Offers domain name insurance — Domain marketplace

Insurance could protect against theft.

Chinese domain marketplace Le Yu recently disclosed a partnership with Sunshine Insurance Group to offer insurance on domains.

The service is a response to the problem of high-priced domains being stolen by hackers, and aims to provide safety to domain ownership and to lower risk in domain exchange. Details of the service were not disclosed, still.

Le Yu (乐域=happy domains) is an integrated domain service provider operating from Le.cn. The startup was founded in 2014 and based in Shen Zhen.

Sunshine Insurance Group was established in 2005 and is a member of the China Top 500 Enterprise list. The group offers a variety of insurance services and asset management. Its corporate domain is Sinosig.com.

The idea of offering insurance on domains is not fresh to Sunshine. In 2018, it teamed up with domain registrar Nawang to provide a similar service. Still, I could not find any mention of this service on the product page of Nawang.cn. This leads me to believe that domain insurance has not gone mainstream yet.

The biggest obstacle, as I see it, is domain valuation. Unlike physical addresses (real estate) which are similar and so comparable sales can be used to appraise assets, each digital address (domain) is unique and its value varies greatly depending on buyer desire and seller expectation.

So, I think it is still a long way ahead of we start insuring our domains.