Nonprofit organization NEAR Foundation, the team behind the NEAR Protocol, will partner with D3 Global, an interoperable domain name company, to apply for a .near top-level domain (TLD) in the upcoming ICANN application period.
A TLD is the highest level in the hierarchy of top-level domains. For example, some of the most common TLDs include .com, .net, and .org.
ICANN applicants must meet specific requirements before being eligible to apply, such as having relevant operational, technical and financial capabilities to ensure the company can successfully operate a TLD. There is also a non-refundable fee of $185,000 and an additional quarterly fee of $6,250 for successful applicants.
Fred Hsu, co-founder and CEO of D3, told Blockworks that the D3 team has decades of experience managing TLDs and navigating the application process.
“We have an incredibly distinguished staff with deep registry-level expertise, process knowledge and key industry relationships, which has allowed us to successfully register and/or manage over 300 TLDs approved in the previous application round. Many of these TLDs have grown to substantial scale today, including .xyz, .inc and more,” said Hsu.
If the NEAR Foundation successfully obtains the TLD, it will be able to use one domain on its website, email and wallet addresses. The TLD can also serve as authentication credentials across platforms, allowing developers to develop dapps that can leverage existing internet infrastructure.
“We’re excited to work with D3 to secure the .near top-level domain and extend the power of NEAR accounts across the Internet. Illia Polosukhin, the co-founder of NEAR Protocol, said in a press release reviewed by Blockworks.
Polosukhin added: “As the functionality of NEAR accounts is expanded with Chain Abstraction, combining Web3 identity with existing Internet infrastructure will help drive mainstream adoption.”
NEAR Foundation isn’t the first team to make moves in the domain space in hopes of connecting Web3 and Web2.
Recently, Ethereum Name Service (ENS), an Ethereum domain name service, partnered with GoDaddy, a popular domain registrar, to link wallets to web pages.
By integrating with one of the largest web hosting providers in the world, users can easily connect their simplified ENS wallet addresses to their domain name systems.