Blockdomains/ Showroom: 4 April 2022
Highlighting transactable top-level domain listings from across the Handshake community.
This blog has been dormant for some months. Happily finding myself now with more time to devote to Handshake, and against the backdrop of exciting TLD market activity, I plan to resume regular posts from this account. As a reminder, the goal of this blog is to highlight transactable TLD listings from the Handshake community to help buyers and sellers more easily connect.
In the interest of publishing more frequently, TLD write-ups may be shorter than in past editions. For the time being, I will compile listings/for-sale TLDs gleaned from my travels within the community. If there is sufficient traction and demand, I will reopen a form for readers to submit their TLDs for consideration. Although I reserve the right to advertise my own TLDs or to do so on behalf of another owner for compensation, I will always disclose any such arrangement clearly, as has always been my practice.
With that, let’s take a look at some for-sale TLDs!
Dozens of three-letter (3L) TLDs have traded since the week of HandyCon, with many sales in the 500-750 HNS range and others higher. Given the attention being paid to 3Ls and the quick relisting of some sold TLDs, I suspect that some consolidation in ownership is occurring, which could continue to push pricing. As longtime community member @thatnsun noted, 500 HNS is a fraction of the cost of a 3L subdomain registration on Ethereum Name Service. Whether HNS 3Ls will command similar secondary market pricing remains to be seen, but suffice it to say that I consider it a category to watch. Scrolling @hns_topsales for 3L transactions is an easy way to catch up on 3L and other trends (limited to sales 500+ HNS), and Durendil’s Nameboard is a great way to find current listings (filter 3-character length and uncheck boxes for hyphens, underscores and numbers).
Namebase Discord community member huasca/ has several 3Ls listed in the low to mid thousands. Although “x” and “z” are less common letters for words to start with, I happen to like them as the last letter of a 3L, as in the case with some of huasca/’s. I’ll be interested if others agree. Namebase make-an-offer does not appear to be enabled for these TLDs.
It’s helpful to contextualize these listings, which Nameboard easily facilitates. The screenshot below includes the lowest-priced 3L TLDs currently for sale, and readers will notice that it encompasses the 1,111 HNS listings from above.
Moving on from 3Ls, arguably the best listing featured in today’s post is preference/, which is listed for 2,261 HNS (no make-an-offer). Simply put, I think this is a pretty good noun TLD for the price. The identity of the seller is not known.
Crypto- and tech-related TLDs continue to trade frequently across price and quality levels. At the upper end of the market, dapp/, nftgames/ and nftstore/ recently traded for five- and six-figure HNS prices. TLDs such as hnsapp/, w3portal/, tokenraffle/, 0xfoundation/ and nftjunky/ traded in the three- and four-figure HNS range. (Note: for purposes of this commentary, I am intentionally excluding the recent wave of “meta-“ sales, e.g., metaspacerenter/, as I suspect that they were not arm’s-length transactions).
“0x” names (0x indicates the hexadecimal system and is the prefix for many crypto wallet addresses) seem to carry some niche popularity, perhaps similar to a vanity license plate. 0xann/ (common short name for 55 HNS), 0xmap/ (115 HNS) and 0xgroup/ (585 HNS) appear to be some of the better available specimens in this category.
netapi/ (net API) is slightly clunky but feels fairly priced at 150 HNS, especially given its short length.
dwebnamer/ at 1,500 HNS is the final crypto-related TLD to be featured today.
Rounding out the post with a couple of 20 HNS listings, keytask/ is a compact and meaningful two-word TLD, and weddingmakeup/ is perhaps worth a flyer given that the average bride’s wedding hair and makeup cost in the US is $300 (per Wedding Wire).