Yesterday, I wrote about the OpenPay.com auction hitting the $500,000 mark in auction at DropCatch.com. This afternoon, I received an email from DropCatch announcing that the auction would be restarted.
Here’s what I was sent:
Home Blog
OpenPay .com Auction Restarted – Verification Required
OpenPay.com Auction Hits $500k with 3 Days to Go (Updated)
OpenPay.com expired at the end of January. It appears to have been owned by a company called DXC Technology. Because the domain name was registered at MarkMonitor, which I don’t believe has an expiry auction partnership, the domain name ended up getting deleted. The drop catching auction platforms competed to grab the domain name, and it was caught by DropCatch.com.
.AI LTO? Cover Renewal in First Payment
A couple of months ago, I struck a deal to sell a .AI domain name for just shy of $15,000 paid over 36 months. Wisely, the first payment and downpayment totaled a little more than $2,300 before the commission fee. Unfortunately, the buyer opted to not continue with the payment plan after the first month, and the domain name was returned to me.
Having a downpayment was helpful to me because Atom.com required that I add years to the renewal to ensure it won’t expire or need to be renewed during the term. The additional renewal fee at Namecheap cost me nearly $300.
Braden Pollock Sold Temple.com for 7 Figures
Deepinder Goyal, formerly the CEO of Zomato, recently announced the launch of a startup called Temple, a neurotechnology wearable. A few weeks ago, TechCrunch profiled the company as it announced a $54 million friends and family funding round that valued the company at $190 million.
Notably, Temple was wisely launched on its brand matching Temple.com domain name. Prior to the launch of Temple, the Temple.com domain name had been owned by domain investor Braden Pollock. Whois records show that Braden acquired the domain name in early 2021. It was previously owned by Georgia-Pacific.
Track the Growth of “Prosumer” Domain Names
Earlier this morning, Nikita Bier, Head of Product at X, declared it would be the year of the “prosumer” for people working at the “frontier of AI:”
For the rest of the year, the word for everyone working at the frontier of AI will be:
Prosumer
— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) March 17, 2026
Honestly, I had to do a quick search to learn the meaning of prosumer (Wikipedia states it is “an individual who both consumes and produces.”) It’s a mashup of the words producer and consumer.
Domain Name Bought for $10: Closed 3 Deals
I want to share an interesting story about a domain name I recently owned. The three word .com domain name was originally acquired in 2021 for $10 in a DropCatch Discount Club backorder. There is nothing that stands out about this particular domain name.
For a few years, it sat without any purchase interest. It was listed for $997 on Afternic with a 10 month LTO option. In 2024, someone purchased it via LTO. They paid four months before canceling the LTO. The total payout was $338.96.