Oinkadot Joint Venture Targets 25 New Top-Level Domains

The move is a calculated hedge, not a whimsical side project — both founders realized they were chasing many of the same strings, so instead of bidding against each other in contention sets, they pooled $5.675 million in application fees and went in together. Twenty-five shots at the same target, one legal entity.

The economics underneath

Let me put that application figure in perspective. Oinkadot has already wired ICANN north of $5.6 million just to sit at the table. That's the entry ticket — it doesn't cover legal, branding, registry operations, or the marketing spend required to make a new TLD actually stick. In 2012, King ran a similar playbook through Top Level Design, landing.design,.wiki,.ink, and.gay (plus a later pickup of.tattoo). GoDaddy bought.design in 2021 and the rest in 2023. The formula is straightforward: win the string, build distribution, exit to a registry acquirer.

The 2026 round is denser than 2012. The application window closed with roughly 1,600 submissions, and one entity — Link Freedom Group — filed more than 300 of them. This is why a joint venture makes sense for two mid-sized registrars. The contention set auction pathway is expensive, public, and binary. You either win the string or your application fee is gone. Diversification across 25 names is portfolio construction, not greed.

What this does to your portfolio

If you're holding second-level domains in any of the 25 namespaces Oinkadot applied for, the registry outcome directly affects your exit timeline. The full list:.anime,.bit,.bug,.cancel,.dine,.dragon,.ghost,.glitch,.hack,.heart,.king,.loop,.manga,.moon,.panda,.puff,.queen,.sign,.spice,.stack,.stay,.super,.weed,.wire,.zzz.

Several of these are already drawing competing bids. D3 has partnered with the Animecoin Foundation on.anime, and Unstoppable Domains has teamed up with Kitnsugi for both.anime and.manga. Link Freedom Group has signaled interest in.bit,.hack,.loop,.moon,.sign,.stack,.stay,.super, and.zzz. Where contention sets form, expect auctions, and auctions at this layer can look a lot like the way scaled-down retail access in commodity futures reshaped who gets to play.

The string selection also tells you where smart money expects commercial demand. Short, brandable, single-concept words —.king,.queen,.heart,.ghost,.dragon — rhyme with the premium.com thesis that's been driving seven-figure sales for two decades. That's not a coincidence.

What I'm tracking next

Three things over the coming quarters:

Contention set publications. ICANN posts these officially, and they tell you exactly who you're fighting for which string. Bookmark the ICANN 2026 round page and check it monthly.

Replacement strings. Oinkadot isn't revealing theirs yet. If a replacement string collides with someone else's primary application, the replacement gets disqualified and the entire application reshuffles. That's the silent risk most coverage skips.

Sibling rounds. It's not just Oinkadot. Colin Campbell — who sold.CLUB to GoDaddy in 2021 — is back with USA Made in America Inc., filing a single application for.factory, per Domain Name Journal. When a veteran operator concentrates on one string and runs a marketing blitz, that string tends to outperform. Watch.factory's launch plan closely if you hold names in the manufacturing, SaaS, or agency verticals.

I'll be candid: I don't know whether.ghost becomes the next.design or the next.biz. Nobody does at this stage. What I do know is that the TLD registry game is a long-duration, binary bet. Oinkadot's move is rational for them — twenty-five entries at $227,000 each, backed by two operators who know how to push volume through registrars. For you, the homework is simpler: map which applicants you'd rather see win and why, because wholesale pricing, launch policies, and registrar partnerships will all be set by whoever takes the string. That single exercise will outperform any newsletter in your inbox by Q4.