General Domain Information

Dynadot Founder and CEO Todd Han announced a new domain name sales marketplace called NameClub. Currently in beta, NameClub appears to operate independently of the Dynadot domain registrar and can be found at NameClub.com.

Check out NameClub, our new domain marketplace. NameClub is optimized to sell domains to end users. It has logos, AI powered search, installment payments, and browsable categories. Still in beta because it was vibe coded by a small team. If you like it we can invest more… pic.twitter.com/u3K0SiP1uN

— Todd Han (@dynatodd) June 23, 2025

One thing users will notice immediately is the similarity to other domain marketplaces with generated logos for its domain name sale listings. As Todd mentioned, the platform uses AI-powered search tools to aid domain discovery for buyers. The platform charges a 10% sales commission for sold domain names.

Dan.com was an innovative domain name sales platform that was acquired by GoDaddy in 2022. Dan innovated and brought the Lease to Own (LTO) offering to the mainstream, and it has been adopted by GoDaddy. In its short time in the industry, Dan’s innovations moved the domain name aftermarket forward by leaps and bounds.

With many of the platform’s features integrated into GoDaddy aftermarket offerings, Dan.com is fully shutting down on June 27, 2025. This was shared on X, along with a link to a Medium.com blog post sharing the platform’s history during its short time in existence:

To every customer, partner and team member: you made Dan․com more than a platform – you made it a movement.

As we close our doors on June 27 2025, we want to say thank you for sharing this journey with us: https://t.co/iMfGJ2aTCL pic.twitter.com/pSjOezdsNH

— Dan.com – a GoDaddy brand (@Undeveloped) June 18, 2025

This morning, I received an email from Atom notifying me the nameservers for one of my domain names was not correctly set up. I remembered to change the nameservers when I added it to Atom, so I was confused by the email. I visited the domain name, and as Atom told me, the domain name resolved to its Afternic listing rather than its correct Atom listing.

A visit to my Namecheap control panel showed me what happened. While I had correctly changed NS1.Afternic / NS2.Afternic to the required Atom nameservers, I inadvertently left the Afternic verification nameserver resolving instead of deleting it. This caused the domain name to occasionally resolve to the previous landing page instead of the new one.

Over the past several years, Hubspot Co-Founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah has emerged as a prominent figure in the domain name space. Dharmesh has acquired high-value domain names like Chat.com, Prompt.com, and Agent.com for millions of dollars. He later famously sold Chat.com to OpenAI for more than $15 million, including equity in the privately-held company.

In addition to these acquisitions, Dharmesh recently built an AI-driven domain name valuation agent on his Agent.ai platform. It can probably be billed as a work in progress, but it provides users with both a quantitative valuation along with a qualitative aspect as well. It doesn’t hurt that values tend to be on the sunny side of the garden.

To make it easier for users to navigate to the domain valuation agent, Dharmesh shared that he acquired the DomainValue.com domain name:

I’ve been a big fan of lease to own deals for quite some time. Before Dan.com existed, I had several LTO deals, but they required quite a bit of legal review and discussion with the counterparties. Dan.com made the LTO process quicker and easier, although I believe the seller takes on more risk without a customized purchase agreement. Afternic has continued Dan’s efforts, allowing for quick and easy LTO transactions.

I have LTO enabled for most of my inventory quality domain names listed for sale on Afternic. The LTO length varies based on a few important factors that I want to share below.