selling their .nl domain names themselves. That would enable a registrant to get a fair price for their domain name, rather than simply dropping it and getting nothing. We also hope that the system will help to keep .nl accessible to everyone, rather than becoming the exclusive province of professionals such as domainers and drop-catchers who specialise in ‘catching’ dropped domain names.

The spec calls for registrants to add TXT (text) records to their DNS, specifying that the domain is for sale and, optionally, how much it costs, in what currency (including Bitcoin), and how to get in touch to purchase it.

The purchasing process would not usually be automated; some human interaction would be required along the way.

But registrants can add a URL for a web form, or if they feel like taking the risk of falling victim to spammers (all DNS records are publicly accessible) their email address or phone number.

The spec would not be restricted to domainers or average domain owners — registries themselves could flag up their reserved premium stock as “_for-sale” in much the same way. They could even wildcard their entire TLD.

Whether the new technology has a major impact on the industry depends of course on adoption. Most registrants lack the technical nous to manually edit their DNS and will have to rely on registrar support to streamline the process with “click to sell” buttons and the like.

And given many registrars are plugged directly into the secondary markets, there might not be a sound business case to let their customers disintermediate them.

But it’s easy to see how enterprising individuals could leverage _for-sale records to compile lists of purchasable domains without the need for marketplace APIs or web scraping. If the price tag and contact address is in the DNS, it’s public data.

There are security risks as well, as the RFC makes clear. As TXT records permit free text, it would be fairly easy for a Bad Guy to put a malicious URL or scam text into their DNS, so anyone building a tool to parse such records will have to do a certain amount of sanitization.

The RFC is also fairly explicit about its lack of an off-switch. While you can unlist a domain at any time, you can’t use the new spec to state unequivocally that it is not for sale, so it’s no good if your goal is to fend off unwanted offers.

WordPress buys Canadian, swaps CentralNic for CIRA

Automattic, which runs WordPress.com and the .blog gTLD registry, says it’s switching to Hello Registry from its current provider.

Hello Registry is a joint venture of two like-minded national ccTLD non-profits: Canadian (.ca) registry CIRA and Dutch (.nl) registry SIDN. It was launched last November, having been developed under the name CIRA Registry Platform.

Automattic is currently running .blog, which has about 300,000 domains and added about 50,000 in the last year, on CentralNic, the registry services provider owned by Team Internet.

The company has told its registrants that it does not expect any disruption from the migration, saying in a blog post:

We’ve been working closely with our registrar partners since November 2024 to ensure a smooth transition, with the migration scheduled for the end of April, 2025.

It added that it believes the move will create “new opportunities for growth and innovation”.

UPDATE: Automattic has got in touch to ask for a clarification. A spokesperson said:

the decision to migrate .blog was made by Knock Knock WHOIS There (KKWT), which is the official registry operator for .blog. While KKWT is a subsidiary of Automattic, it operates independently as required by ICANN. So, this wasn’t a decision made by WordPress or WordPress.com

So…
.

Coronavirus helps .nl beat 6 million regs

Dutch ccTLD .nl passed the six-million-domains milestone recently due in part to a surge in registrations during coronavirus lockdown.

According to SIDN, the registry, the six millionth domain was deyogiclub.nl and it was registered June 18.

According to my data, .nl has grown by about 100,000 domains since the start of 2020, and by about 80,000 names in the second quarter.

SIDN said (Google-translated from the original Dutch):

The number of registrations rose so rapidly during the corona crisis in recent months that the 6 million .nl domain registrations were reached much earlier than expected on the basis of the growth development.

The Netherlands entered its strongest period of lockdown March 15 and started easing restrictions in mid-May.

Coronavirus lockdown is working out great for at least one registry

The Dutch ccTLD registry has revealed that its volume of new registrations has been growing rapidly since the Netherlands implemented its coronavirus lockdown measures.

“Since the measures came into effect, Dutch entrepreneurs and private individuals registered over 85,000 .nl domain names, 10,000 more than in the same period in 2019,” SIDN said today (translated from the Dutch by Google).

Only about 2% to 3% of these names relate directly to the pandemic, the registry said.

There were 5,930,715 .nl domains registered as of April 20, an increase of about 17,000 from the start of the month.

A survey of registrants carried out for SIDN found that 100% of them intended to use their domains for online-only activities, as opposed to using them to promote a bricks-and-mortar business, for the first time.

SIDN’s good luck may not be shared by all in the industry, however.

ICANN, which is funded by a tax on registration fees, is to host a call next week in which it will explain how it will have to adapt its budget to respond to the impact of the pandemic.

If we take Verisign’s .com as a benchmark, its zone file has grown by roughly 383,000 domains since the end of March. In the same period last year, the increase was 434,000.

Tonight, Verisign is due to report its first-quarter numbers, and no doubt we will get some color on how its bosses think the virus will affect the market.

Norway bans the Dutch from using dormant .bv

The Norwegian government has intervened to prevent a deal that would have allowed the sale of .bv domain names in the Netherlands.
Norwegian ccTLD registry Norid and Dutch counterpart SIDN said a deal to start using the dormant ccTLD fell apart after the government exercised its right of veto under Norway’s domain regulations.
.bv represents Bouvet Island, the remotest island in the world. It’s a Norwegian territory in the Antarctic, uninhabited but for seals.
It’s been delegated to Norway since 1997, but has never been used.
But BV is also the Dutch acronym for “Besloten vennootschap met beperkte aansprakelijkheid”, a corporate identifier that has pretty much the same meaning as “Ltd” or “LLC”.
Clearly, there was an opportunity to make a bit of extra pocket money for both registries, had SIDN been allowed to licence the use of the ccTLD, but the government intervention has scuppered all that.
SIDN said it had planned to use .bv as “a platform for validated business data”, but that now it will try to implement that idea in .nl instead.

Amsterdam accepts pre-registrations for city gTLD

The City of Amsterdam has confirmed that it has joined the ranks of major international cities applying to ICANN for a new generic top-level domain.
It has commissioned local publishing company HUB Uitgevers to manage .amsterdam, along with its technical partner SIDN, the .nl ccTLD registry.
Unusually, the project has also already started accepting pre-registrations at its official site.
The ICANN application fees are being covered by the local government, but a City of Amsterdam spokesperson said it expects to make the money back from annual royalty payments from HUB.
The famously liberal tourist destination has about 1.2 million inhabitants, according to Wikipedia.