XYZ buys 10 fresh TLDs as ICANN consents to (some) UNR transfers

Daniel Negari’s firm expands its portfolio of top level domains.

Image of a globe with the words fresh tlds

Today, ICANN disclosed the approval of 11 top level domain transfer requests resulting from the UNR auction that took place in May of last year. Frank Schilling’s UNR offered 23 top level domains for sale during that auction.

The transfers were delayed due to concerns regarding how UNR marketed the auctions, which suggested ownership in the strings as well as an off-DNS NFT.

XYZ was named the fresh operator of .audio, .christmas, .diet, .flowers, .game, .guitars, .hosting, .lol, .mom and .pics. The firm previously partnered with UNR on some top level domains and bought out UNR’s interest in .car, .cars and .auto in 2020.

Separately, a fresh firm called Dot Hip Hop purchased .hiphop. Dot Hip Hop was the most vocal firm to complain to ICANN regarding the delay.

(Apparently, the firm purchased .hiphop following the auction. UNR stated all of the domains sold in the auction, so it seems that the auction for this domain did not go through. Also, ICANN notes that it received just 17 transfer requests from UNR, so a handful of domains don’t appear to have sold.)

ICANN stated that, for the 11 transactions it has approved, the parties made significant changes to their transaction documents with UNR.

Also on the wire