Greetings and salutations, my domain brothers and sisters; this is Father Domainicus with an important Sunday message.
Today we note a small but symbolic shift in the aftermarket: Apostle Paul’s farewell from the GoDaddy Megachurch and from the halls of the ICA, as he heads into retirement.
For years, brother Paul was one of the most visible public faces of the domain aftermarket. His path ran straight through Uniregistry, Dan, and Afternic, so if you listed, bought, or sold at scale, you lived with the consequences of decisions he helped create or champion.
With Uniregistry’s acquisition, domainers watched a well-funded marketplace get absorbed into GoDaddy’s orbit. Some welcomed the added reach and resources, while others quietly resented seeing yet another independent domainer chapel folded into the GoDaddy Megachurch and into oblivion.
Dan.com provided clean landers, simple flows, efficient transactions and LTO sales. Its acquisition by the GoDaddy Megachurch led them into the cold ground.
Afternic, on the other hand, was the long-established chapel where Apostle Paul’s influence was most obvious.
Fast Transfer networks and reseller syndication became the backbone of many domain investors’ outbound reach, even as questions persisted around increased commissions and other such “improvements” that seemed to favor platform revenue over maximizing the seller net.
Credit where it’s due: Apostle Paul helped build a powerful infrastructure that made buying and selling domains easier and more scalable. At the same time, the industry ended up with fewer large alternatives, more dependence on a small cluster of platforms, and a lot of change driven from the top down rather than from the needs of the Domain Church flock.
With brother Paul stepping away from GoDaddy and the ICA his legacy lands somewhere between a reformer and a company man. The aftermarket he leaves behind is more organized and tightly integrated, but also more centralized and less diverse.
I wish brother Paul a calm retirement, fewer urgent broker escalations, and an inbox with less domainer drama. At the same time, we should keep our eyes open, our domain portfolios flexible, and our willingness intact to move away when the liturgy of fees and rules no longer suits us.
Amen to that!
~Father Domainicus
Copyright © 2025 DomainGang.com · All Rights Reserved.
