Things I Learned About Domains from My Interview with Richard Lau, Domain Legend and Founder of NamesCon

Richard Lau is one of the most respected domain investors alive. He created NamesCon — the domain industry's premier annual conference — and his portfolio reads like a dictionary of the internet's most valuable real estate: Rides.com, Resume.com, Short.com, Face.com, Hockey.com, Rise.com, Insane.com, and more. He's also the founder of Water School (waterschool.com), a project that has raised significant funds for clean water initiatives in East Africa.

On our latest Discord AMA, I sat down with Richard and walked away with a notebook full of rules, stories, and hard-won insights that most domain investors take a decade to learn. This article is everything I took from that conversation — the origin stories, the buying and selling rules, the beginner playbook, and why Richard chose to fractionalise Rides.com on Doma Protocol after nearly thirty years of doing things the traditional way.

Richard's career started in 1996–1997 — before Google existed, before most people had email, before anyone took internet addresses seriously. His defining moment came with an early domain sale to a trademark holder for a few thousand dollars. That sale wasn't life-changing money, but it crystallised something: "There's something here." He's been investing ever since.

The Lau.com story, though, is where you really understand what kind of investor Richard is. In 1996, he spotted that the domain was available for registration. At the time, Network Solutions (NSI) was the sole .com registrar, and the expiration and re-registration process was ad hoc and inconsistent — nothing like the formalised "domain drop" system that emerged years later. Richard sat at his computer for over 48 hours, manually refreshing the page on a 14.4k modem (agonisingly slow even by 1990s standards), paying $100 for a two-year registration at a time when people around him openly mocked the idea of buying "internet addresses."

This wasn't stubbornness — it was a calculated bet that internet addresses would become scarce, valuable assets, placed at a time when the idea invited open mockery. Nearly every major domain fortune traces back to a similar moment of contrarian conviction.

What this means for you: The domain aftermarket is not new, not speculative, and not a fad. It's a nearly 30-year-old asset class. Industry estimates — drawing on data from platforms like Escrow.com, Sedo, and aftermarket aggregators — suggest somewhere in the range of $2–4 billion in annual secondary market sales, including unreported private transactions. The exact figure is impossible to pin down because many high-value sales are never publicly disclosed, but the scale is real. Most people have simply never heard of it.

A premium domain is a short, memorable, commercially powerful web address — the digital equivalent of owning a building on a prime high street. Think of Face.com, Resume.com, or Short.com. These are single-word .com domains, and they sit at the absolute apex of domain value because they're instantly recognisable, impossible to misspell, and relevant to entire industries.

Here's the hierarchy as I understand it from talking to Richard and other domain veterans:

• ›Single-word .com domains — the apex. Category-defining. Face.com doesn't just describe a product; it is the category.
• ›Two-word brandable .com domains — the accessible middle tier. Things like MikesLandscaping.com or GreenHive.com.
• ›Premium country-code TLDs with crossover appeal — domains like .ai (Anguilla's country code, embraced by the AI industry) that have developed genuine aftermarket demand due to industry association.
• ›Premium new gTLDs — strong generics in extensions like .shop, .live, or .coffee. Growing in relevance but with thinner resale markets.
• ›Everything else — long, hyphenated, obscure-extension domains that are unlikely to appreciate meaningfully.

As of early 2025, Verisign's Domain Name Industry Brief reports approximately 360 million domain registrations worldwide. The vast majority are worth their registration fee and nothing more. The premium layer — the domains businesses will pay thousands, tens of thousands, or millions for — is vanishingly thin. That scarcity is exactly what creates value.

Why do businesses pay so much? Direct-type traffic (people typing "resume.com" into a browser), brand credibility, memorability, and the reality that the right domain compresses years of marketing spend into a single purchase. Richard's portfolio is a case study in how scarcity, patience, and commercial relevance compound: he's held some of these names for over 20 years, and their value has appreciated precisely because the supply of single-word .coms is permanently fixed.

What this means for you: Not all domains are created equal. Understanding the hierarchy — and where realistic opportunity exists for someone without six figures of starting capital — is the first step to doing this intelligently.

Before you can apply any buying rule, you need to know what a domain is actually worth. This is harder than it sounds, and getting it wrong is the single fastest way to lose money in this asset class.

Comparable sales data is the gold standard. Two resources dominate:

• ›NameBio (namebio.com) — a database of over 1.5 million historical domain sales. Search for domains similar to the one you're evaluating: same length, same extension, same keyword category. If single-word .shop domains have historically sold for $500–$5,000, that's your range.
• ›DNJournal (dnjournal.com) — tracks publicly reported aftermarket sales weekly and publishes annual top-sales lists. Useful for understanding the high end of the market.

Automated appraisal tools exist but should be treated with heavy scepticism:

• ›GoDaddy Domain Appraisal and Estibot will give you an instant estimated value for any domain. These tools use algorithms based on keyword search volume, extension, length, and comparable sales. The problem: they're frequently wrong by an order of magnitude in both directions. A domain Estibot values at $1,500 might sell for $50 or $50,000 depending on who needs it.
• ›Use automated appraisals as a rough sanity check, never as a buying or selling price. If an automated tool says a domain is worth $500 and you're being asked to pay $5,000, that's a red flag worth investigating — but the tool's number isn't gospel.

Manual valuation factors that matter most:

• ›Length — shorter is almost always more valuable. Single-word beats two-word beats three-word.
• ›Extension — .com commands the highest premiums by a wide margin. Other extensions are valued relative to their aftermarket liquidity.
• ›Commercial intent — does the word describe something people buy? "Insurance," "loans," "resume" have obvious commercial buyers. "Serendipity" is a beautiful word but has a much smaller buyer pool.
• ›Brandability — can a company build an identity around this name? Short, pronounceable, and spellable wins.
• ›Search volume — use Google Keyword Planner or similar tools to gauge monthly search volume for the keyword. Higher search volume generally means more potential buyers.
• ›Existing traffic — if the domain already receives direct-type traffic, that's measurable value.

What this means for you: Never buy a domain without first researching comparable sales on NameBio. The 1/10th rule (covered next) only works if your estimate of "what it's worth" is grounded in actual market data, not wishful thinking. A beginner who believes a domain is worth $10,000 based on gut feeling and pays $1,000 under the 1/10th rule has still massively overpaid if the real market value is $500.

This was the single most actionable thing Richard shared on the AMA, and I want to make sure you understand not just the rule but the reasoning behind it.

When buying a domain from another investor, Richard aims to pay roughly one-tenth of what he believes the domain is worth — based on comparable sales data and his decades of market experience. A beginner hears that and thinks "lowball everyone." A practitioner hears it and understands risk-adjusted carry cost pricing. Let me break that down.

• ›Renewal fees accumulate. Every domain costs money to hold — a standard .com renewal runs approximately $10–13 at wholesale, and $12–20 at most retail registrars. Across hundreds of domains over many years, that's real money.
• ›The sell-through rate is brutal. Richard confirmed an industry rule of thumb I've heard from multiple guests: the average portfolio sell-through rate — the percentage of your portfolio that actually sells in a given year — hovers around 1–2%, with a commonly cited range of 0.5% to 3%. This is anecdotal and self-reported across the industry (figures like Michael Cyger at DomainSherpa have cited similar numbers), not an audited statistic, and the actual rate varies significantly by portfolio quality. But the directional truth is clear: the overwhelming majority of your domains won't sell in any given year.
• ›Opportunity cost is real. Capital tied up in a domain can't be deployed elsewhere. At 1/10th, even if your valuation is off by 3x and you hold for five years, you can still profit.
• ›The end-user gap is where the money lives. When Richard buys from another investor at 1/10th of value, he's buying at what insiders call "domainer pricing." When he eventually sells to a business that needs that exact name for their brand, that's end-user pricing — often 10x to 100x what another investor would pay.

The 1/10th rule isn't cheapness. It's a survival mechanism designed for an asset class where most of your holdings sit dormant for years at a time. If you don't build that margin of safety into every purchase, a few bad years of renewals and no sales will wipe you out. But the rule is only as good as your valuation — which is why the comparable sales research described in the previous section is essential. One-tenth of a wrong number is still a wrong number.

What this means for you: When you're evaluating a domain purchase, ask yourself: "If I'm wrong about the value by 3x and hold this for five years paying renewals, do I still come out ahead?" If the answer is no, you're paying too much.

Richard said something on the AMA that I haven't been able to stop thinking about: "The only way to sell a domain for $1 million is to say no to $900,000."

On the surface, that's a negotiation tactic. Underneath, it's a statement about financial architecture. You can only say no to $900,000 if you have the runway to absorb zero revenue from that domain indefinitely. That requires one of three things:

1. A separate income source that covers your living expenses and renewal costs.

2. A portfolio large enough that other sales cover carrying costs — at roughly 1.5% sell-through, a 1,000-domain portfolio generates roughly 15 sales per year, which starts to create predictable revenue.

3. Alternative liquidity mechanisms — and this is where things get interesting for 2026, because fractionalisation now exists.

The sell-through rate maths matters enormously here. If you own 100 domains and 1.5% sell per year, that's 1.5 sales. You're essentially running a business on one or two transactions annually. The variance is enormous. You might sell three in a good year and zero the next. This is why serious domain investors hold hundreds or thousands of names — not because they're greedy, but because the statistics demand it for reliable revenue.

Beginners dramatically overestimate how fast domains sell. Hearing that Richard's portfolio includes Face.com and Resume.com, you'd assume those get daily offers. Maybe they do. But the right offer — the one that reflects true end-user value — might come once every several years. The discipline to wait is the entire business model.

What this means for you: If you enter domain investing expecting quick flips on every name, you'll get frustrated and quit. The winners treat this like a long-duration asset class — more like fine art or prime real estate than like day-trading.

If most of your portfolio sits unsold in any given year, does that mean those domains are generating zero value? Not necessarily. There are several established strategies for generating revenue from domains you're holding.

Domain parking is the most common. Parking services — offered by Sedo, GoDaddy, Afternic, and others — place pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on your undeveloped domain. When someone types the domain directly into a browser or arrives via a search engine, they see a landing page with relevant ads. If they click, you earn a small amount. For domains with meaningful direct-type traffic (e.g., generic single-word .coms), parking revenue can run from a few dollars to several hundred dollars per month. For most domains, it's pennies — but across a large portfolio, those pennies offset renewal costs.

Domain leasing is an underutilised strategy where you rent a domain to a business for a monthly or annual fee, retaining ownership. This works well for premium domains where the end-user wants the name but can't justify (or afford) a full purchase. Platforms like Dan.com offer lease-to-own structures where payments accumulate toward a purchase price.

Minimal development — building a simple content site on a domain — can generate SEO value and advertising revenue while you hold. A domain like GreenRoofing.com with a few informational articles about green roofing can attract organic search traffic and modest ad revenue. The domain becomes more valuable to an eventual buyer because it already has traffic and search engine authority.

What this means for you: Don't treat unsold domains as dead weight. Even modest monetisation strategies can turn a portfolio from a pure cost centre into something that partially or fully covers its own renewal expenses — giving you the financial runway to wait for the right buyer.

A guide that tells you to invest in domains without telling you where to transact is incomplete. Here's the landscape:

For buying domains at registration cost (new registrations):

• ›Namecheap, Porkbun, Dynadot, and Cloudflare Registrar are popular for competitive pricing and clean interfaces.
• ›GoDaddy is the largest registrar by volume but typically charges more for renewals.

For buying domains on the aftermarket (from other investors):

• ›GoDaddy Aftermarket / Afternic — the largest aftermarket platform, integrated with GoDaddy's massive distribution network.
• ›Sedo — the leading international domain marketplace, strong in European markets.
• ›Dan.com — popular for its buy-now and lease-to-own features, with a clean buyer experience.
• ›Dynadot Marketplace and Namecheap Marketplace — smaller but growing, with lower commission rates.
• ›NameBio — not a marketplace itself, but essential for researching comparable sales before you buy or sell anywhere.

For selling domains:

• ›List on multiple platforms simultaneously. Most serious domain investors list on Afternic, Sedo, and Dan.com at minimum.
• ›Outbound sales (directly contacting potential end-users) consistently produce the highest prices, as discussed in the beginner playbook below.
• ›Domain brokers — firms like Saw.com, MediaOptions, or Grit Brokerage handle high-value sales on your behalf. Commissions typically range from 10–20% depending on the platform and deal structure, with elite brokers often in the 10–15% range. Some charge flat fees for specific services.

For safe transactions:

• ›Escrow.com is the industry standard for domain escrow. The buyer deposits funds, the seller transfers the domain, and Escrow.com releases payment once both sides confirm. This eliminates the risk of sending a domain and never receiving payment, or paying and never receiving the domain.
• ›Most major marketplaces (Dan.com, Sedo, Afternic) have integrated escrow or payment protection. For private sales negotiated via email, always use Escrow.com or a comparable service — never accept direct bank transfers or cryptocurrency payments without escrow protection.

Domain transfer mechanics:

When a domain sale completes, the actual transfer happens via an EPP code (also called an auth code or transfer code). The seller provides this code to the buyer, who initiates a transfer at their registrar. The process typically takes 5–7 days for .com domains. Some registrars support push transfers (instant, within the same registrar) which are faster.

What this means for you: Bookmark Escrow.com, create accounts on at least two aftermarket platforms, and never transact without payment protection. Domain fraud is real and targets beginners who don't know the standard processes.

This section isn't optional reading — it's the difference between building a legitimate business and exposing yourself to legal liability.

UDRP (Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy) is the primary legal mechanism trademark holders use to reclaim domains registered in bad faith. Filed through WIPO or other ICANN-approved dispute resolution providers, a UDRP complaint can result in a domain being transferred away from you — and you bear your own legal costs regardless of outcome. A UDRP complainant must prove three things: (1) the domain is identical or confusingly similar to their trademark, (2) the registrant has no legitimate interest in the domain, and (3) the domain was registered and used in bad faith.

The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) is a US federal law that goes further — it allows trademark holders to sue domain registrants for damages (up to $100,000 per domain) if the domain was registered with bad-faith intent to profit from someone else's trademark.

How this affects you practically:

• ›Registering generic dictionary words (e.g., "resume," "coffee," "rise") is generally safe — these are common words, not trademarks.
• ›Registering a domain that matches an existing business's trademarked name and then offering to sell it to them is the textbook definition of cybersquatting. Even if you didn't know about the trademark, the act of contacting them to sell can be interpreted as bad-faith intent.
• ›The beginner playbook below recommends registering clean versions of local business domains (e.g., MikesLandscaping.com). This is a common practice, but it carries risk: if "Mike's Landscaping" has established trademark rights through use in commerce, registering their exact business name as a domain and soliciting a sale could be challenged under UDRP or ACPA. To mitigate this: focus on generic, descriptive domains (GreenRoofing.com) rather than domains matching specific business names; never register domains containing well-known brand names; and if you do register a name matching a small local business, be aware of the legal grey area you're operating in.

Before registering any domain, search the USPTO trademark database (for US marks), the UK IPO trademark register (for UK marks), and the EUIPO database (for EU marks) to confirm the name isn't a registered trademark. This takes five minutes and can save you thousands in legal costs.

What this means for you: Domain investing is legal and legitimate — but cybersquatting is not. The line between the two is defined by trademark law and your intent. When in doubt, register generic descriptive words, not names that belong to existing businesses or brands.

Here's the part where Richard's advice gets immediately practical, and it doesn't require thousands in capital.

His explicit recommendation for beginners: buy two-word branded names — things like GreenRoofing.com or FreshPaintPros.com — for about $10 at registration cost. Then flip them for roughly $30–$100 by directly contacting businesses that are currently stuck with inferior domain names.

This is where most guides go wrong. They tell you to register names and list them on a marketplace, then wait. Richard's approach is the opposite — it's outbound sales. You're making your own market.

Here's how it works in practice:

1. Find businesses with terrible domains. Search Google Maps for local businesses — landscapers, plumbers, dentists, personal trainers. You'll find businesses operating on domains like greenroofing-llc-services.com or freshpaintcompanyuk.net.

2. Register the clean, generic descriptive version. If GreenRoofing.com is available for $10, register it. Focus on generic descriptive names rather than domains matching a specific business's trademarked name — see the legal risks section above.

3. Contact the business owner directly. Email them a brief, professional message explaining that you own the domain and offering it at a price that's obviously good value for them. A few practical notes on outreach: keep emails short and professional — one or two paragraphs maximum; identify yourself clearly (name, website); don't send mass automated emails, as this risks violating anti-spam regulations (PECR in the UK, CAN-SPAM in the US); and follow up once after a week if you don't hear back, then move on.

4. Handle the transaction safely. For sales under $500, PayPal Goods & Services offers basic buyer/seller protection. For anything above that, use Escrow.com. Once payment is secured, provide the buyer with the EPP/auth code so they can transfer the domain to their registrar. If you're both on the same registrar, a push transfer is faster.

5. Repeat. This teaches you valuation, negotiation, and the skill of identifying what businesses actually need — which is the same skill set you'll use at every level of domain investing.

The beauty of this approach is that it's low-risk and high-education. You're learning by doing with $10 stakes. A business owner using a terrible domain probably doesn't know the clean version exists. By creating that awareness, you're literally generating demand that wasn't there before.

As you get better at this, you scale up: from $30 flips to $300 flips to $3,000 flips. The mechanics are identical. The names get better. The buyers get larger.

What this means for you: You don't need five figures to start in domains. You need $50, some research skills, and the willingness to send cold emails. Start there. Richard did.

Richard is clear-eyed about .com remaining the undisputed king for the highest-value aftermarket transactions. But he also sees real opportunity in newer extensions — both generic top-level domains (gTLDs) and specific country-code TLDs (ccTLDs) that have been adopted by industries beyond their original geography.

A quick primer: the domain system has two main types of extensions. Country-code TLDs (ccTLDs) are tied to nations — .uk, .de, .io, .ai. Some ccTLDs have been adopted well beyond their country of origin: .ai (Anguilla's country code) has been embraced by the artificial intelligence industry, and .io (British Indian Ocean Territory) became popular with tech startups. Generic TLDs (gTLDs) are everything else — the original .com, .net, .org, plus hundreds of newer extensions like .shop, .live, .coffee, and .xyz. ICANN (the body that governs the domain name system) opened applications for new gTLDs in 2012, with the first new extensions launching in 2013–2014.

Richard's thesis is that premium generics in newer extensions are currently undervalued relative to their long-term potential. If you can register a strong keyword match in .shop or .live for a modest fee today, the entry cost is low enough that the asymmetric upside may justify the bet — though the comparison to early .com registrations requires heavy qualification.

Some caution on the analogy: .com had a monopoly position as essentially the only game in town during the late 1990s. New gTLDs compete with .com and with each other across hundreds of extensions. A domain like coffee.coffee is a strong keyword match, but it operates in a fundamentally different market structure than Resume.com did in 1997. The .com namespace had scarcity that new gTLDs, by design, do not.

To ground this in data: aftermarket sales in .ai have been strong — NameBio records sales like Agents.ai ($25,000), Chat.ai ($200,000), and similar premium keywords commanding four- to five-figure prices. The .shop extension has seen more modest but growing aftermarket activity. Most other new gTLDs have thin to nonexistent secondary markets.

The risk is real. New gTLDs have fundamentally thinner aftermarket liquidity than .com. The buyer pool is smaller. The .ai extension is currently an exception — riding the AI wave with genuine aftermarket demand — but most new gTLDs haven't developed robust secondary markets yet.

• ›The play for new gTLDs: Either hold until the aftermarket matures, or sell directly to end-users in that niche. Outbound sales (the same skill from the beginner playbook) become even more important here because marketplace-based liquidity is limited.
• ›The play for .ai: This is a ccTLD, not a gTLD, and it behaves differently — it has genuine, current aftermarket demand driven by the AI industry boom. Premium .ai domains are already commanding meaningful prices.
• ›Where to be cautious: Avoid obscure extensions nobody types or trusts. A premium word in .live or .shop has potential. A random phrase in .accountants probably doesn't.

What this means for you: Don't ignore new extensions entirely, but don't bet the farm on them either. A small allocation to high-quality generics in new gTLDs like .shop or .live, alongside ccTLDs with industry adoption like .ai, could pay off significantly if those markets develop — and the entry cost is low enough that you're not taking outsized risk. Just don't confuse low entry cost with guaranteed upside.

Richard's take on blockchain-native domain systems — ENS (Ethereum Name Service, which issues .eth names), Handshake, and Unstoppable Domains — was direct: "They need ICANN recognition to go mainstream — friction kills adoption."

This echoes what I've heard from every serious registrar I've interviewed. Tom Barrett at EnCirca laid out the technical case: these systems lack universal browser resolution (you need a special plugin or extension to even visit a .eth website), they risk collisions with existing TLD namespaces, they have no UDRP enforcement — that's the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy, the legal framework that lets trademark holders challenge bad-faith domain registrations — and there's no accountability for bad actors.

Elias Benger at InterNetX put it bluntly: "You need to be very big to make the other network irrelevant — and currently everything of relevance is on ICANN and DNS."

The key insight, and the one most crypto-native domain discussions miss entirely, is this: the value of the domain system comes from universal resolution — the fact that every browser on every device in every country resolves the same domain names to the same websites. That universality flows from the single authoritative DNS root managed by ICANN. Any system that operates outside that root is, by definition, creating a parallel internet that requires special software to access. For consumers and businesses, that's a dealbreaker.

Blockchain offers powerful capabilities as a settlement and ownership layer — programmability, transparency, 24/7 transferability. But these capabilities need to work with the existing DNS infrastructure, not against it. This is the core tension that the next section addresses.

What this means for you: If you've been buying .eth or .crypto names hoping they'll replace .com, Richard (and every other domain veteran I've spoken with) would tell you the adoption curve depends on ICANN integration — and there's no sign of that happening.

Here's where Richard's traditional domain expertise intersects with blockchain infrastructure — and where the conversation got genuinely new.

Doma Protocol, built by D3 Global, is a DNS-compliant blockchain designed for tokenising traditional internet domains — .com, .ai, .xyz, and everything else in the existing namespace — as programmable real-world assets. D3 Global describes Doma as the first DNS-compliant blockchain purpose-built for this function, though it's worth noting that earlier projects (Namecoin, Gateway.io/Namebase) explored various approaches to connecting domains with blockchain infrastructure. Doma's mainnet launched in late 2025, and it runs as an EVM-compatible Layer 2 (a blockchain built on top of Ethereum for faster, cheaper transactions) using the OP Stack (the open-source framework behind Optimism, one of Ethereum's most established Layer 2 networks).

The critical distinction: Doma doesn't create new domain extensions. It doesn't compete with ICANN. It takes domains that already work in every browser on earth and brings them on-chain — meaning their ownership, transfer, and fractional rights become programmable smart contract operations.

How tokenisation actually works at the registrar level:

The process begins with a participating registrar (like NicNames, InterNetX, or EnCirca). When a domain owner decides to tokenise their domain, the registrar locks the domain at the registry level — preventing transfers, deletions, or changes outside the Doma smart contract system. The registrar then issues on-chain tokens via Doma's smart contracts representing the domain's ownership and DNS control rights. The domain's registrant of record at the registry level remains the registrar (or a custodial entity), while on-chain tokens represent beneficial ownership.

This custodial arrangement raises important questions. The registrant of record in the WHOIS database and the on-chain token holder may be different entities. If a dispute arises — say, a UDRP challenge — the resolution applies to the WHOIS registrant, not necessarily the token holder. The legal relationship between on-chain ownership tokens and traditional registrar-level domain control is new territory, and the enforceability of on-chain ownership if a registrar disputes it or goes bankrupt has not been tested in court.

Un-tokenisation — taking a domain off-chain — reverses the process: the token holder initiates a withdrawal through the smart contract, the registrar unlocks the domain and transfers registrant control back to the owner, and the on-chain tokens are burned.

Doma's dual-token architecture:

• ›DOTs represent ownership and transfer rights — the equivalent of the deed to the domain.
• ›DSTs represent DNS control — who decides where the domain actually points on the internet.

A note on token standards: the specific token standards used by Doma (whether ERC-20, ERC-721, ERC-1155, or a custom implementation) should be verified against D3 Global's technical documentation. Because DOTs represent ownership of unique assets (individual domains) while also enabling fractionalisation, and DSTs represent distinct operational control rights, the implementation details matter significantly for how these tokens behave on-chain. Check D3 Global's developer docs for the authoritative specification.

This separation matters enormously. If someone tokenises a domain, they can sell fractional ownership (via DOTs) without giving up operational control of the website (via DSTs). And if a wallet holding DOTs is compromised, the attacker doesn't automatically get the ability to hijack the domain's DNS settings.

Funding and partnerships:

Doma has raised significant venture capital — a signal of institutional confidence, though not a guarantee of success. D3 Global has announced a $25 million fundraise with participation from notable crypto investors including Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures, and Sandeep Nailwal (co-founder of Polygon). Readers should verify the round size, lead investor designation, and timing against D3 Global's official announcements or Crunchbase, as venture funding details sometimes shift between announcement and close.

The registrar partners include NicNames (an early mover in domain tokenisation), InterNetX (part of the United Internet/IONOS group, one of Europe's largest domain management platforms), and EnCirca (ICANN-accredited, specialising in high-trust TLDs like .bank and .pharmacy).

Doma is not a registrar. It's infrastructure that registrars build on top of — a distinction that matters because it means the protocol scales through existing industry channels rather than trying to replace them. You'll need some ETH to interact with the Layer 2; if you're new to crypto, MEXC is one option for purchasing ETH (affiliate link — alternatives include Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance, depending on your jurisdiction; compare fees and supported regions before choosing an exchange).

What this means for you: For the first time, traditional internet domains can potentially be traded, fractionalised, and programmatically managed on-chain — without losing universal browser compatibility. This is what Richard chose for Rides.com, and it's worth understanding both why and what the risks are.

Doma Protocol represents genuinely new infrastructure, and new infrastructure comes with genuinely unresolved risks. If you're considering tokenising domains or buying fractional domain tokens, you need to understand what you're getting into.

Smart contract risk. Doma's smart contracts govern the relationship between on-chain tokens and real-world domain assets. If a smart contract contains a bug — or is exploited — the consequences could include loss of ownership tokens, unauthorised DNS changes, or domains being locked in an unrecoverable state. Smart contract audits mitigate but do not eliminate this risk. The history of DeFi is littered with audited contracts that were subsequently exploited.

Custodial and registrar risk. When a domain is tokenised, the registrar holds the domain at the registry level. If the registrar goes bankrupt, loses its ICANN accreditation, or experiences a catastrophic technical failure, the on-chain tokens may not be sufficient to recover the domain. On-chain ownership is only as reliable as the off-chain custodial arrangement that backs it.

Legal enforceability. If a dispute arises between a token holder and a registrar — or between two parties claiming ownership — which system governs? WHOIS records and ICANN dispute resolution processes don't recognise blockchain tokens as proof of ownership. The legal frameworks for resolving conflicts between on-chain and off-chain ownership claims are untested.

Regulatory uncertainty around fractionalised domains. This is perhaps the most significant open question. Fractional ownership tokens that provide economic rights in an underlying asset — the right to a share of sale proceeds, for instance — are likely to be classified as securities under both UK (FSMA/FCA) and US (SEC Howey test) frameworks. The Howey test asks whether there's an investment of money in a common enterprise with an expectation of profits derived from the efforts of others. Fractional domain tokens could satisfy all four prongs depending on how they're structured and marketed. If fractional domain tokens are securities, selling them without proper registration or exemption is illegal. This is not a theoretical risk — the SEC has actively pursued enforcement actions against token projects for unregistered securities offerings.

Market liquidity. Tokenising a domain creates tokens, but tokens need buyers to have value. The market for fractional domain tokens is nascent — there may not be sufficient trading volume for price discovery or liquidity when you want to sell.

What this means for you: Domain tokenisation is a promising innovation with real unresolved risks. Don't treat it as a guaranteed improvement over traditional domain ownership. Approach it with the same diligence you'd apply to any early-stage technology — and be especially cautious about fractionalised tokens until the regulatory picture clarifies.

When Richard chose to fractionalise Rides.com on Doma Protocol, it was worth examining what that actually means in the context of everything he'd taught me about domain economics.

Consider the maths. Richard's portfolio likely contains tens of millions of dollars in domain value. At roughly 1.5% sell-through, the overwhelming majority of that value is locked — illiquid, generating no revenue, just sitting there waiting for the right buyer at the right price. The traditional aftermarket offers one liquidity event: a full sale, typically through a broker charging 10–20% commission, with a multi-week settlement process.

Fractionalisation — the process of dividing ownership of a single asset into smaller, tradeable units — changes that calculus in theory. By tokenising Rides.com as DOTs on Doma, Richard can offer partial ownership exposure to an asset that would otherwise require a full purchase. He doesn't have to sell the entire domain. The settlement is on-chain. The market is open around the clock, every day.

How fractionalisation works mechanically:

• ›The domain is tokenised via a participating registrar, creating DOTs (ownership tokens) and DSTs (DNS control tokens).
• ›The owner retains the DSTs, maintaining operational control of the domain.
• ›A portion of the DOTs are offered for sale, representing fractional ownership stakes.
• ›Fractional DOT holders own a proportional claim on the domain's value — but the specific rights attached to fractional ownership (governance votes on sale price, share of parking revenue, rights in the event of a full sale, minimum holding periods) depend entirely on the smart contract terms and Doma's protocol design. These details should be reviewed carefully before purchasing any fractional tokens.
• ›As of now, fractional domain tokens would trade on Doma's Layer 2 network. The liquidity and price discovery for these tokens depends on the depth of the market — which is still very early.

How a full sale would work: If a buyer offers to purchase the entire domain, the process for triggering a sale and distributing proceeds to fractional holders must be governed by the smart contract. Whether this requires unanimous consent, majority vote, or can be forced by a majority holder are critical design questions that prospective fractional buyers should investigate.

This model is conceptually analogous to how REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts, which let you buy fractional shares of property portfolios) transformed real estate investing by unlocking liquidity on assets that were previously only accessible to the ultra-wealthy. But the analogy has limits: REITs are heavily regulated, audited, and legally well-defined. Fractional domain tokens are none of these things yet.

The securities question again: If fractional domain tokens provide an expectation of profit from the appreciation of an underlying asset, they may constitute securities under UK and US law. This doesn't mean fractionalisation is illegal — it means it may need to be conducted within a regulatory framework (e.g., Regulation D or Regulation A+ in the US, or FCA authorisation in the UK). The current regulatory status of fractional domain tokens is unclear, and this uncertainty is a material risk for both issuers and buyers.

Tomasso and Alessandro — the father-and-son team behind Wines.xyz whom I interviewed previously — did something similar. They fractionalised their domain so token holders can mint subdomains (like mike.wines.xyz) as human-readable crypto wallet addresses. Tomasso, who has 40-plus years in the wine industry, told me domains are a "way better asset for tokenization" than physical real estate: "You can see the website, verify the smart contract lock, check registration. No leaks, no tenant headaches, no inspections."

When you trade fractionalised domain tokens on-chain, that's a taxable event in most jurisdictions. I use Koinly to track my on-chain domain trades, and you can estimate your capital gains beforehand with our CGT calculator.

What this means for you: Fractionalisation is a genuinely new liquidity mechanism for domain assets — but it comes with regulatory uncertainty, untested legal frameworks, and early-stage market liquidity. If you're considering buying fractional domain tokens, understand exactly what rights you're acquiring, research the smart contract terms, and be aware that the regulatory environment could change rapidly.

Domain investing generates taxable income, and the tax treatment varies significantly depending on your jurisdiction and how your activity is classified.

In the UK, HMRC may classify your domain activity as either trading income or capital gains, and the distinction dramatically affects your tax liability. If you're regularly buying and selling domains as a business activity — especially if you're following the beginner playbook of registering and flipping multiple domains — HMRC is likely to view this as trading income, taxable at your marginal income tax rate (up to 45%). If you're holding a small number of premium domains as long-term investments and selling occasionally, gains may qualify for capital gains tax treatment (currently 20% for higher-rate taxpayers on most assets, with a £3,000 annual exempt amount as of 2024–25). The line between trading and investing is fact-specific; if in doubt, consult a tax adviser.

In the US, the IRS generally treats domain sales as capital gains if the domains were held as investments, with long-term capital gains rates (0%, 15%, or 20%) applying to domains held for more than one year. If domain flipping is your primary business activity, profits may be treated as ordinary income and subject to self-employment tax. Domain renewal costs are generally deductible as business expenses.

On-chain transactions — including buying, selling, or trading fractional domain tokens — are taxable events in both jurisdictions. Each trade must be tracked for cost basis and gain/loss calculations.

What this means for you: Keep meticulous records of every domain purchase, sale, renewal, and on-chain transaction from day one. Use accounting software or crypto tax tools. The cost of getting this wrong compounds quickly as your portfolio grows.

Tokenised domains are bearer assets on-chain — meaning whoever controls the wallet controls the domain tokens. This makes security non-negotiable.

The DOT/DST separation in Doma's architecture is itself a security feature. If an attacker compromises a wallet holding DOTs, they gain ownership tokens but not necessarily DNS control (the DSTs). This isn't just a technical nicety — for a business running a live website on a premium domain, that separation could prevent a complete operational catastrophe.

For anyone new to Web3, NicNames offers custodial wallet support — they manage the wallet on your behalf, similar to how a bank holds your cash. This removes the complexity of seed phrases and private keys. For high-value tokenised domains, though, self-custody is the standard. If you're tokenising a domain worth five or six figures, you want that sitting in cold storage, not on a hot wallet. I use a Ledger for exactly this.

One thing people miss: tokenising a domain doesn't eliminate the traditional registration lifecycle. Your domain still has an expiry date with the registrar. If you let the registration lapse, the on-chain tokens become worthless because the underlying DNS asset no longer exists. Set renewal reminders. Treat them like mortgage payments.

What this means for you: The combination of on-chain verification and the dual-token architecture makes tokenised domain ownership more transparent and potentially more secure than the traditional system — but only if you handle your wallet security properly and maintain the underlying domain registration.

Every guest I've interviewed in the past year has mentioned AI's impact on domains, and their perspectives converge on a fascinating picture.

Tom Barrett at EnCirca sees a demand wave building: AI is displacing white-collar workers, many of whom are becoming solopreneurs, and every solopreneur needs a brand and a domain. That's a structural expansion of the addressable market for premium domain names.

Elias Benger at InterNetX identified three forces: an Agent Name Service — the idea that AI agents will need domains as identity anchors, the same way businesses do now; vibe coding tools that lower the barrier to building web projects (more projects = more domain registrations); and a challenge — AI search engines may reduce the direct-type traffic that makes generic domains valuable.

Tomasso accumulated hundreds of premium domains over more than a decade. The results, he told me, only materialised in the last year or two as AI drove digital property awareness. His philosophy: "Foresight has value only if you execute — if you don't execute, you will be excellently executed."

Andriy at NicNames put it most directly: "The domain market never shrinks — every business, every brand needs a domain."

Richard's portfolio of single-word generic .coms — Face.com, Resume.com, Rise.com — becomes potentially more valuable as AI agents and AI-powered search reshape how we navigate the internet. Whether AI reduces direct-type traffic or increases the value of definitive brand domains is the open question. My bet, informed by these conversations, is that both things happen simultaneously: generic traffic drops, but the premium on owning the definitive domain in a category increases because AI systems will prioritise authoritative sources.

While your domains appreciate over time, your crypto holdings don't need to sit idle either. Use our staking calculator to see what your ETH could earn while you wait for your domain plays to mature.

What this means for you: The AI wave isn't reducing domain demand — it's reshaping it. The next generation of domain investors will be buying names for AI agents, solopreneur brands, and vibe-coded projects alongside traditional businesses.

The order of these steps matters. Research comes first because buying domains without understanding comparable sales is gambling, not investing. Registering comes second because you need skin in the game to learn actively. Outbound outreach comes third because that's where revenue starts. Doma exploration comes fourth because tokenisation tools make more sense once you understand the underlying asset. And Richard's discipline rules come last because they're the long-game framework that everything else plugs into.

1. Research comparable sales on NameBio and DNJournal before buying anything.

2. Search trademark databases (USPTO, UK IPO, EUIPO) to confirm your target domain doesn't infringe an existing mark.

3. Register 3–5 domains at a competitive registrar (Namecheap, Porkbun, Dynadot) — focus on generic, descriptive two-word .coms.

4. List them on aftermarket platforms (Afternic, Sedo, Dan.com) and simultaneously begin outbound outreach to potential end-users.

5. Use Escrow.com for any private sale transaction over a few hundred dollars.

6. Track every purchase, sale, and renewal for tax purposes from day one.

7. Explore Doma Protocol if you're interested in tokenisation — but only after you understand the underlying asset class and have read the risks section above.

8. Apply the 1/10th rule and the sell-through rate maths to every buying decision, and don't invest more than you can afford to hold for years.

If you already hold crypto and need to swap into ETH for the Doma L2, ChangeNOW lets you swap without creating an account.

What this means for you: You can start today with under $50. The knowledge compounds faster than you'd expect, and the community — including the Discord AMAs where I host guests like Richard — is more accessible than any other asset class I've encountered.

• ›Learn to value domains first — use NameBio comparable sales data, not gut feeling or automated appraisal tools
• ›Apply the 1/10th rule — buy domains at one-tenth of researched value to survive illiquidity
• ›Expect roughly 1–2% annual sell-through — patience is the business model, not a virtue signal
• ›Make your own market — contact businesses with bad domains instead of waiting for buyers
• ›Check trademark databases before registering — cybersquatting carries real legal consequences
• ›Use Escrow.com for every transaction — domain fraud targets beginners
• ›Explore Doma Protocol for on-chain liquidity — fractionalise, trade 24/7, skip broker fees — but understand the regulatory uncertainty and smart contract risks
• ›AI is expanding domain demand — solopreneurs, agents, and vibe-coded projects all need names
• ›Keep meticulous tax records — domain sales are taxable events, and on-chain trades add complexity