ApeCoin DAO Approves .APE Top Level Domains

The ApeCoin community overwhelmingly supported registering “.APE” as a new top-level domain (TLD) with ICANN.

The ApeCoin community unanimously supported a request to register “.APE” as a new top-level domain (TLD) with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which is the global authority on Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and domain names.

ApeCoin’s decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) proposed collaborating with Web3 domains expert D3 to develop the .APE top-level domain (TLD) as a real-world asset (RWA).

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) set a goal to adopt new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) by the second quarter of 2026, prompting this proposal.

ApeCoin Community Overwhelming Support

A majority of the ApeCoin community voted in support of the plan, which was 91.68%, while 8.32% of the community voted against it. Fred Hsu, the co-founder and CEO of D3, stated in an interview that the DNS domains that the company provides and plans to register with ICANN are interoperable.

This means they may be utilized for Web1 (email/web), Web2 (apps/social), and Web3, respectively. According to the plan, D3 will lead the effort to prepare and submit the application, which will take around one year to be ready.

Furthermore, D3 plans to provide users with Ape-linked name tokens as an immediate Web3 identifier. This option will be available to users. Using domains, Hsu’s concept for D3 can potentially connect more than 5 billion users of Web2 to Web3.

He said that traditional domains have not seen significant change over the past two decades, which is why we intend to revolutionize both domain ownership and usage.

According to Hsu, once the .APE domains are released, they will have the potential to produce annual revenue that is in the multi-million dollar range.

He explained that domains are not only an essential component of digital real estate but also a source of recurring income. As part of the agreement, the Ape name tokens and the .APE top-level domains will each get a 50% share of the total profits generated by the Ape name tokens and the ApeCoin DAO.

As a result of the proposal, it became clear that “owning” a TLD is not feasible. Additionally, “ICANN contractually grants the rights to exclusively operate and monetize each TLD that automatically renews every ten years,” as stated in the previous sentence.

As previously mentioned, the endeavor entails expenses totaling three million dollars. It is expected that ApeCoin D3 will incur continuous technical and operational costs related to the management of the .APE namespace.

ApeCoin DAO will contribute to these expenditures to facilitate co-marketing with the general public. In February 2024, GoDaddy, a domain registrar, and the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) collaborated to enable users to link Web3-based.eth domains and top-level domains of the domain name system at no cost.

The cooperation between GoDaddy and ENS removes the impediment of expensive gas expenses, which had previously discouraged consumers from bringing domain names to ENS.

Paul Nicks, president of domains at GoDaddy, emphasized the development. Nicks called it “the fusion of domain names and blockchain technologies,” which benefits the Web2 and Web3 ecosystems.

In July 2023, Unstoppable Domains, a competitor of GoDaddy’s Web3 platform, made it possible for consumers to purchase.eth domain names. Furthermore, the platform included additional payment methods and capabilities to simplify ENS domain management.