Is it actually reasonable to expect a steady $3M of domain creation over such a long period of time? AI is really trendy right now so a lot of projects are sparkling up, and even more ideas of projects… and people buy domain names for all of these, even those they won't ever actually start to build.

I would bet many of these domains won't even be renewed, and I would guess that the number of newly created domains won't actually keep up for long.

.io never went away for tech

you'd think the mobile app development bubble would have popped 10 years ago but it just kept going despite not really delivering value to most people that feel that they need one

2020's .finance is still popping in the crypto space, notably many, maybe even most of those ideas do make revenue for the creator, in comparison to a random registration on a whim that sits in stasis forever

I can see the same for .ai domains

over here .xyz is the new .io and nobody cares about the tld that much at all

if you’re relying on users to type in your domain name, or SEO, or some form of legitimacy with an equally as antiquated crowd, you’ve already failed and need to scrap the idea

In fact, unless you're selling to techies, it's dubious to operate a US business on anything but .com.

Investor value at the cost of hurting small business by increasing cost or creating confusion.

I've had a .net.au since 1999 and the same rules apply there.

People in Australia use .com.au all the time, domain.au almost looks broken to my eye.

good to know about the risks of price hikes though!

Well yes, but not one that uses the Cyrillic alphabet or has this word.

What happens when the island no longer exists? Does the country still exist? Should the .tv domain still exist?

When Yugoslavia broke up they shut down its TLD, but this would be .... different?

According to this article I found, Tuvaluans are trying to maintain their statehood and maritime rights once they no longer have land. It's uncharted territory for the UN but it strikes me as pretty likely (plus it's a bad look to not throw a bone to a country that the rest of the world played a part in destroying).

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/11/tuvalu-seeks-t...

My prediction is the TLD stays and revenues go to the entity that is the Tuvaluan government (probably based in Australia at that point)

https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/10/12/tuvalu-plans-for-i...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Tuvalu#The_cli...

Kind of a stranger fart joke, what it says is that because of the geopolitical changes the domains will be renamed. But the first one can be read as "I'll piss" and the second one "I'll poop".

Source? I've never seen this number before. I've seen 8.4% of government revenue, and ~1/12 of GNI but never 95% of GDP...

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/sep/10/business....

Then you get into British Overseas Territories (like Anguilla!) and French Overseas Departments (e.g. Reunion). Are they countries? Sort of, but not really?

Even within the UK it's tricky. Is Scotland a country? I don't think so, but a lot of Scots do.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_...

[0] https://phys.org/news/2018-02-pacific-nation-bigger.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20190326140508/https://kmt.news/...

> Why didn't ICANN just charge a flat fee for any string to resolve to an IP?

Because ICANN doesn’t control what strings resolve! They delegate to registries (by putting NS records in the root resolvers), and for ccTLDs it’s up to each country to set policy and infrastructure to taste. If anything, the existence of gTLDs (like .com) where policy is set internationally is the unusual aspect of this arrangement.

I wonder if we'll see newly formed countries angling for names that will get valuable abbreviations

Opening up registration for non-citizens / non-residents is an option each country has. Some restrict registration more than others.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_d...

There's also an important angle that countries can set the terms of service for their ccTLD to match their laws. It's one way to ensure a country has some legislative and enforcement ability over their corner of the web.

I understand the (arguable) necessity and the prolific scams, but it seemed cruel to broke teenagers.

This was also one of the only ways for a broke middle schooler without a credit card to get a cool "real" domain.

Combine it with dyndns, self-host some ancient-but-free bulletin-board software (Woltlab Burning Board may ring a bell for the European / German audience) after learning about this "Apache2" and "mod_php" thing and your small slice of internet with 10 users max is done. Good times. :D

Have this instead “How a Tiny Pacific Island Became the Global Hub of Cybercrime”

https://m.slashdot.org/story/421307

Or used JavaScript tricks to hide the ads, or redirect the outer page to an ad-free URL. I know you could do the former on cjb.net, but perhaps .tk required the latter.

.fi (Finland) was used by crypto/web3 companies during the 2021-22 hype cycle because it associates with finance (as in DeFi = decentralized finance).

.is (Iceland) and .at (Austria) are English words and can be used for cleverish domains that form sentences in URLs, as in: this.is/amazing

At least I have found what I have expected on that domain.

I'm not personally willing to gamble on the $500 price tag though

https://www.thewebmaster.com/archived/io-tld-top-level-domai...

Also, that article is wild!

In the future, we'll have a coup in some country and it will cause web chaos just from the TLD issue. (I've seen first-hand how some countries handle their ccTLDs...)

All two-letter TLDs are. Now that you know the pattern, you'll be able to identify all the other ccTLDs as well.

Lots of islands, lots of of countries with spotty international recognition, a couple countries that no longer exist (like the Soviet Union), and a couple "regions" (EU, Antarctic)

If there is some political issue and say .ai domains are taken over, what's stopping IANA from just taking over that TLD and moving the zone to some other entity? Most domains there are owned by international business and some IANA members might want to keep them running.

There have been a few disputes around certain ccTLDs, in the end it's a mixture of political and commercial interests that need ad-hoc mediation in most cases.

.cx (Christmas Island) domains were relatively common some 20 years ago, iirc because of some dynamic DNS provider.

And of course .io is the ccTLD for the British Indian Ocean territories

(For anyone who doesn't know -- don't go there. At least not while you're in public.)

Oracle.

IMO Arduino's use of the domain wasn't as famous as Creative Commons' use of the domain creativecommons.cc ... but Arduino is still at arduino.cc, while Creative Commons has moved to .org.

I assumed it was a domain created for personal sites, but it turns out its for the country.

There's the usual second level domains .co.me, .net.me, .org.me, .gov.me etc. reserved for actual Montenegrin entities.

IIRC it sort of has a residency requirement, but there are companies that will proxy your registration for you. More trouble than its worth to just not abuse the TLDs in this manner.

.nu (Niue) was originally owned by a Niue non-profit in Massachusetts, US, but was later transferred into Swedish ownership as "nu" means "now" in Swedish and lots of websites in Sweden were using it.

Felis catus is your taxonomic nomenclature,

An endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature;

Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses

Contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses.

I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations,

A singular development of cat communications

That obviates your basic hedonistic predilection

For a rhythmic stroking of your fur to demonstrate affection.

A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents;

You would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance.

And when not being utilized to aid in locomotion,

It often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.

O Spot, the complex levels of behavior you display

Connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array.

And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,

I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend.

Also, .ws (Western Samoa), which was sold as "web site".

0: https://omarkama.li

1: https://monitoro.co

I'm really quite fond of it. It's the Indonesian TLD, but there aren't residency requirements (for top-level domains). I've got the relevant `.com`s as a fallback, but I hope this sticks around without drama.

Not something to do lightly for an actively used domain name if you're an actual business, as it may establish presence in a jurisdiction you'd rather not be in; but it should be fine enough for personal use; worst case, you abandon the domain when it becomes an issue and maybe avoid travel to that country.

It’s still up, but it’s going down real soon.

Island sells web address to buy UN membership [0]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/sep/10/business....

From the documents, it looks like Tuvalu contributes $ 2,500 p/y to the Working Capital Fund (i.e. reserves) and about $ 40,000 p/y to the regular budget (which is periodically modified and approved depending on needs of the various programs, and collected yearly from member countries, with unspent leftovers returned to them).

If these look like paltry sums, it's because they are. No wonder the Gates Foundation is squarely in the top-20 UN donors.

For comparison, some of the biggest contributors are the US (55m to Working Capital Fund, 750m to yearly budget), China (38m and 500m) and Japan (20m and 220m), although the highest per-capita contributions amoung sizeable countries are Norway and Sweden.

There are no guarantees with ccTLDs and any problems that come up might be exacerbated by language and cultural barriers. Regardless, I have the .co, .me, and .io that match my best .com domain even though I'll never use them. I'd do the same for .ai, but it's too expensive.

Even the new gTLDs are iffy depending on your risk tolerance. In my opinion, the only truly "safe" domains since ICANN removed most price controls [1] are .com and .net. Also, many of the new gTLD registries are owned by Ethos Capital via Identity Digital [2] (Donuts + Afilias).

> In January 2021, Ethos Capital acquired Donuts after their failed bid to gain control over the .org internet domain. [3]

Similar to ccTLDs, I'd only register domains on many of the new gTLDs for brand protection and wouldn't use them or rely on them.

I wouldn't say to never use those TLDs, but I would use a strategy that only relies on them for shortening URLs and redirecting traffic to top tier TLDs. For example:

    somecompany.balloons --> somecompanyballoons.com

1. https://domainnamewire.com/2019/06/30/domain-overseer-lifts-...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Digital

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donuts_(company)

What a great thing for the country.

Not necessarily. The risk with any kind of external subsidy is that it may not last forever. Imagine if that happened wherever you live. Once everyone's accustomed to $0 in property tax, what would happen if you suddenly had to put those taxes back in place? Would it stall the economy if the tax burden was high enough?

IMHO, the best way to deal with windfall money like that is to put it into a wealth fund or use it to build infrastructure. That way you don't become dependent on it and, if the money stops flowing after a while, you at least have some long term infrastructure to show for it.

Which is lasting. Arguably more so than a trust fund.

[0] http://datahaven.net/

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39154380

That's more than the yearly sales Anguilla makes in total.

Many words and phrases I've looked for in the space are registered but listed as for sale. I suspect this means new sales will slow for Anguilla, and I wonder if as time passes and value drops, renewals will slow too.

[0]: https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1686148772831846402 "TLDs are almost as bad as VPNs in terms of the magnitude of trust you need to commit to another entity for your online survival. Always do thorough research before choosing a TLD."

[1]: https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1613228573015568386 "TLD registries set their own prices. PS: .io is operated by Indian Ocean Territory. Then, "In 2017, a researcher managed to take control of four of the seven authoritative name servers for the .io domain.""

[2]: https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1688603657716248576 "Every company I consult with, I advise them to choose TLDs like you would email providers, web hosts, VPNs, and ISPs! They carry heavy risks."

[3]: https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/900740252498665472 "(Note the 1500% increase in price for the .hosting TLD.)"

[4]: https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1598092186024755200 "Many TLDs are unregulated and put your business at risk"

In the meantime, at least thepiratebay.org is still up... and now that I think of it, it's a good canary for the integrity of dot-org.

TLDs kicking out unsavory websites is global and does not have any automated workarounds.

So my suggestion is always to get a TLD where you feel safe that they can help resolve any potential conflicts that might arise.

At least for important networking stuff, your marketing can be on .ai or whatever is buzzing at the moment.

There are plenty of worse choices, like using .la (Laos) for Los Angeles, .dj (Djibouti) for DJ-related sites, or (particularly prevalent on HN) .rs (Serbia) for anything related to the Rust language.

For example .de is the perfect choice if you are a German company servicing primarily the German market.

And you'd be smart to have your mobile app fall back to a backup domain if your main domain is uncontactable.

A few years ago I wrongly thought that the ai TLD no longer had an A record because of that. Grumble!

- https://icannwiki.org/.canon

- https://domainnamewire.com/2010/03/17/canon-why-would-you-wa...

com is a top level domain, yoursite.com is a domain, and blog.yoursite.com is a subdomain. All of these can have their own DNS records that resolve to things. Typically they don't unless it redirects to something like nic.tld or something.

The DNS root is .

Under the DNS root are the TLDs; com, net, org, and a bazillion other.

Then under those are domains. More or less. Some countries use for example co.tld instead of tld, and some use both.

Anyways, aside from things like glue records etc that the domain and tld owners have to concern themselves with, my claim is that for a user it is more or less the same.

If I tell you that my website is http://www.example.com/ then in theory you could do the following to resolve it:

- You don't know the IP of www.example.com so you have to find the Name Server for it.

- You don't know the NS of example.com so you decide that you should query the NS of com for it.

- You don't know the NS of com so you decide that you should query the DNS root . for it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_root_zone

https://root-servers.org/

So let's query a root server

  dig @198.41.0.4 com. NS

  ; > DiG 9.10.6 > @198.41.0.4 com. NS
  ; (1 server found)
  ;; global options: +cmd
  ;; Got answer:
  ;; ->>HEADER

  dig @192.12.94.30 example.com NS

  ; > DiG 9.10.6 > @192.12.94.30 example.com NS
  ; (1 server found)
  ;; global options: +cmd
  ;; Got answer:
  ;; ->>HEADER

  dig @a.iana-servers.net. www.example.com A

And we get the following output:

  ; > DiG 9.10.6 > @a.iana-servers.net. www.example.com A
  ; (1 server found)
  ;; global options: +cmd
  ;; Got answer:
  ;; ->>HEADER

But what I am getting to is this:

We can ask the root servers for the NS for the TLD.

  dig @198.41.0.4 ai. NS

  ; > DiG 9.10.6 > @198.41.0.4 ai. NS
  ; (1 server found)
  ;; global options: +cmd
  ;; Got answer:
  ;; ->>HEADER

  dig @204.61.216.123 ai. A

  ; > DiG 9.10.6 > @204.61.216.123 ai. A
  ; (1 server found)
  ;; global options: +cmd
  ;; Got answer:
  ;; ->>HEADER

"""

And it’s just part of the general budget—the government can use it however they want. But I’ve noticed that they’ve paid down some of their debt, which is pretty unusual. They’ve eliminated property taxes on residential buildings. So we’re doing well, I would say.

"""

https://domainnamestat.com/statistics/tld/tv-TLD_ID-1435

Cutting taxes is harder to corrupt? The removal of taxes is good because the country can't properly collect taxes in the first place?

> The removal of taxes is good because the country can't properly collect taxes in the first place?

Sure. Look at Russia's infamous 'tax audits'. ("For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.") And then deadweight losses, overhead from dodging it, stuff being driven in to blackmarkets, manipulation of tax regs (the more complicated the better) to subsidize connected oligarchs... The more nominally powerful but incompetent a government is, the worse.

However, one could hope for a bit more ambition on these matters :)

This practice is forbidden on gTLDs, but no such rule exists for ccTLDs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD4hxKkqR4E

Vince Cate sounds decent, ethical and honourable. Other people would be ripping the government off.

We should encourage URLs that stay around and discourage speculators and other squatters.

Equally true in English, though it's spelled variously -ie or -y.

Dog (hond) doggie (hondje)

The only issues I've seen from .dev is:

- It's owned by Google (opinions differ). Google owns a lot more TLDs than I thought...[0].

- Like .app, it requires TLS for web hosting (good for production, annoying for local work).

- Not all services that host DNS support it. For example, Cloudflare's registrar[1] didn't support .dev until August '23.

I don't believe the deprecation of Google Domains has any impact on the Google Registry side of things, but I could be wrong. I transferred my domain out of GD once my preferred registrar supported it.

[0] https://www.registry.google/

TLDs: meme, ing, app, day, new, soy, dev, dad, foo, mov, nexus, how, esq, rsvp, page, phd, prof, zip, boo, and みんな

[1] https://community.cloudflare.com/t/request-cloudflare-regist...

You can have an AI company with any sort of domain now. No one really cares. I bet much of the .ai surge is due to domain squatters hoping for a windfall. It's not going to happen.

I have a one-word, relevant .ai domain that I'm hoping to do something with, but I'd also be open to any sort of offer as I'm short of money right now. So I posted it for sale on various sites and gotten zero interest in it.

The days of rare, in-demand domains like sales.com or something are long gone. In fact, most serious companies want a unique name to build a brand. Which is a better long-term name, intelligent.ai or logique.com?