The domain name industry rarely stands still. Every quarter brings new registration trends, changing buyer behavior, and fresh clues about where businesses and investors are placing their bets. Some shifts are obvious. Others hide beneath the surface until enough data tells the story.
Bodis gave domain investors three days’ notice. On 28 January 2026 the company announced it was shutting down its services. By 31 January it had stopped monetizing domains altogether, and it dropped its PayPal payout threshold to one cent so operators could empty whatever was left in their accounts.
Over the years, I have investigated and consulted on hundreds of domain name disputes, and a particular pattern keeps resurfacing. A business hires a web designer or developer to build and maintain its website. The developer, as a matter of convenience, registers the company’s domain name and is listed as the registrant of record. The relationship later sours over money — real or imagined — and the developer responds by seizing control of the domain name, transferring it into an account the business cannot reach, and refusing to release it until a demand is paid.
On June 30, 2026, GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) released its 2026 list of America’s Most Entrepreneurial Cities, and for the first time, the company partnered with Zillow (Nasdaq: Z, ZG) to layer housing-market data onto the rankings. San Antonio, Texas, took the top spot with 11% year-over-year business growth and 9,232 new businesses formed, followed by Miami, Milwaukee, El Paso, and Portland. Rounding out the top ten were Fresno, the Bronx, Tampa, Albuquerque, and Washington, D.C.
ICANN has announced the next major security update for the Domain Name System (DNS), and the timing matters. On October 11, 2026, the organization plans to roll over the DNSSEC root zone Key Signing Key (KSK), which acts as the trust anchor for DNSSEC validation across the Internet. [Read more…]
A new platform launched this week aims to solve one of the biggest financial risks facing applicants in ICANN’s 2026 New gTLD Program. The company behind it says the problem is simple: applicants often do not know they are heading into string contention until it is far too late to avoid expensive consequences.
