The domain aftermarket — the buying and selling of previously registered domain names — has grown into a global business with billions of dollars in transactions each year. But just how large is this market, and why do estimates vary…
The domain name system has exploded over the last three decades. From the early dominance of .com in the 1990s, to the rise of country codes, to the introduction of over 1,000 new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), investors and businesses…
Domain names are unique digital assets. For investors, startups, and businesses, the value of a name can swing from a few hundred dollars to millions. Traditionally, pricing was an art informed by experience, comparable sales, and negotiation. But today, a…
The secondary domain market has always evolved in cycles: from the speculative gold rush of the late 1990s, to the institutionalization of the 2000s, to the maturing liquidity of the 2010s, and now into a more global and AI-disrupted era…
The domain aftermarket has grown from a niche curiosity in the mid-1990s into a billion-dollar industry. Some domains have changed hands for prices rivaling prime real estate. But how have the biggest domain sales evolved over time? This article presents…
The decade from 2010 to 2020 marked the maturing of the secondary domain market. What began in the late 1990s as experimentation and grew in the 2000s into a recognized trade, now developed into a global digital asset class. Domains…
The first half of the 2020s has been defined by rapid change, extraordinary external shocks, and the acceleration of long-term trends in the secondary domain market. The COVID-19 pandemic, the surge of digital adoption, the explosion of .ai, and the…
The domain name system now includes over a thousand extensions, yet only a handful truly matter in the aftermarket. While some extensions dominate in sheer registration numbers, others punch far above their weight in resale activity. To understand the market,…
The first decade of the 21st century was both a trial by fire and a breakthrough for the secondary domain market. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000–2001, many questioned whether premium domain names were truly assets or simply artifacts…
When the commercial internet opened to the public in the mid-1990s, domain names were initially treated as little more than technical addresses. Most were registered for free or for a nominal fee, and the idea that they could one day…