The web is running out of good names. We buy the next ones early.
Namehold is a frontier domain company. Memorable .com names are scarce and getting dearer, and founders now choose custom and frontier extensions more often than ever. Every category extension began as a country code that founders re-read: .tv, .io, .ai, and now .si. We position in the extensions and vocabulary of the next category years early, hold them with a three-year cash reserve, sell them to the companies that arrive, and publish every holding, cost and sale.
Pre-launch. The ledger opens with the first names. The token is planned and subject to legal review; nothing here is an offer.
Booming, scarce, and moving beyond .com
The market is booming
Publicly reported sales passed $244M in 2025, up 31.9%, and the first half of 2026 was the strongest on record at $146M. Those are the sales people chose to report. GoDaddy's aftermarket alone booked about $510M, and Escrow.com settled $395M of domain deals, so the real market clears above $1 billion a year.
NamePros; Domain Name Wire; DNJournal, 2025–2026
Good names are scarce
The supply of memorable .com names is fixed and shrinking. Brokers report that premium one-word .com inventory "continues to shrink, driving their values even higher". The price needed to enter DNJournal's Top 100 doubled in two years, and the largest sale ever recorded, AI.com at $70M, closed in 2025.
DNJournal, January 2025 and 2026 charts
Buyers are moving beyond .com
By mid-2025, 54% of YC and Techstars startups launched on something other than a traditional extension. .com's share of the Top 100 fell from 90 entries in 2021 to 51 in 2024 while .ai rose from one to 21. New-extension registrations grew 34% in the year to June 2026, against 5.5% for .com.
Identity Digital; DNJournal; Verisign DNIB
Country codes become categories. The aftermarket notices years later.
.tv was Tuvalu until television found it. .io was the British Indian Ocean Territory until startups read it as input/output. .ai was Anguilla, registering 50,000 names a year, until ChatGPT made it the default extension for a generation of companies. In 2026, Slovenia's .si is being read as "superintelligence": an AI startup paid $20,000 for Recursive.si in May, and after the term entered official use in September the registry added more names in five weeks than in the previous fifteen years.
.si registered domains, 2026
| Extension | Was | Became | Now |
|---|---|---|---|
| .tv | Tuvalu | Television, from 1998 | About 500,000 sites; close to a tenth of Tuvalu's GDP |
| .io | British Indian Ocean Territory | Input/output, through the 2010s | About 1.6M names |
| .ai | Anguilla | Artificial intelligence, from 2022 | More than 1M names; first seven-figure sale in March 2026 |
| .si | Slovenia | Superintelligence, 2026 | 361,711 names on 9 October 2026 |
Spot it, buy it early, hold it in public, sell to the companies that arrive
Spot
Every thesis is written down and published before a single name is bought: which extension or vocabulary, why, and what evidence exists. The first entry is .si.
Buy early
Names are registered at about €10 or bought wholesale from early holders, never at retail into a running wave. A few premium .ai and .com anchors give the book weight.
Hold in public
A company holds every registration in its own registrar accounts with registry lock, keeps three years of renewals in cash, and publishes holdings, cost basis, appraisal ranges and a dated sales ledger.
Sell to arrivals
Names are listed at fixed prices from day one, settled through escrow, with lease-to-own available. Proceeds go into the next thesis.
A fee that buys names, and a ledger that proves it
Namehold plans a token on Solana whose transfer fee funds the first domain acquisitions. The fee is symmetric and hard-capped at a rate published before launch, it flows into a timelocked multisig, and every dollar of it is traced to a purchase on the public ledger. It is designed to fund a treasury, not to pay a yield, and the plan is subject to legal review before anything launches.
- Fee
- A fee on every transfer, set in Solana's Token-2022 transfer-fee extension so no venue can route around it. The rate is not yet decided; it is published before launch, and any later change takes effect only after a public notice period.
- Where it goes
- 60% to domain acquisitions in the first year, 25% to a renewal reserve covering three years of renewals, 15% to operations, each a published percentage with its own address.
- Sunset
- The fee is removed once domain sales cover renewals. It is launch funding, not a permanent levy.
- No redemption right, net-asset-value floor or buyback commitment. Domains cannot be sold on demand to defend a price.
- No yield, APY or distribution funded by the fee. Any future distribution would be programmatic and come only from realised domain sales.
- No burns in the early years, and no further issuance after launch.
- No launch before legal clearance, a named audit, locked liquidity and onchain vesting are in place.
The ledger opens with the first names
No domain company publishes its holdings, cost basis and verified sales. Namehold will, with each figure stamped with its source and date, appraisals shown as ranges with their method, and every sale marked verified only when an escrow or marketplace reference exists.
Field definitions, the verification standard and the fee ledger that appears if the token launches are on the Treasury page.
Where we are
Pre-launch
- Company formed; legal review under way.
- Registrar accounts with registry lock and hardware keys.
- Thesis register opened with .si.
First names, first ledger
- First frontier names registered and bought below the hurdle.
- Ledger version one published, even with ten names.
- Verification page filled: entity, team, registrar proof.
Token launch
- Final fee rate and split published.
- Named audit, locked liquidity, onchain vesting, treasury addresses.
- Acquisitions in the first year, each on the ledger.
Sunset
- Fee removed once sales cover renewals.
- Ledger continues; proceeds fund the next thesis.