Hacker News Reader

Comment by mslev | Hacker News Reader

Me: "Wow [myfirstname].dev is available! I gotta get it!"

Aaaaaaand its $11,500.

Yeah, it's a Dutch auction. This is the first price step, so everything costs that much today, even adgfhjklhajklsdfghaksdfasdf.dev. The price will go down according to the schedule, and it'll be bought when someone is willing to pay that much for it.

The rich get first pick. How very capitalist.

Actually it seems fairer than a traditional auction, since there is no chance of a bidding war.

The auction isn't designed to be fair for all, it's designed to allocate domains efficiently (in the economic sense).

Mr. mslev does not consider [hisfirstname].dev to be worth $11k, so he will not buy it yet. But someone else might consider [hisfirstname].dev to be worth $11k, so they will buy it. However, if nobody else values [hisfirstname].dev much, then Mr. mslev will buy it when it costs $12 (or earlier, if he thinks it's worth more).

So domain XYZ.dev is given to whoever values having XYZ.dev the most. And yes, people need money to demonstrate that they value it so much.

This also helps prevent domain squatting. I would love to buy asdf.dev and apple.dev and facebook.dev and hello.dev. apple.dev and facebook.dev would be worth it even at $11k because you could resell them to the actual companies, but laws effectively prevent this. However, I would not want to buy asdf.dev and hello.dev at $11k unless I know I could resell them for more than $11k. If I could resell them for more than $11k, that means someone else (the buyer) would buy it right now at $11k.

If everything was $12, bad guys would buy up asdf.dev and hello.dev and everything they could get their hands on, but now that's not a valid strategy unless asdf.dev and hello.dev are actually worth that much (or you'll lose money reselling them). And if they are worth $xxx, they will get bought at auction when the price drops to $xxx.

Speed will still win (buy valuable-name.dev at the crack of dawn when auction begins, before anyone else has a chance to, and resell it within hours), but hoarding domains long-term is no longer an effective strategy.

Exactly. The alternative of not doing a Dutch auction at launch is much worst; valuable names end up in the hands of squatters who are perfectly happy to sit on many names that remain unused so long as they can sell a few at exorbitant prices. The average non-squatter registrant is better off with EAP and premium prices, as the prices you pay during EAP are lower than what a squatter would try to get out of you for the same domain.

It's much more fair this way. If domains were cheap right away, bots would buy all them up. This gives people the chance to buy a domain- this round is more for businesses, but future rounds in the hundred of dollars will be better for the average person.

How can it be called fair at all when only the rich get first pick?

> If domains were cheap right away, bots would buy all them up.

No. Bots would buy them all up if bots were allowed to buy them all up. It's laughably easy to prevent bots from buying domain names if you don't want bots to buy domain names.

> This gives people the chance to buy a domain

This gives rich people/businesses the chance to buy a domain.

> future rounds in the hundred of dollars will be better for the average person.

After the rich have had their pick. Again, I don't see how you can with a straight face call this fair.

Here's a suggestion: Offer domains to all humans who can pay a reasonable non-refundable application fee. Block bots. When a domain receives more than one offer, randomly assign it to an applicant. Block domain transfers permanently to prevent squatters. Let any domain that isn't renewed fall back into the pool and become available (again to a randomly assigned new owner).

I'm sure there are pitfalls doing it this way, but it took me a minute to come up with that. A few hours of thought, some robust debate, and I'm certain we can come up with a fairer way to assign domain names.

> It's laughably easy to prevent bots from buying domain names

That's where you are wrong.

Mine is not available either and I doubt someone paid $11,500 for an Italian name with the dev extension. How come? My guess is some providers are "reserving" them.

Which is exactly why I won't check on any domains I want until I'm ready to buy them: I don't need a "domain taster" locking them up for profit.

You can just use whois.

Yeah, real WHOIS (like from the command line, not one of those sites that proxies it for you). That'll go direct to our registry application, bypassing all registrars entirely.

Try to register through Gandi. They give you options that decrease in price all the way down to ~$16 -- that's the "get it when it GAs" price. If someone scoops it up before you, you're refunded. Otherwise, it's yours.

I managed to get <lastname>.dev, and it's a somewhat common last name, for $133.50 on the "GA" pricing. I expect someone will grab it before then. But if not...

Nah, it says "Unavailable" on Gandi. It seems that somebody paid full price, although it is not operative => mauricio.dev

Unfortunately, 'mauricio' is on the global domain reserve list administered by ICANN, so it cannot be registered on any ngTLD. I believe it's Mauritius in another language?

Oh, interesting, yes this is "mauritius" in Spanish a not so common name. I didn't know this, thank you for pointing it out. I guess that list is recent as mauricio.com and mauricio.co belongs to regular people and are currently working.

Do you happen to have a link to said list? A quick googling returned nothing relevant for me.

I believe item #3 on this page is relevant:

https://www.icann.org/resources/country-territory-names#rese...

Yeah that's it, it's Mauritius in Spanish apparently.

ICANN definitely went overboard on these required reservations, but of course we have no choice but to comply.

.com is a legacy gTLD, which existed long before these restrictions were codified in 2012 for the new gTLD program. .co is a ccTLD (it's for Colombia), and ccTLDs also predate the gTLD program and are not subject to the gTLD program restrictions besides.

It'll be 12$ on get.dev once it hits GA.

I looked up [firstname].dev and it says even in GA it will be $360/yr because it is a premium name.

Just wait a week. If it is still available on the 28th it will be $12

"Vamoose, provincial. These are not your lands."

Same experience, huge turn-off. I was hoping for `.dev` to be free and along the lines of letsencrypt.org. Very disappointed

The huge problem with free domain names is the unfathomable amount of abuse, phishing, scamming, etc., that they are used to perpetrate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com