The monthly .AI expiry auction operated by the .AI registry ended yesterday. The top performing auction was Vision.ai, which sold for $100,000. There were 112 bids in the auction. In looking at the registry’s auction platform’s past sales, it looks like this is the largest .AI expiry auction, as well as its first 6 figure sale.
I was not following the auctions as they closed, but Steve Webb shared a screenshot of the final bid amount:
Over the weekend, I noticed the Micro.CO domain name was forwarding to Micro.Company. In the normal course of web browsing, this wouldn’t be surprising, but given the context, it surprised me. GoDaddy Auctions had announced that Micro.CO was included in its NameFind private auctions closing on December 15th:
Looks like https://t.co/ePiQKJvhDN was acquired by @microdotcompany. Interesting that the auction at @godaddyauctions ended yesterday and they're already forwarding the domain name. The name I won (https://t.co/4emG3LaPTX) hasn't been provisioned to me yet. https://t.co/FV8TYTi0iZ
— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) December 16, 2023
How the heck did the winning bidder manage to secure the domain name in such a short period of time? It generally takes many days for GoDaddy to provision domain names won via GoDaddy Auctions. In addition, I had won a domain name on December 15th, and it was not delivered to my GoDaddy account.
In a tweet this afternoon, GoDaddy announced that it will be auctioning some short domain names from its NameFind portfolio. These domain names will be auctioned in 7 day auctions without reserve prices on GoDaddy Auctions. These are private seller domain names rather than expiry domain names:
To celebrate the upcoming end of GoDaddy Auctions’ Beta phase, we’re adding some top-notch domains to the platform!
Don’t miss out on Cliche.com, VisitVegas.com, plus tons more, all in no-reserve auctions.
New names added daily!https://t.co/olrNSvSX8o
— GoDaddy Auctions (@godaddyauctions) December 6, 2023
I was looking through the names available to bid on at DropCatch.com when something caught my attention. In addition to seeing the “Dropped” and “Private Seller” types of auctions, there are now “Pre-Release” auctions as well.
A quick investigation showed me the source of these domain names. It would appear that HugeDomains is letting some of its inventory expire, and those expiry domain names are coming up for auction on DropCatch. Both HugeDomains and DropCatch have the same parent company – TurnCommerce.
For as long as I can recall, the minimum and opening bid for domain names in expiry auction at GoDaddy Auctions has been $12 + the renewal fee. The minimum bid amount has changed to $25 for domain names entering into auction at GoDaddy Auctions. The change was announced in a blog post on GoDaddy’s website on October 26.
Here’s what GoDaddy wrote about this change:
I had to be a soccer dad on Friday afternoon, and I missed the close of the Accelerator.com expiry auction at GoDaddy Auctions. When I returned, I saw the domain name had sold for $145,050, according to NameBio. When I clicked the auction page link, however, I saw a message that said “Auction cancelled,” which I shared on Twitter to see if someone could shed light on this:
I was following the https://t.co/xbkfsGhcnN auction at @godaddyauctions until I had to leave with 30 minutes remaining. The auction page currently says “auction cancelled” but @NameBio says it sold for $145,050: https://t.co/jADS0tev0L
I reached out to @GoDaddy for clarity. https://t.co/AhIiKV3Pyx pic.twitter.com/H8wx3nlqLR
— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) October 20, 2023
I reached out to a contact at GoDaddy to ask if the domain name was sold or if the auction was cancelled. A GoDaddy contact replied to me and told me he thought the auction is still valid and awaiting payment.
