I want to share an email from my GoDaddy account representative about a change to the domain name expiry process. I believe this is going to have an impact on the auction process as well, and this should be good news for people who have called for changes at GoDaddy Auctions.

The renewal timeline will shift from 42 days to 30 days. From my perspective, it looks like this means that a domain name that is won at auction will no longer be permitted to be renewed by the former registrant. The email I received did not mention anything about the impact on auctions, so that is my interpretation of the news.

Here’s the email I received a moment ago:

I was following the Gradient.com auction on GoDaddy Auctions for the last few days, and the domain name sold for $125,001 yesterday. Because Gradient.com was an expired domain name, the domain registrant has several days to renew the domain name before the winning bidder will be able to close on the domain name and take possession of it.

I reached out to GoDaddy Aftermarket VP Paul Nicks about the auction, and he told me “this is the highest priced expired domain on our platform.” If the sale closes, it would rank as the 34th largest public domain name sale of the year in the DNJournal year to date sale report. On NameBio, you can see a list of the largest domain name sales via GoDaddy Auctions and GoDaddy’s domain buy service.

For many years, Gradient.com has been owned by a company called Gradient Resources. It is unclear why the company let the domain name expire. Because this name