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Blockchain companies are showing interest in .XYZ domain names
Blockchain-related companies are buying .xyz domains on the aftermarket.
One of the most exciting stories in domain investing this year is that of Swetha Yenugula. She has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars building a .xyz portfolio of nearly 20,000 names, and this year she’s had record results from her portfolio.
As she turns heads with names like quest.xyz for $70,000 and flip.xyz for $28,000, I looked into her recent high-value sales to see if there’s a pattern. Indeed, it appears that blockchain companies are showing an interest in .xyz domain names.
I reviewed the past 30 sales that Swetha revealed on Twitter. 10 of them are already developed, and 6 of those are blockchain-related companies.
These six domain names are used by companies in DeFi, NFTs, cryptocurrencies, and other blockchain areas: flip.xyz, talisman.xyz, highlight.xyz, decent.xyz, agora.xyz, and demeter.xyz.
Two of the domains, scott.xyz and kenji.xyz, are personal sites.
Continuum.xyz is a site that helps creators with their freelance careers and maxim.xyz forwards to a VR site on .one domain.
Blockchain companies seem to be more willing to use non-.com domains than traditional companies. They’re also flush with money right now, so dropping five figures on a .xyz domain is not a big deal for them.
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This company’s original name was restrictive, so it made a big domain upgrade
Gem’s original name restricted its services.
With advances in technology, the process of hiring the right person for a role should be simpler than ever before. However, CNBC recently reported that job openings have soared to 10.9 million in the US as companies struggle to fill vacancies.
Many entrepreneurs have focused on the recruitment process to try to bring new software, tools, or innovation to tackle a plethora of problems that have led to this abundance of vacancies. The likes of Phenom, Lattice, and ZipRecruiter are all Unicorn companies, valued at $1 billion or more, helping to create a new experience for recruiters.
Another company that has recently joined the billion-dollar club is Gem. This software developer has produced a powerful recruiting platform that is aimed at modernizing the entire hiring process.
Gem originally launched as ZenSourcer in 2017, using the ZenSourcer.com domain name. The company was co-founded by Steven Bartel, an early Dropbox employee who was influential in growing the Dropbox team drastically, and Nick Bushak, a former Facebook engineer.
Together, the pair guided ZenSourcer to early success, with the company raising $2 million in seed funding just months after launching. Early investors included Y Combinator and Dropbox’s co-founders.
Dropbox, Slack, and Robinhood were among early ZenSourcer customers, but the ZenSourcer brand name was restrictive. Potential customers thought the company simply focused on candidate sourcing, limiting the ambitious founders, so ZenSourcer transitioned to Gem. CEO Steve Bartel told Business Insider:
“We hope with our name brand, we hope to start getting people to think of us as more than a sourcing product. The idea that we can expand our product to help companies build relationships with people over time is something we want to move towards.”
The rebrand, which was announced along with a $9 million Series A funding round in 2019, was preceded by the acquisition of the Gem.com domain name. Gem.com was originally registered in 1992 and previously used by the Gemini Facilities Core Group.
Gem acquired Gem.com in February 2019. A source told me at the time that the domain was sold for a seven-figure fee paid in installments via Escrow.com.
Since switching to Gem and Gem.com, the company has developed its product offering further and now boasts over 800 customers that have made over 5,000 hires via Gem.
In the last year, Gem has reportedly tripled its annual recurring revenue (ARR). Growth leads to growth, and the company recently announced it raised $100 million in Series C funding at a valuation of $1.2 billion.
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CentralNic acquires mystery websites for $6.5 million
CentralNic acquires website network but doesn’t say much about it.
CentralNic (AIM: CNIC) announced today that it is acquiring a network of revenue-generating websites for $6.5 million.
The company said it was already monetizing about half the websites’ traffic. The sites should generate at least $2.0 million in revenue per year and $ 1.5 million in annualized EBITDA, so it’s paying a little over four times annual EBITDA.
A press release is scant on details. It identifies the seller as White & Case Ltd. White & Case is the name of a major law firm, but it’s not clear if it’s the same company. I reached out to the law firm this morning for comment. [Update: George Kirikos found a Barbados company by this name that has been involved in at least one UDRP.]
I also contacted CentralNic’s PR agency this morning for more information about the sites and haven’t heard back at the time of posting.
With so little information about the sites, it’s difficult to put this acquisition in context. CentralNic’s advertising segment monetizes with affiliate offers as well as pay-per-click ads on unused domain names. The acquired sites could be traffic arbitrage sites or “real” content sites that require care and feeding. If it’s the latter, this would be a major departure from CentralNic’s current ad strategy.
I’ll update this story if I learn more.
Post link: CentralNic acquires mystery websites for $6.5 million
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What domains Coca-Cola and other end users bought
Coca-Cola was among the end user buyers at Sedo this past week.
NFT and blockchain-related businesses continue to buy domain names. Sedo’s top sale this week was NFTchain.com for $88,000, and it also brokered BestNFT.com for €12,500. It’s not clear who bought these domains. You’ll notice other blockchain-related buys in the list below.
The biggest brand name on the list is Coca-Cola, which bought a domain for a type of hard seltzer beverage.
Here’s a list of end user domain name sales that just completed at Sedo. You can view previous lists like this here.
Elka.de €11,900 – Elka is an access control company (think physical access like gates). It uses the domain Elka.eu.
MFA.se €8,000 – MFA is short for Myndigheten for arbetsmiljokunskap, which is the Swedish Agency for Work Environment Expertise. It collects, compiles, and communicates knowledge of what constitutes a good work environment and how that correlates with employee health, company productivity and profitability. It forwards this domain to Mynak.se.
PR-services.com $7,699 – Deutsche Plasser Bahnbaumaschinen GmbH offers train parts and repairs. I think PR is an abbreviation for its name.
PixelPix.com $6,900 – Pixel Pix is an NFT project.
Avelios.com $5,900 – Avelios Medical provides technology to health clinics.
Aiswei.com $5,799 – Aiswei is a solar power company. It forwards this domain to aiswei-tech.com.
EnergyCubes.com $5,799 – Lausitz Energie Bergbau AG is an energy company that got its start in mining and power plant operation. I wonder if this domain is for its large-format battery business.
Enclave.me $4,999 – This domain is being used for a crypto project.
BusinessNavi.com $4,995 – Accelerate Media Solutions GmbH, an app company, is listed as the registrant. The domain resolves to a page promoting BusinessNavi, a business dashboard tool.
LemonDou.com $4,900 – The Coca-Cola Company bought this domain for Lemon Dou, a chūhai, which is a Japanese drink similar to hard seltzer. Coca-Cola has been expanding the markets where this product is sold.
Black-Mamba.com $4,888 – Whois lists LM Studio, a web development shop. The domain currently resolves to a page with a Black Mamba logo and “Conseils and Communication.” Conseils is French for advice.
Crediture.com $3,750 – Crediture says it is “re-inventing financial credit reporting to be fair, understandable, and secure for everyone by tapping into the next-generation power of blockchain technology.”
Moosey.com $3,125 – Moosey Wellness offers a health care plan for pets.
Confyde.com $2,699 – Lixir LLC is a company in New Hampshire that was incorporated in August. It is in the health care and social assistance space.
Alyos.com €2,490 – Alyos Technology manufacturers stretch ceilings, fabrics and canvasses. It uses the domain Alyos.eu.
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ICANN has no problems with Donuts’ DropZone
ICANN is not concerned that DropZone presents significant security, stability, or competition issues.
ICANN Vice President, GDD Accounts and Services Russ Weinstein has informed TurnCommerce that it sees no problems with Donuts’ plans for its DropZone service. Weinstein said Donuts’ plans do not raise significant security, stability, or competition concerns.
Donuts filed two Registry Services Evaluation Policy (RSEP) requests (pdf, pdf) with ICANN for the DropZone system.
With Dropzone, the registry provides an exact expiration time for each domain, and registrars can apply for the domains at this time through a discrete EPP server system. If more than one registrar sends an application, the domain is awarded to the first registrar that submits its application on or after the expiration time.
TurnCommerce co-founder Jeff Reberry expressed concerns about the system and the precedent it could set. Apparently, Donuts intends to charge a small fee for DropZone orders. It’s unclear if the fee will be success-based or application-based.
While few people will be concerned about a fee for Donuts’ domains, this could give .com registry Verisign an opening to find a way to extract revenue from the expired domain process.
Verisign has previously tried to grab more revenue from expired domains with a “waitlist” service. The company has also patented other ways to distribute expired domains, including offering encoded backorder domains and creating access pools for catching expired domains.
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Smart Robotics B.V. tries reverse domain name hijacking
Robotics company in the Netherlands files case in bad faith to try to get domain name.
A World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) panel has ruled that Smart Robotics B.V. has attempted to reverse domain name hijack smart-robotics.com.
The company filed a cybersquatting claim against the domain name even though it was registered well before it existed. Smart Robotics B.V. also pointed to robotics ads on the pay-per-click page hosted on the domain as proof of lack of rights or legitimate interests, which didn’t help its case.
The domain name owner didn’t respond, but WIPO panelist Tony Willoughby busted holes in the Complainant’s case. He noted that Smart Robotics B.V. didn’t attempt to address the registration date issue. Regarding the pay-per-click links, he noted that all of the links were related to the dictionary meaning of the domain. Smart Robotics B.V. pointed to a case in which PPC links were used to find a lack of rights, but those links targeted the trademark meaning of a made-up word.
Willoughby pointed out that the Complainant relied on parts of the WIPO Overview 3.0 but ignored others that were fatal to its case. He wrote:
The Complaint is undoubtedly fundamentally flawed, but was it brought in bad faith to attempt to deprive the Respondent of the Domain Name or to harass the Respondent (paragraph 15(e) of the Rules)?
The Complainant is legally represented by a law firm with expertise in the field and clearly knew or ought to have known that the Complaint was doomed to fail on both the second and third elements of the Policy. Extraordinarily, the Complaint made no reference to the dictionary nature of the Domain Name, nor did it begin to explain how a registrant could have been targeting a complainant, which only came into existence several years later. In so doing it unreasonably ignored established Policy precedent as captured in WIPO Overview 3.0 of which, through its representative, it must have been aware.
The Panel finds that the Complaint was brought in bad faith and constitutes an abuse of this administrative proceeding.
Taylor Wessing N.V. represented the Complainant.
Post link: Smart Robotics B.V. tries reverse domain name hijacking
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Actual domain investor results – DNW Podcast #356
Let’s look at actual P&Ls of domain investors.
Last week at NamesCon Online, I interviewed domain investors Logan Flatt and Mark Levine. They shared their actual revenue, expenses and profits for last year and updated how their sales are going this year. On today’s show, I’m replaying that session in audio format. In addition to hearing these numbers, you’ll learn what Logan and Mark do to increase sales and their pricing philosophies. Also, you might be surprised to learn what percentage of their domain sales are .com.
Also: France.com and the Supreme Court, Epik hack revelations, Flippa dough and more.
Sponsor: Sav.com for sale pages
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, or click play above or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)
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How to buy curated domains at Squadhelp for wholesale prices
Here’s how to buy domains at wholesale prices that are already approved for Squadhelp Premium.
Qualified buyers can acquire domains approved for Squadhelp Premium at discounted prices.
On this week’s podcast, I talked to Squadhelp founder Darpan Munjal. One feature we discussed is the Squadhelp Wholesale Marketplace, where domain investors can buy domains that are already in the Premium Marketplace but at a reduced price.
I checked this out about a year ago and found the prices to be very high. But after visiting it again after our conversation, I found a handful of domains at good prices and bought two of them.
There are some good tools to narrow the list and filter out domains that don’t meet your criteria. Some of the filters I used are:
- Price range – this is the wholesale cost
- Retail price range – this is the price the domain is listed for on Squadhelp’s Premium Marketplace. You can combine this with the wholesale cost filter to find ones with a bigger delta. There’s some curation of retail prices at Squadhelp because they have to be approved at the price. So combining these two filters can be helpful.
- Age – People are pretty good at coming up with new brandable domains, so don’t completely discount newer domains. However, if you equate age with quality, this is a good filter to play with.
- Length – You can show only four letter domains or choose “medium” or “short”
- Registered by – Squadhelp has an option for domain investors to create new brandable domains and have Squadhelp register them and maintain them on their behalf. You can choose to only show domains that are actually registered by the seller or show ones that are registered by Squadhelp. If you buy a domain registered by Squadhelp, the domain doesn’t actually transfer, only the premium listing does.
The premium listing for any domain you buy transfers to your account. Of course, if you don’t want it to remain listed you can remove it.
Access to the Wholesale market is restricted to qualified buyers. You are automatically qualified if you meet certain activity levels, or you can manually apply for access if you have at least three approved and live listings in the Premium Marketplace.
Post link: How to buy curated domains at Squadhelp for wholesale prices
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Former France.com domain owner asks Supreme Court to consider case
Jean-Noël Frydman, who owned France.com from 1994 until 2018, wants the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in.
Jean-Noël Frydman hasn’t given up yet.
The businessman who registered France.com in 1994 has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider a dispute over the France.com domain name.
In 2014, Frydman’s company France.com, Inc. filed a lawsuit in Paris against a Dutch company alleging trademark infringement of France.com. The French Republic and its tourism agency, Atout France, intervened in the matter.
The French government convinced successive courts that the government — not someone in the U.S. — should own France.com. The government asserted the exclusive right to use the term “France” commercially, contending that under French law, the name “France” cannot be appropriated or used commercially by a private enterprise because doing so violates the French Republic’s exclusive right to its name and infringes on its sovereignty.
In 2018, the French government presented a copy of the Paris Court of Appeals decision over France.com to Web.com, and Web.com transferred the domain to it.
Frydman sued in U.S. court in 2018. The French government convinced the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that the French government has sovereign immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
Frydman petitioned the appeals court for en banc rehearing but was rejected.
Not deterred, Frydman has petitioned for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court.
It’s been a long fight for Frydman, but it’s not surprising given the incredible value of this domain name and the business he operated.
Post link: Former France.com domain owner asks Supreme Court to consider case
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A useful website to learn more about the China domain market
Want to dig into China’s domain opportunities? Start here.
The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) website provides useful data to help you decide how to invest for the China domain market.
Of particular interest to domain investors is the Internet Statistics section. Here, you can find English reports of surveys CNNIC has conducted on domains and internet usage since 1997. The earliest English report was released in 2012.
I’ll use the latest report (No. 47) released this year to show you some of the useful information you can get.
The Summary page at the beginning of the report is a good place to start. It highlights, for example, the following information as of December 2020.
- 989 million users accessed the internet, with a penetration rate of 70.4%.
- 782 million consumers bought goods online.
As you can see, China has great potential as a domain market. Next, study the “Domain Name” section because it gives you details about domains registered in China.
Extension Registrations % .cn 18,970,054 45.2% .com 12,630,968 30.1% .中国 1,703,082 4.1% .net 938,792 2.2% .org 145,656 0.3% .info 31,445 0.1% .biz 21,583 0.1% NEW gTLD 7,446,046 17.7% Others 89,985 0.2% Total 41,977,611 100.0%According to the table, .cn and .com are the two major extensions to focus on. If you decide to invest in .cn domains, the next table is also important.
Breakdown Registrations % .cn 16,274,907 85.8% .com.cn 2,136,939 11.3% .net.cn 285,579 1.5% .org.cn 150,474 0.8% .adm.cn 85,281 0.4% .gov.cn 17,930 0.1% .ac.cn 12,341 0.1% .edu.cn 6,422 0.0% Others 181 0.0% Total 18,970,054 100.0%It indicates that .cn has a much wider audience than .com.cn. This was not the case in the early days when direct registration of .cn was not allowed. .Com.cn was the only choice for corporate China but now .cn has taken the lead.
So far, I have touched on only a small part of the report. There is still a lot of information to digest.
If you are serious about the China domain market, I suggest downloading all the reports, inputting the data into Excel, and making charts. By doing so, you will be able to see changes in the market over the years.
Post link: A useful website to learn more about the China domain market
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Percent upgrades from MyPercent.com to Percent.com
This company’s domain upgrade shows the challenges of naming a company with a popular brand name.
Percent is a platform that claims to offer greater transparency and liquidity to anyone looking to make alternative investments.
Since forming in 2018, Percent has been through at least two other domain names before settling on the formidable Percent.com. Starting out, Percent was known as Cadence and operated on the domain WithCadence.io.
Cadence seems to be a popular brand name, with Crunchbase listing 63 companies using Cadence as their brand name, while LinkedIn displays 918 company results for the term Cadence. From a domain perspective, Cadence is a competitive term.
DotDB shows that Cadence is registered in 159 extensions, and the keyword is present in a further 5,000 or so domains. Cadence.com is also very much off the market and in the hands of Cadence Design Systems, Inc., which also operates the @Cadence Twitter handle.
Could the popularity of Cadence as a brand name, along with the unavailability of key digital assets such as Cadence.com or the @Cadence Twitter handle, be part of the reason why Candence rebranded to Percent?
Percent, in comparison, seems to be less frequently used as a brand name, with Crunchbase displaying three companies using Percent as a brand name, with a further 30 occurrences where a company’s name contains Percent as part of its brand name.
The rebrand took place in April 2021, with Percent simultaneously announcing its new brand name and its receipt of $12.5 million in Series A funding. While Percent relaunched using MyPercent.com, a name it likely purchased from BuyDomains, it ultimately upgraded to Percent.com.
Fortunately for Percent, the domain was for sale. According to Archive.org, Percent.com was listed for sale with Buckley Media, a brokerage company led by Kate Buckley. By June 2021, the domain name was being used by Percent, with MyPercent.com forwarding to Percent.com.
Domain researcher Jamie Zoch shared details of the Percent.com upgrade via Twitter, noting that Percent included a small announcement on its home page acknowledging the company’s switch from MyPercent.com to Percent.com.
Unfortunately, neither Kate Buckley nor the buyer, Percent, could share details of Percent’s acquisition of Percent.com.
For a company offering investment opportunities online, a premium domain name is a key part of the company’s foundation. Aside from Percent, investment companies such as Public, Titan, and Forge have all made important domain upgrades.
Post link: Percent upgrades from MyPercent.com to Percent.com
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Namecheap begins selling blockchain-based domain names
Namecheap is now offering 11 alt-root domains based on blockchain technology.
Namecheap has become the largest domain name registrar to begin offering blockchain-based domain names.
The company is offering a selection of 11 alt-root Handshake domain names: .p, .pgp, .sox, .elite, .ill, .saas, .creator, .oh, .oo, .oot, .orb. It says it plans to add more extensions in the future.
Handshake domain options show in regular Namecheap search results, and people can select a button on the search to see only Handshake domain names. The domains are labeled and include a tooltip to explain what they are:
In a press release, Namecheap states:
Decentralizing the web creates a more egalitarian online space where technologies power the Internet community rather than a few stakeholders. Handshake represents a shift toward decentralization, with progressive steps that help to grant users less oversight, more freedom, and enhanced security.
While it’s true that Handshake is decentralized at the top level, the implementation looks an awful lot like a typical, ICANN-based TLD to customers. They are paying annual fees for Handshake domains purchased at Namecheap. The only difference is that web users can’t visit the domains unless they make technical changes to their browsers.
It’s a risky move for Namecheap. These domains don’t resolve like traditional domains. While Namecheap makes this clear, I can’t help but think that some customers will be confused. It also sets them up for future name collisions if any of these names are added to the main root.
Companies have offered alt-root domain names in the past. The domains eventually failed.
If you’re interested in Handshake, there’s an entire Handshake track every day during NamesCon this week.
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Join me at NamesCon today
I’m taking part in two sessions today.
NamesCon.online starts today, and I’m taking part in two sessions this morning.
First, at 7:55 am PDT, I’ll join Soeren von Varchmin for the opening session, where I’ll talk a bit about the current domain name market.
Then at 10:05 am PDT, I’m leading a discussion with Logan Flatt and Mark Levine. This is your opportunity to hear from two domain investors who will divulge their full profit and loss statements. Not just tweets about making big money from individual domain sales — you’ll learn how much they’ve invested, their full costs, and how it nets out. We’ll also discuss which types of domains they are making money from (not just .com!), how they are pricing them and more.
Tickets are still available for $99.
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© DomainNameWire.com 2021. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact editor (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.
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End user domain name sales up to $70,000
NFT and blockchain companies drive several domain sales this week.
Sedo’s top sale this week was Fume.com for $160,000. It’s under Whois proxy and doesn’t resolve to an active website yet, so we’ll have to see who bought it. But Sedo had many other solid sales, including a handful of .ai and .io domains.
It’s clear that NFT and blockchain-related companies are driving a lot of sales, which you’ll notice in the list below.
Here’s a list of end user domain name sales that just completed at Sedo. You can view previous lists like this here.
Collecting.com $70,000 – Collecting Cars sells antique cars, collectible cars, car parts and memorabilia. It forwards this domain to its site at CollectingCars.com.
eHab.com $49,999 – HealthSouth runs the Encompass Health rehab facility in Alabama. Maybe this is for an online rehab service?
Radius.ai $21,500 – Radius AI says it uses “AI powered computer vision to make your space more profitable and productive.” It forwards this domain to RadiusAI.com.
BestNFTs.com €11,000 – The buyer is setting up a site that reviews NFTs and various NFT marketplaces/services.
Daylight.io $10,000 – Daylight Automation Inc. offers a no code solution for data-intensive workflows.
Carebot.com $7,222 – Carebot offers a system to doctors that helps detect lung anomalies.
Embedded.ai $6,000 – Embedded AI develops algorithms.
Rooflink.com €5,000 – Rooflink’s site is still under development but it seems like it’s some sort of service for roofing companies. Update: yes, it sells software to roofers. And this appears to be an upgrade from roof.link.
Lolo.co €4,490 – Lolo Company offers a low code way to build global programmable networks and data streams across IP and mobile infrastructure. It uses the domain loco.company.
ML77 .com $4,357 – This is an online gaming site.
Veralabs.com $4,000 – Veralabs is an NFT service.
iLive.de €3,750 – This domain forwards to i-Live.de. I’m having trouble understanding what it does, but it’s some sort of residential development company.
Pixelmine.com $3,250 – Pixelmine offers icons for Minecraft servers.
RMG.io $2,999 – Rainmaker Games says it’s “an organization founded in the metaverse, built on blockchain and brought together by Play To Earn.”
OneCommon.com $2,300 – One Common is an online store with an eclectic mix of goods including clothing and craft cocktail ingredients.
Trials.net $2,203 – This domain forwards to MyTrial.com, the site for a new business that says “Better Clinical Trials – Where patients, providers, and researchers discover new treatments together.”
Post link: End user domain name sales up to $70,000
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Flippa raises $11 million Series A
An old name in the domain name business gets a big cash infusion.
Website marketplace Flippa has raised an $11 million Series A round over a decade after it was founded.
Flippa lets people buy and sell online businesses, and was doing it since before it was cool. I visited the company’s headquarters in Melbourne way back in 2012.
The service has had its ups and downs over the years. And like any business this age, you can expect some business model changes over time. Flippa added support for domain name sales a while back and even made an ultimately unsuccessful acquisition of a domain brokerage.
These days, there’s lots of competition in the website brokerage business. Much of it is in the form of brokerages and M&A groups specializing in online businesses.
Flippa has a laundry list of action items for its new cash, including expanding beyond websites and apps. In a blog post announcing the raise, CEO Blake Hutchinson states, “We will soon help you to trade ANY and EVERY digital asset type of ANY size. ” One would assume that could include another crack at the domain name aftermarket.
Post link: Flippa raises $11 million Series A
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Categories: Domains
Domaining.com owner wins RDNH in cybersquatting dispute
Francois Carrillo successfully defended his valuable nuro.com domain with help of attorney John Berryhill.
Francois Carrillo, owner of the popular domain news aggregator Domaining.com, has successfully defended (pdf) his domain name nuro.com in a UDRP. The Complainant was also found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.
Canadian healthcare company NURO Corp. filed the UDRP. The company was incorporated in 2017. Carrillo acquired the domain name in 2015, so this case was dead on arrival on the issue of bad faith.
The panel found that the domain was not registered and used in bad faith. Oddly, it did not find rights or legitimate interests for Carrillo, which I think was a mistake. But the most important thing is that the panel decided the overall case correctly and also found NURO Corp. guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.
Many panels are hesitant to find a Complainant that is not represented by outside counsel to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking. But in this case, it was clear that the Complainant had access to outside counsel when filing its case.
The panel found reverse domain name hijacking because the Complainant filed the case even though the facts demonstrated the complainant knew it could not succeed on the issue of bad faith registration and use.
John Berryhill represented Carrillo.
Post link: Domaining.com owner wins RDNH in cybersquatting dispute
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Takeaways from the Epik hack call
A call that starts with a discussion about the Epik hack covers lots of ground and sometimes goes off the rails. Here are some of my takeaways.
Rob Monster in a live meeting last Thursday. Photo from video still.
On Thursday, September 16, Epik CEO Rob Monster held a live meeting on his platform PrayerMeeting.com in the wake of the hack of his company.
Nearly four hours of the meeting is recorded and available on YouTube. It has also been transcribed.
I read through the entire transcript. It went off the rails at times. Consider this exchange, per the transcript:
Catgod [holds a gallon-sized bag of marijuana up to the camera] You see that demons? You see that demons? God has given me, he’s just given me [crosstalk]
C What you smoking on, Catgod?
Catgod Got some A1 Yolo, got some Cherry Lime Rickey.
Monster, 3:15:57 That’s funny.
Catgod But all them demon n*****s, He’s just giving them reggie.
HF [holding vape] NYC Flow.
Monster, 3:16:06 Um, gosh guys.
Gosh guys, indeed.
Twice during the call, Monster broke into prayer to cast away demons. But Monster said he also thinks Epik will be better after the hack because God will repay the company:
Monster, 2:54:42 I think that Jesus basically allows evil to happen because he gives us free will. But I think that in the end he transmutes evil so when there’s injustice… and it’s repaid sevenfold. So this hack could happen, it’s going to actually repay Epik with a bounty sevenfold. That’s God’s… [noise from other participant, unintelligible] …but when Satan overplays his hand, does something really stupid, then the Lord transmutes that into good.
Here are some takeaways and other thoughts from reviewing the transcript:
Shitty code
Monster admitted that there was some “shitty Russian code” that came from acquisitions. He said the code stemmed from the acquisition of Intrust Domains in 2011.
Monster, 0:35:56 [reading chat. Full comment from “JP”: “I’m upset at the security incident at Epik, but my anger isn’t towards Rob specifically, he’s just human.”] “upset at the security incident at Epik but my anger isn’t towards Rob…” Yeah no, thank you, I appreciate that, JP. Yeah we… we did not nail that one. I think quite candidly that was some serious weak code, like hard-coding API keys… just weak sauce. And in reality, like I said earlier in the call, our top engineers mostly hadn’t seen that code because it was kind of blackboxed, behind a firewall, separate git repository, and not part of the Epik git. And that might sound surprising… [pauses to blow nose] sorry, I have a cold… considering that we’re like a registrar, but that’s basically because of the history of how that company became part of Epik. It was an acquisition, it is a captive dev team, and I’ve operated with that group to a large extent on the basis of trust. They’re good people, they’re honorable people, ethical, responsible people, but their coding methods and frameworks are not up to standard, and they’ve pretty much handed over all the keys to two top guys, Justin Tab, David Roman. And they’re they’re doing a great job diving into the code. And there were some very unpleasant discussions, very heated conversations, because some of the team hadn’t seen the code until until it was exposed. That might sound a little bit crazy but you have to keep in mind that we’ve grown really quickly around a core registrar, and if you want to know the history, I’ll tell you a story. You guys mind a digression? I’ll tell you a story…
Rob then tells the story about how he left DigitalTown and doubled down on Epik in August 2018 after he gets “absolute clarity that the Lord is going to need a registrar”.
Monster draws a line on free speech
Monster is clearly not a free speech absolutist. Epik has taken content down. Live during the call, he took down a site that had been spreading information and doxxed one of the callers. It’s also worth noting that he made a Texas anti-abortion group take down a site that asked people to submit information about people getting abortions.
This brings up an interesting point. Monster draws a line, and it’s a line somewhere in his philosophy and mind. Other people draw the line elsewhere, but Monster calls this deplatforming and unfair. So really, nearly everyone believes in free speech up until a point. And if their point is less restrictive than someone else’s, they call it censorship and deplatforming.
Monster elaborated on drawing the line:
We had two board directors, they were both Jewish they both resigned because of the Gab stuff I think was too hot. Then after the 8chan thing, it was a client for two days and we let them go. But it’s not easy running Epik, right? You have to understand. Trying to thread the needle on what’s lawful free speech is not an easy task. The decision tonight to turn off Joey’s site [the doxxing site] is not a light decision.
Epik apparently raised a lot of dough this year
Monster says the company raised $32 million from a billionaire in June of this year.
I think the Swastika guy interaction has been taken out of context
Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t defend Monster on one thing. I saw some chatter on Twitter about a guy with a Swastika showing up to the meeting, and Monster saying, “Much love to you.” If you read the totality of the conversation, it’s clear that Monster doesn’t approve of this person’s actions and rhetoric.
Post link: Takeaways from the Epik hack call
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SC Johnson terminates remaining dot-brand top level domains
SC Johnson turns .off its new top level domains.
Consumer products company SC Johnson has told ICANN it wishes to terminate the remainder of its dot-brand top level domain names.
Last year, the company terminated its agreement for the .rightathome top level domain. Now, it has informed ICANN that it wishes to terminate .glade, .scjohnson, .afamilycompany, .off, .raid and .duck.
Glade is a brand name for air freshener, Off is an insect repellent, Raid is an insect killer, and Duck is a cleaning product.
It does not appear that SC Johnson used any of the top level domain names.
Given the generic nature of some of the strings, it’s possible that another company might be interested in picking up the mantle and would likely pay SC Johnson to do so. But that might not be worth the company’s effort.
Post link: SC Johnson terminates remaining dot-brand top level domains
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Epik breach: credit card woes, Whois data
Credit card exposure from breach could have a major impact on customers.
Credit card data, which apparently includes CVV data, was exposed in the Epik breach.
I’ve been writing a lot about the Epik security breach, and you can expect to hear a lot more in the coming weeks as more details come out.
Yesterday, I published an email from Epik stating that it might be worth taking precautionary measures with credit card data. If you’ve ever bought anything online, this isn’t the end of the world. Numbers get stolen all of the time, even from the biggest retailers. But in Epik’s case, it appears that the company was storing CVV codes as well, which is a big no-no. These are the three and four-digit codes that are usually on the back of the card that are used for verification. Merchants are supposed to only use it for authorization and not store the number.
The other big news is that a bunch of scraped Whois records of non-customers were included in the breach. I have a couple of thoughts about this.
First, you should understand the history of Epik. The company entered the domain registrar business with the acquisition of Intrust Domains in 2011. Intrust was notorious for spamming people to sell them expiring domains. And, although Epik told me at the time that it didn’t acquire the email marketing part of Intrust, Epik itself was known for trying to sell domains via unsolicited email. (In a public video chat about the hack, Epik CEO Rob Monster confirmed that the early code base it acquired from Intrust was built on “shitty Russian code”, and that some of it is still in production.)
So it’s no surprise that the company has lots of Whois data. In fact, I wonder if it has a lot more than what was breached. Last year, Epik’s VP of Communications threatened people who were saying bad things about Epik by writing, “I am one of few individuals on this planet with the capacity to email 300 million people in fifteen seconds, with a full media agency and PR firm behind me.” I have no idea where that email data he referred to comes from and where it is stored.
Is the exposed Whois data a big deal? Yes and no. On the one hand, all of this data was public and probably scraped by plenty of spammers. On the other hand, this data can easily be used to spam people now. And certainly, people are going to be upset that their data was re-exposed by a company they’ve never heard of, so it’s going to be another large headache for the domain registrar as it works through recovering from the hack.
Post link: Epik breach: credit card woes, Whois data
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Selling more geo domains – DNW Podcast #355
Can SquadHelp crack the geo domain sales code?
Can SquadHelp crack the code to help you sell more geo domains? On today’s show, SquadHelp CEO Darpan Munjal discusses the company’s plans to help you sell more domains like LosAngelesSiding.com and AustinAllergists.com. We also get an update on lots of new features that should help you sell your domains.
Also: An Epik hack, “keeping” domains, record-breaking sale, and more
Sponsor: Dan.com API Partner Program
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, or click play above or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)
Post link: Selling more geo domains – DNW Podcast #355
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