Domain Names

Donald Trump

2026-09-30 15:04:49

Trump’s AI-to-SI order triggers claims of insider trading in .si domains

US President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming Artificial Intelligence as Super Intelligence has triggered allegations that insiders may have profited from a rush into .si domain names before the announcement. According to Protos, independent journalist Adam Cochran said registrations of .si domains jumped in June and July ahead of Trump’s September 19 SI rebrand announcement, with roughly 12,000 domains registered before the move became public. Cochran said many AI- and MAGA-themed .si domains were bought for tens of thousands of dollars and later listed for millions, with Build.si offered for more than $14 million. He argued that the trading pattern did not resemble typical domain squatting in common words, but rather purchases of expensive aftermarket domains that began changing hands at roughly the same time. The report also noted that Trump’s order says the term AI is outdated and that the US government will stop acknowledging it in favor of Super Intelligence. Hours before the order, Trump met top executives from Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, X, Nvidia, and Google at an AI summit, where they signed what the report described as a “morally binding” accord on AI safety.

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Trump

2026-09-30 08:48:21

Trump’s push to rename AI as SI sends Slovenia’s .si domain registrations surging

Donald Trump’s proposal to rebrand Artificial Intelligence as "Super Intelligence," or SI, has triggered an unexpected rush into Slovenia’s country-code domain, .si. On Sept. 22, Trump said at the United Nations General Assembly that the United States would call AI by the new name. Because .si matches the new abbreviation, registrations jumped almost immediately. The contrast was sharp. The .si domain added about 3,500 registrations across all of August, but after Trump’s announcement, new registrations averaged roughly 3,700 per day, meaning a single day outpaced the previous month. By Sept. 29, the total number of .si domains had climbed past 220,000. Netcraft said the spike was not driven only by organic interest. It found that among a batch of .si domains registered through Dynadot between Sept. 19, when Trump began discussing a name change for AI, and Sept. 22, when he formally introduced SI at the UN, about 52% were quickly listed for resale on the secondary market. In the 25 hours after the announcement, new .si registrations even exceeded .ai, the Anguilla domain that has benefited for years from the AI boom.

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OpenAI

2026-09-30 03:40:47

OpenAI launches Dots, but neither dot.com nor dots.com is under its control

OpenAI unveiled its persistent agent, Dots, at DevDay, but the most obvious .com domains tied to the product are not owned by the company. The sharper detail is dot.com: it is currently held by xAI, and the domain redirects visitors straight to Grok Bot. The other natural match, dots.com, also does not belong to OpenAI. Public WHOIS records show dot.com changed hands in July this year, roughly two months before Dots was formally introduced. That timing quickly fueled speculation in the community that xAI may have moved early to secure the name. Still, there is no evidence showing xAI knew in advance that OpenAI would use Dots as a product name. The history of dots.com is older and stranger. The domain originally belonged to the U.S. women’s apparel chain Dots. When the company went through bankruptcy liquidation in 2014, the domain was sold for $335,000 to an unidentified individual buyer. Since then, the actual holder has not been publicly confirmed. As a result, OpenAI has launched Dots without control of either of the two most intuitive .com entry points, and one of them is already sending traffic to a rival product.

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Telegram

2026-08-18 17:52:31

Telegram Applies for .gram Domain, Opening Path to User-Specific Web Addresses

Telegram has applied for the “.gram” top-level domain, according to a post by founder Pavel Durov on Aug. 19. If the application is approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, the platform’s roughly 1 billion users could become eligible for their own second-level domain names tied to Telegram usernames. Durov gave examples in his post, saying the Telegram handle @durov could eventually map to durov.gram, while @monk could map to monk.gram. He also said users would be able to create and host interactive websites on Telegram through a single command. The proposal, as described by Durov, links Telegram identities with domain naming and website creation, but the plan still depends on ICANN approval before any rollout could happen.

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Solana

2026-08-10 15:35:21

Solana Name Service to Pause New .sol Registrations on Aug 17 for Snapshot

Solana Name Service (SNS) has announced that new registrations for .sol domains will be temporarily halted starting from August 17. The pause is intended to allow the service to carry out an eligibility snapshot. According to the team, the snapshot will cover only those .sol domains that were already registered before the suspension. Once the snapshot is done, users will be able to check whether they qualify for a new round of entitlements or upgrades. Registration for .sns domains is expected to resume around the middle of September, with specific arrangements to be announced gradually. SNS also cautioned users to be alert against fake claim links, reiterating that it will never ask anyone to sign any transaction or pay any fee in order to claim new .sol domains. The team advised users to only rely on official communications for further updates about the snapshot and the resumption of registrations.

2000

ENS

2026-07-22 19:55:14

ENS Rebounds as Ethereum Naming Service Draws Fresh Attention

ENS has rebounded from its 2023 low, while registrations, renewals, and Web3 identity use cases are bringing the Ethereum naming protocol back into focus.

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