In a press release I received yesterday morning, Namecheap announced its upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. Of particular interest to domain investors are the sales on domain name registrations, including newly registered .com domain names.
Here are the domain name registration deals announced by Namecheap:
Namecheap CEO Richard Kirkendall shared a preview of something his company currently has under development. It is called Thunderbolt, and you can visit Spaceship.com/thunderbolt to see what the company intends to bring to the market with Thunderbolt.
Richard shared a high-level vision for Thunderbolt, with the idea being the possibility of not needing an ISP or phone service:
Namecheap is taking an additional step to help prevent abuse in its Namecheap Market. New users who wish to bid on auctions in the Namecheap Market will be required to pre-fund their accounts with $100. This requirement is an effort to authenticate auction participants to combat auction fraud. Most current users won’t be impacted by this change.
Here’s what Namecheap shared with customers about this policy change:
In an email sent to customers this morning, Namecheap announced two changes to its domain name auction Marketplace. The Marketplace platform will assign user badges to illustrate the number of domain auctions bidders have won. The badge levels are Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. In addition, when an auction winner does not pay, it will be re-auctioned rather than offered to the runner up bidder.
The rationale for these changes is “[t]o make sure the Marketplace remains a trusted platform, and to ensure that each auction is conducted fairly.”
Here’s the email I received from Namecheap explaining the changes that were made and why the changes were made:
This morning, Namecheap published its Domain Insights & Trends Report for the first half of 2023. It is a look at domain name trends and insights highlighted by the company, which is the second largest domain registrar in the world. Because of the size and reach of Namecheap, this report gives a good overview of the domain name market from the perspective of a large retail registrar.
Some of the topics in the report, highlighted in the accompanying press release, include the following:
Spaceship.com is a domain registrar launched by Namecheap CEO Richard Kirkendall. The website, which was seeking beta testers last November, launched in beta a few months ago. According to its Founder, the registrar is growing pretty quickly with more than 100,000 domain names under management (DUM):
After just a few months in open beta, Spaceship .com has now surpassed 100,000 domains under management. More than 25% of those are transfers in from other registrars. One small step…..
— Richard Kirkendall (@NamecheapCEO) July 25, 2023
