3 ms·

The problem here is that registrars sell domains for much less than they're worth, thus creating trade opportunities. Handshake[1] has a solution for this prob

The problem here is that registrars sell domains for much less than they're worth, thus creating trade opportunities. Handshake[1] has a solution for this problem. Each new domain, instead of being sold outright, is put up for a two-week-long Vickrey auction[2]. If registrars adopted this policy, buying domains just for parking would become much less affordable. I wish ticket sellers functioned that way. This would let artists get the true value of their tickets (which is much higher than what they're usually sold at. Ticket scalpers would also have to disappear, as real customers would be paying the true ticket prices directly to artists, and there would be no opportunity for profit. Disallowing the transfers of domains (with exceptions) is another way to solve the problem. Transfers should be allowed only when the new owner is going to continue using the domain for the same project, which is also transferred over. In all other cases, the domain would be returned back to the pool, where anyone could buy it for the normal price. A similar strategy is already used by some ticket companies. [1] https://handshake.org/ https://handshake.org/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction

prepend 6y ago
I don’t think this will help as most domains are parked for a long time, years even. So many of the two week auctions would just be bid on by few people because there’s not interest yet. I think this works better for ticket companies because there’s a temporal element and more demand.
- salicideblock 6y ago
  It would maybe help if the parkers would compete during these two weeks. This prices from the registrar would be higher and only domains with less speculative value would go into parking. Still makes it a sleazy activity IMO.
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  I’ve been watching a specific unnamed domain that’s been parked for over two decades uninterrupted, and they increase their minimum price in line with inflation over time, even though clearly no one will ever buy it (because it was temporally relevant to a small city in the 90s and has no further value remaining). It gets resold to other domain parkers now and then, which is hilarious to me since it’s so obviously worthless, but when they churn the domains to a new owner, they lose sight of that twenty-years-unsold marker. Oh well.
jfengel 6y ago
It seems like there's a risk of domain squatters bidding up the price of the object just to make you pay more. Just making a bid tips your hand that it's worth something. They can't tell if it's your cat pictures blog or your unicorn hopeful startup, but the calculation suggests that they'd nudge up the price of the former in hopes of forcing you to tip your hand that it's the latter. If there's no reserve, they'd still just buy up everything they could get for $.01. If there's a $10 reserve, at least one person would bid $11 just to make you pay $11.01 -- and setting off an arms race that raises the price of all domains, even cat pictures blogs. Is there something I'm missing? It makes a lot of sense for tickets, where there's no incentive for domain squatters to bid up the price of an item that's worth more to you than it is to them. I sure don't like domain squatters, who are the epitome of "why we can't have nice things". But I don't know how to design a system that prevents them without also putting in a lot of friction at the bottom end where intuitively you'd expect there to be practically no cost.
- quantified 6y ago
  Make the registration and renewal costs higher. Anything that is practically free is prone to getting gobbled up in the way the OP complains about.
- miki123211 6y ago
  You're missing the Vickrey auction part. It would be hard for the squatters to outbid you, as they wouldn't even know your bid in the first place. You could bid $100, but you'd only pay the second price (which could as well be $0). The squatters would either have to do either $100 per domain.

prepend 6y ago

I don’t think this will help as most domains are parked for a long time, years even. So many of the two week auctions would just be bid on by few people because there’s not interest yet. I think this works better for ticket companies because there’s a temporal element and more demand.

salicideblock 6y ago
It would maybe help if the parkers would compete during these two weeks. This prices from the registrar would be higher and only domains with less speculative value would go into parking. Still makes it a sleazy activity IMO.
floatingatoll 6y ago
I’ve been watching a specific unnamed domain that’s been parked for over two decades uninterrupted, and they increase their minimum price in line with inflation over time, even though clearly no one will ever buy it (because it was temporally relevant to a small city in the 90s and has no further value remaining). It gets resold to other domain parkers now and then, which is hilarious to me since it’s so obviously worthless, but when they churn the domains to a new owner, they lose sight of that twenty-years-unsold marker. Oh well.

jfengel 6y ago

It seems like there's a risk of domain squatters bidding up the price of the object just to make you pay more. Just making a bid tips your hand that it's worth something. They can't tell if it's your cat pictures blog or your unicorn hopeful startup, but the calculation suggests that they'd nudge up the price of the former in hopes of forcing you to tip your hand that it's the latter. If there's no reserve, they'd still just buy up everything they could get for $.01. If there's a $10 reserve, at least one person would bid $11 just to make you pay $11.01 -- and setting off an arms race that raises the price of all domains, even cat pictures blogs. Is there something I'm missing? It makes a lot of sense for tickets, where there's no incentive for domain squatters to bid up the price of an item that's worth more to you than it is to them. I sure don't like domain squatters, who are the epitome of "why we can't have nice things". But I don't know how to design a system that prevents them without also putting in a lot of friction at the bottom end where intuitively you'd expect there to be practically no cost.

quantified 6y ago
Make the registration and renewal costs higher. Anything that is practically free is prone to getting gobbled up in the way the OP complains about.
miki123211 6y ago
You're missing the Vickrey auction part. It would be hard for the squatters to outbid you, as they wouldn't even know your bid in the first place. You could bid $100, but you'd only pay the second price (which could as well be $0). The squatters would either have to do either $100 per domain.