Unstoppable Domains abandons ICANN bids for .crypto and .bitcoin
The web3 naming company says it will refund eligible buyers after dropping plans to seek standard-internet recognition for nine of its domain extensions.
By The Third AnglePublished 3 min read
Illustrative internet-infrastructure imagery; it does not depict Unstoppable Domains' systems. Photo: NASA / Unsplash · Unsplash License
Unstoppable Domains has abandoned plans to apply for conventional internet recognition for nine of its web3 domain extensions, including .crypto, .bitcoin, .wallet and .blockchain. The company's official announcement says the decision also covers .polygon, .nft, .dao, .unstoppable and .zil, while five partner extensions will not proceed either.
The change closes a route that could have made those names work through the standard Domain Name System and ordinary browsers. They remain onchain assets that can be used for crypto transactions, but the company is no longer pursuing ICANN applications for them in this round.
A $2 million decision
ICANN's base evaluation fee is $227,000 per new generic top-level domain application. Unstoppable said the nine bids it dropped would have cost more than $2 million before other application and operating costs.
CEO Matthew Gould told CoinDesk that the web3 market was smaller and more niche than the company had expected after the 2021 crypto and NFT boom. Unstoppable said traditional DNS domains now account for more than 90% of its business, according to the report.
Refunds are open
Customers who bought names in the affected extensions on or after March 5, 2025 can request refunds, according to the company's notice. The eligibility date for .blockchain is June 5, 2024. Refund requests opened Aug. 25 and close Sept. 25, with processing expected within 28 days.
The refund policy matters because Unstoppable publicly announced its intention to apply for several of these extensions before the purchases covered by the window. The company has not said that every buyer will receive a refund automatically; customers must submit the names through the refund process and have the purchase verified against their account.
What continues
Unstoppable still submitted applications for .agi, .robot, .gram, .hub and .xmr alongside partners including Telegram, the 0G ecosystem, Hub Culture and Cake Wallet. Those applications are separate from the nine Unstoppable extensions that the company withdrew.
The practical result is a split strategy: Unstoppable is keeping its established onchain namespaces outside the conventional DNS while pursuing a smaller set of new applications where it still sees a case for standard-internet integration. The announcement does not establish when any surviving application would be approved or become usable in ordinary browsers.
