Keep Tabs on That Domain Name: Lesson from deBridge

deBridge is a “cross-chain interoperability and liquidity transfer protocol” startup that has operated on the deBridge.Finance domain name. As one might have imagined, the company pined for its brand matching deBridge.com domain name, but it did not have any luck trying to acquire it – or even receiving a reply to its inquiries and offers.

That changed this past Spring when the company was able to acquire deBridge.com in an expiry auction on NameJet. The company acquired deBridge for $50,999. In a long post on X, deBridge Co-Founder Alex Smirnov detailed the efforts he went through to try and acquire the domain name, and he shared how the domain name was ultimately acquired.

The key takeaway is that it is a good idea to set a calendar reminder to check on the Whois record for a domain name every so often. Alex did this annually, but it couldn’t hurt to check every 6 months. If a change is note – perhaps its expiration – action can be taken to try and acquire the domain name.

I have many calendar alerts set for domain names I’ve wanted to acquire. This is helpful from a market observation perspective, and it also helps me remember to follow up with domain owners to see if anything has changed with the status. In general, I won’t send a follow-up email more than once a year unless I am told otherwise, but I keep on checking.

Check out Alex’s post to see how he acquired deBridge.com:

We won the 4-year battle for https://t.co/C1RDxF3eIv

After a 4-year chase and a bidding war, deBridge has found its rightful home at https://t.co/C1RDxF3eIv. Here’s how it went down.

After raising our $5.5M seed in 2021, I tried to buy https://t.co/C1RDxF3eIv through… pic.twitter.com/LP91N2z6r0

— deAlex (@AlexSmirnov__) October 16, 2025