Backorder (Drop-Catching)
A service that tries to register a domain the instant it drops, so you can claim an expiring name.
- glossary
A backorder is a request placed with a service to grab a domain the moment it drops — the instant an unrenewed name is released back to the public. Because many parties may want the same expiring name, drop-catching is a speed game: providers fire registration attempts in the milliseconds after release, and when more than one backorder competes for the same domain it often goes to a private auction among the interested buyers. Backorders are how investors target good names already taken by someone who let them expire.
Related keywords
- backorder
- drop-catching
- expired domain
- pending delete
- domain acquisition
Contributors
Namefi is a collective of engineers, designers, and operators who obsess over building tools that make managing your onchain domain names effortless.
Victor Zhou is a technology founder and standards editor focused on digital identity and trust. He founded Namefi, edits Ethereum Improvement Proposals, and previously led smart-contract architecture work at Google Labs.
His work sits at the intersection of naming, ownership, and the systems people use to establish identity online. That perspective makes him especially interested in the way names move between personal meaning, public recognition, and digital infrastructure.
For Namefi, Victor edits and writes about domains as durable digital identity: how names become ownable onchain assets, how tokenization changes custody and trust, and what naming can learn from the systems people use to establish identity online.