[CPWG] Need Advise: Tokenization of Domain Names

[Evan Leibovitch]

[ For some reason, the messages from Alexander to the list are not being
forwarded to me, I only see them when someone responds.]



Alexander wrote:

The third link „Busting Domain Name Secondary Market Myths” by my very
> good, personal friend Zak is a good example: it entirely pertains to LEGACY
> TLDs such as .com and .de: these have “quasi-monopolies”. In Germany for
> example you are literally forced (by the market and user behavior) to have
> a .de domain. Even one of the most “American” brands on the planet (one of
> the few U.S. made cars that manages to get sold in Germany) saw itself
> forced to use jeep.de – instead of jeep.com/de or something. In Germany
> you MUST use “.de” – or you look entirely stupid. That amounts to a
> “monopoly”.
>

I would say that this is a cultural exception rather than the rule. In my
experience, in most other countries the local ccTLD struggles to compete
with .com which is thought of more as an international TLD than an American
one. (Who uses .us?) When the ccTLD is stronger than average it is as often
as much of a language issue as a national one (ie. .de sites will be in
German, .br will be in a variant of Portuguese).


> Regarding any proposed “tokenization”: The legacy TLD namespaces are all
> established – nothing will change there. We are obviously talking here
> about future, new gTLD namespaces. And there you can throw all the legacy
> TLD rules into the trash bin – because when starting out, a new gTLD
> namespace has a gTLD brand awareness of literally “zero”: neither
> prospective registrants (not domainers, real registrants that use the
> domain for real websites that provide actual benefit to the user: not
> “parked sites”) nor the Internet user know about the gTLD. And mass
> grabbing of its new namespace is a severe problem that “kills” that gTLD
> brand.
>
>
I don't think most end-users care about TLD brands. It's a matter of
function; either it forwards the user to the appropriate Internet
destination or it doesn't.

In fact I would say that most end-users don't care much about domains
period, and they care less each day. How many people explicitly ask for "
jeep.de" compared to just typing "jeep" in their browser? On mobile this is
even more acute since keyboards are smaller and search can be done by voice.

“Domainers” are very proud about their business. We could start to argue
> about their value contribution in legacy spaces. In some cases, their
> activities might be inevitable. In many cases not. Example: someone reads
> in the news that a University started a non-profit project named “something
> cool” (placeholder). Then a domainer quickly registers “somethingcool.com”
> – hoping that the project will become a for profit spinout. Now a few
> months later the spinout is being formed – and ransom has to be paid for
> that domain. There is hardly ANY “contribution” by the “domain investor”
> here. It’s just plain old highway robbery. Do you support such activity?
>

There are usually options to circumvent the ransom; sometimes inelegant
(like using a hyphen, something-cool.com), sometimes adding a word (ie,
trysomethingcool.com) or sometimes using an oddball TLD (somethingcool.ngo).

I've been involved in many startups and we've never had to go to the resale
domain market. Sometimes the acquisition of an expensive resale domain is
deliberate, to display that the company is so successful that it can waste
money on a vanity domain (like transitioning from americanair.com to aa.com
).

Given how much Internet is now found through search, clickable links, QR
codes etc, the need for speculated "memorable" domains is not what it used
to be. Plus (in my experience) there are fewer companies now that define
their whole brand by their domain (ie, pets.com).

If that means that entire inventories of grabbed domains remain unsold and
losing money for speculators, no tears are shed. I find the desperate
effort to spread the risk using tokens almost amusing.

Once upon a time, stamp collections were considered so valuable that they
were part of inheritance plans. Now, nobody cares. Demand for anything
speculated can be volatile.

- Evan
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