- By Namefi Team
301 Redirect (Permanent Redirect)
An HTTP status telling browsers and search engines that a page has permanently moved to a new URL.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
ICANN-Accredited Registrar (RAA)
A registrar approved by ICANN under a Registrar Accreditation Agreement to sell gTLD domains.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
ACPA (Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act)
A US law letting trademark owners sue cybersquatters in federal court, an alternative to the UDRP.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Aftermarket (Secondary Market)
The resale market for already-registered domains, where names are bought and sold between owners.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Anchor Text
The visible, clickable words of a hyperlink, a signal search engines use to understand the target.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Backorder (Drop-Catching)
A service that tries to register a domain the instant it drops, so you can claim an expiring name.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Bad Faith (UDRP Element)
Registering or using a domain to exploit a trademark, a required element to win a UDRP case.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
BGP Hijack
Rerouting internet traffic by falsely announcing IP routes, a network-layer attack that sits below DNS.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Blockchain
A shared, append-only ledger maintained across many computers, the foundation of tokenized ownership.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Brandable Domain
A short, catchy, often invented name that works as a memorable brand, like a made-up word.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Buy-Now (BIN) vs Make-Offer
Two ways to price a listing — a fixed instant price, or inviting buyers to negotiate an offer.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
ccTLD (Country-Code Top-Level Domain)
A two-letter top-level domain assigned to a country or territory, such as .uk, .de, or .jp.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Comparable Sales (Comps)
Past sales of similar domains used as benchmarks to estimate what a name is worth.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Bridge (Cross-Chain)
A protocol that moves tokens or messages between blockchains that cannot natively talk to each other.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Cybersquatting
Registering a domain matching someone else's trademark in bad faith, hoping to profit from it.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
DNS Hijacking (Spoofing, Cache Poisoning)
Redirecting a domain's traffic by tampering with DNS resolution rather than its registration.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
DNS Propagation
The delay before a DNS change is seen everywhere, as cached old records expire across resolvers.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
DNS Record Types (A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT)
The entries in a zone that map a domain to addresses and services — A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT, and more.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
DNS Resolver (Recursive Resolver)
The server that takes a domain lookup and walks the DNS hierarchy to return the matching address.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Domain Appraisal (Valuation)
Estimating a domain's market value from comparable sales, keyword demand, length, and extension.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Backlink / Domain Authority
A reputation signal estimating how well a domain ranks, driven largely by quality inbound links.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Domain Broker (Brokerage)
An intermediary who negotiates a domain sale between buyer and seller, usually for a commission.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Domain Expiration
The date a domain's registration ends; if not renewed, it begins a lapse process toward deletion.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Domain Financing (Installment)
Paying for a domain over time in installments instead of a single upfront sum.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Domain Forwarding (301 Redirect)
Sending visitors from one domain automatically to another address, often via a 301 redirect.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Domain Hack
A name that spans the dot to spell a word using the TLD, like del.icio.us or examp.le.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Domain Hijacking
The theft of a domain by gaining unauthorized control of its registrar account or registration.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Landing Page (Lander)
The single page shown on a parked or for-sale domain, often with ads, search, or a purchase offer.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Liquidity
How quickly a domain can be sold near its estimated value — high for great names, low for niche ones.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Domain Parking (Parked Domain)
Placing ads or a for-sale notice on an undeveloped domain to earn revenue or signal availability.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Domain Portfolio
A collection of domains held by one owner, managed as an investment with renewals, sales, and valuation.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Domain Renewal (Auto-Renew)
Paying to extend a domain's registration before it expires, often automatically each term.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Domain Tasting (AGP)
A largely defunct tactic of registering domains then cancelling within the free add-grace period.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Domain Theft
The unauthorized transfer of a domain out of its rightful owner's control, often via account compromise.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Domaining (Domainer)
The practice of investing in domain names — registering, buying, and selling them for profit.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
End User
A buyer who wants a domain to actually use for a business or project, not to resell it.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
EPP Status Codes (clientHold, …)
The standardized flags on a domain that show its state — locked, on hold, pending transfer, and more.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
EPP (Extensible Provisioning Protocol)
The standard protocol registrars use to register and manage domains with a registry.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
ERC-20 (Token Standard)
The Ethereum standard for fungible tokens like stablecoins, complementing the ERC-721 NFT standard.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Ethereum (ETH)
The leading smart-contract blockchain, and the network most tokenized domains are issued on.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Exact-Match Domain (EMD)
A domain that exactly matches a search keyword, like besthotels.com, once highly prized for SEO.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Grace Period
A short window right after a domain expires when you can still renew it at the normal price.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
gTLD (Generic Top-Level Domain)
A top-level domain not tied to a country, such as .com, .org, or .xyz, run under ICANN contract.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Holding / Carrying Cost
The ongoing renewal fees an investor pays to keep a domain until it sells.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority)
The function that maintains the DNS root zone and allocates IP address blocks and protocol numbers.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) / Punycode
A domain using non-ASCII characters, encoded for DNS as ASCII Punycode beginning with xn--.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
IP Address (IPv4 / IPv6)
The numeric address that identifies a device on a network, which DNS maps a domain name to.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
IPFS (InterPlanetary File System)
A peer-to-peer protocol that addresses files by their content, used to host decentralized web data.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Keyword Domain
A domain built around a valuable search keyword or phrase, valued for descriptive clarity.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
KYC / AML
Know Your Customer and Anti-Money-Laundering checks that verify identity in regulated crypto services.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Layer 2 (Rollup)
A network built on top of a blockchain to make transactions faster and cheaper, like Base on Ethereum.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Lease-to-Own
Acquiring a domain through recurring payments that build toward full ownership, a sibling of rent-to-own.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Minting (Mint)
Creating a new token on a blockchain — for a domain, issuing the NFT that represents its ownership.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Nameserver (NS Record)
A server that answers DNS queries for a domain; its NS records name the authoritative servers.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
New gTLD
A generic top-level domain introduced by ICANN's expansion program, such as .app, .xyz, or .shop.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Pending Delete (Drop)
The final status before an unrenewed domain is released back to the public for registration.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Phishing
Tricking people into revealing credentials or funds via fake sites and messages that impersonate trusted brands.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
PPC (Pay-Per-Click)
An ad model where the owner earns each time a visitor clicks an ad, used to monetize parked domains.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Premium Domain
A high-value domain priced above standard rates for its memorability, brevity, or keyword strength.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Private Key / Public Key
The cryptographic key pair behind a wallet — the public key receives, the private key authorizes.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Redemption Period (RGP)
A post-expiration window where a lapsed domain can be recovered, usually for a steep redemption fee.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Registrant
The person or organization that holds the rights to a registered domain name — the owner of record.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Registry Lock
A high-security service where the registry freezes a domain so changes need manual out-of-band approval.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Registry (Registry Operator)
The organization that runs the master database for one or more TLDs and sets their wholesale pricing.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Reseller
A company that sells domains under a larger registrar's accreditation rather than holding its own.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Reserve Price (Minimum Offer)
The lowest price a seller will accept, often hidden, below which an offer or auction bid is rejected.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Reserved Names (Blocked Names)
Domains a registry withholds from open registration, such as premium, policy, or protected labels.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Reverse Domain Hijacking (RDNH)
Abusing the UDRP in bad faith to try to seize a domain from its legitimate owner.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Root Zone (Root Servers)
The top of the DNS hierarchy, listing every TLD and the servers authoritative for it.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Second-Level Domain (SLD)
The label directly left of the TLD — the "example" in example.com — the part you actually register.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Sell-Through Rate (STR)
The share of a domain portfolio that sells in a given period — a key liquidity metric for investors.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
The page of results a search engine returns for a query, where domains compete for visibility.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Short / Numeric Domain (LLLL, NNNN)
Very short domains — three to four letters or all-digits — prized for brevity, especially in some markets.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Subdomain
A prefix added to a domain to create a separate address, such as blog.example.com or app.example.com.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
TLD SEO Impact
How a domain's extension does and doesn't affect search rankings — content and links matter more.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Trademark Clearinghouse (Sunrise)
ICANN's central trademark database powering Sunrise pre-registration and brand claims in new gTLDs.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Tokenized Domain
A real DNS domain whose ownership is represented as a blockchain token you hold in a wallet.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Trademark
A legally protected mark identifying a brand's goods or services, central to many domain disputes.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Registrar / Transfer Lock
A status that blocks a domain from transferring to another registrar until it is explicitly unlocked.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
TTL (Time to Live)
How long, in seconds, a DNS record may be cached by resolvers before it must be looked up again.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Type-In Traffic
Visitors who reach a site by typing a guessed domain directly, the basis of domain parking revenue.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Typosquatting
Registering misspellings of popular domains to catch mistyped traffic, often for ads or phishing.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
URS (Uniform Rapid Suspension)
A fast, low-cost remedy that suspends a clearly infringing domain, complementing the UDRP.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
WHOIS Privacy (Privacy Protection)
A service that masks a registrant's personal contact details in public WHOIS or RDAP records.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Wholesale vs Retail Pricing
The gap between the low price investors pay each other and the higher price an end user pays.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization)
The UN agency whose arbitration center decides many UDRP domain-name disputes.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Zone File (Glue Record)
The text file holding all the DNS records for a domain, including glue records for its nameservers.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
AI Agent
Software powered by an AI model that acts on a user's behalf — making purchases, calling APIs, and increasingly transacting with other agents.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Auth Code (EPP Code, Transfer Code)
A short per-domain secret a registrar issues to authorize moving a domain to another registrar, also called an EPP code or transfer code.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
DeFi (Decentralized Finance)
Decentralized Finance offers lending, borrowing, and trading through smart contracts on public blockchains, without banks or brokers as intermediaries.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions)
Cryptographic signatures on DNS records that let resolvers verify a response is authentic and was not forged or tampered with in transit.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
ENS (Ethereum Name Service)
The Ethereum Name Service maps human-readable names like alice.eth to wallet addresses and records, managed entirely by on-chain smart contracts.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
ERC-721 (NFT Standard)
The Ethereum standard interface for non-fungible tokens that lets wallets and marketplaces handle any unique token, including tokenized domains, alike.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Gas (Transaction Fees)
The fee paid to process a transaction on a blockchain, priced in the network's native asset and rising with congestion; Layer 2s charge far less.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Hardware Wallet
A dedicated offline device that stores a wallet's private keys and signs transactions on-device, so the keys never touch an internet-connected computer.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Seed Phrase (Recovery Phrase, Mnemonic)
A list of 12 or 24 words that encodes a wallet's master key; anyone holding it controls the wallet, so it is the one thing you must back up.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Stablecoin
A cryptocurrency designed to hold a steady value against a reference like the US dollar, used to pay and settle without crypto price volatility.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
TLD (Top-Level Domain)
The Top-Level Domain is the rightmost part of a name, such as .com, .org, or .io, administered by a registry under ICANN or a country authority.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
WHOIS (and RDAP)
WHOIS and its successor RDAP are the public lookup services for a domain's registration details, such as its registrar and expiration date.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
x402
An open protocol that uses the HTTP 402 Payment Required status to let servers and AI agents request and receive on-chain payments inline with requests.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Atomic transfer
A transaction that completes fully or not at all, never in a partial state, so an asset and its payment swap in one indivisible on-chain step.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Auction (Dutch, English, dynamic)
A competitive sale format where buyers bid to set the price, run as English (ascending), Dutch (descending), or dynamic timed auctions.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Automated delegation
Handing control of a domain or its records to a smart contract that enforces rules automatically, with no human approving each change.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Censorship-free
A property where no single authority can unilaterally seize, block, or alter ownership, because control rests with the holder's keys on a public ledger.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Collateral
An asset pledged to secure a loan that the lender can claim on default; a tokenized domain can serve as collateral in NFT-aware lending.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Composability
The ability to combine independent on-chain components like building blocks, so a tokenized domain can plug into lending, trading, and other protocols.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Cross-registrar transfer
Moving a domain's registration from one ICANN registrar to another using an auth code, while keeping the same owner and the same name.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Cryptographic security
Protection based on public-key cryptography, where only the holder of a private key can authorize actions, rather than a password a server could leak.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Custodial ownership
An arrangement where a third party holds the private keys to your assets for you, so you depend on their security and their permission to transact.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization)
A Decentralized Autonomous Organization run by smart-contract rules and member voting rather than a central executive, often managing a shared treasury.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
DID (Decentralized Identity)
A Decentralized Identifier is a globally unique ID controlled by its owner's keys rather than a central registry, used to prove identity across services.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
DNS (Domain Name System)
The Domain Name System translates human-readable names like example.com into the IP addresses computers use to route traffic across the internet.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Domain bundle
A group of related domain names sold or managed together as one package, often covering multiple TLDs or spelling variants of a single brand.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Domain trading
Buying and selling domain names to profit from price differences, ranging from quick flips to long-term holds in a managed portfolio.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Escrow
A neutral third party or smart contract that holds funds or assets until both sides meet the agreed terms, then releases them, cutting counterparty risk.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Farcaster
A decentralized social network built on Ethereum where accounts, identities, and social graphs live on-chain rather than on one company's servers.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Fractional ownership
Splitting a single high-value asset into smaller tradable shares so several people can own portions of it, enabled on-chain by token standards.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
ICANN
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit that coordinates the global domain name system and accredits registrars.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Internet-native asset
An asset that originates and lives on the internet itself, like a domain or token, rather than being a digital record of a physical or legal object.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Leasing
Renting the use of a domain for a recurring fee while keeping ownership, with smart contracts able to enforce terms and automate the payments.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Lending protocol
A smart-contract platform where users supply assets to earn interest and borrowers take loans against collateral, with no bank as intermediary.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Lens
Lens Protocol is a decentralized social graph where profiles, follows, and posts are owned by users as on-chain assets they can carry between apps.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Marketplace (e.g., OpenSea, Blur)
An online venue where buyers and sellers trade assets; for NFTs and tokenized domains, examples include OpenSea and Blur.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Multi-sig
A wallet that needs several private keys to approve a transaction, such as two of three signers, so one compromised key cannot move funds alone.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
NFT (Non-Fungible Token)
A Non-Fungible Token is a unique, indivisible blockchain token used to represent ownership of a specific item such as a tokenized domain.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Permissionless
A system anyone can use or build on without a gatekeeper's approval, because the rules are enforced by open protocols rather than a central authority.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Protocol asset
An asset whose existence and rules are defined by an open protocol's smart contracts, so it works the same for everyone without a controlling company.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Registrar
An ICANN-accredited company authorized to register and manage domain names for the public, such as GoDaddy, Namecheap, or Cloudflare.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Rent-to-own
A purchase arrangement where the buyer pays in installments while using the domain and gains full ownership once the agreed total is paid.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Revenue-sharing
An arrangement that automatically splits income from an asset among parties by preset percentages, enforceable on-chain by smart contracts.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Search Engine Optimization is the practice of improving a site's content and structure so it ranks higher in search results and draws more visitors.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Smart contract
A program stored on a blockchain that runs exactly as written when its conditions are met, enabling agreements that execute without an intermediary.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
UDRP (Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy)
ICANN's mandatory policy for resolving domain disputes, mainly trademark and cybersquatting claims, as a faster, cheaper alternative to court.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Wallet
Software or a device that stores the private keys controlling your on-chain assets and signs transactions, such as MetaMask or a hardware wallet.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Web3
A vision of the web on public blockchains where users own their assets, identity, and data through their keys rather than through platform accounts.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Domain ownership
The rights to control, use, and transfer a domain; tokenization records those rights on-chain in a wallet instead of only in a registrar account.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
On-chain
Describes data or actions recorded directly on a blockchain, where they are public, verifiable, and secured by the network rather than a private server.
glossary
- By Namefi Team
Tokenize
To represent ownership of an asset like a domain as a transferable token on a blockchain so it can be held in a wallet and traded on-chain.
glossary