Sell-Through Rate
The share of a domain portfolio that sells in a given period — a key liquidity metric for investors.
- glossary
Sell-through rate (STR) is the percentage of names in a domain portfolio that actually sell within a defined period — typically a calendar year — and it serves as a practical measure of domain liquidity for an investor's overall book. Even large, reputable portfolios rarely achieve an STR above a few percent annually; a 2–3% sell-through on a well-curated .com portfolio is considered healthy, meaning most names must be carried for years before finding a buyer. A low STR relative to holding costs signals that a portfolio needs pruning — dropping marginal names before their renewal fees erase returns. Tracking STR alongside average sale price and holding period gives investors a clearer picture of their real return on capital deployed in the aftermarket.
Related keywords
- sell-through rate
- STR
- domain liquidity
- portfolio performance
- domain sales velocity
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.