Latest owner of DNForum — Epik becomes
Domain forum finds its fourth owner in five years.
Domain name firm Epik has purchased DNForum, the firm disclosed ahead of the holiday weekend.
DNForum was once the domain industry’s most active forum but was supplanted by NamePros. The forum went dark in 2016 and was subsequently purchased by George Verdugo and Kevin Faler. The duo then sold the business to Oliver Hoger, John Nguyen and Lars Lima in 2018.
One of the forum’s biggest assets is the user database, which was promoted as 535,000 users when the forum was offered for sale in 2018.
It will be interesting to see what Epik does with the site. Epik employees are very active at rival forum NamePros.
Epik founder Rob Monster gave a hint of what is to come in a post at DNForum this weekend.
Monster stated the firm is evaluating a way to make the forum community-owned using a cryptocurrency.
Another interesting thing to watch will be how the firm moderates the forum. Epik is known for taking a libertarian approach to content, counting by providing services to user-generated content platforms kicked off other platforms. In the forum post, Monster notes that it will generally use a light hand for people to link to or upload anything “that is useful in the spirit of reasonable self-governance.” While that statement is in conjunction with a comment regarding conducting domain business, this will be an area to watch.
