Why it costs more

Three things you are paying for

A .com is $30 a year here. The same string at a commodity registrar is commonly ten or twelve dollars for the first year. That gap is not a markup on an identical thing — it is three concrete differences, and they are worth naming plainly rather than hiding behind the word privacy.

1 — The name is not in your name

A registrar that sells a name cheaply is selling you a record with your legal name and address in it. What you buy here is an asset registered by us, in our name, on your behalf. That is a materially different instrument to hold, and it costs materially more at wholesale — before anyone's margin is applied — because someone is standing in the record where you would otherwise be.

2 — There is no card, so there is no processor

The identity check at an ordinary registrar is not really the registrar's idea. It arrives with the payment rail: a card means an acquirer, an acquirer means a name, an address and a fraud file. Removing the card removes the check — and moves the cost to us. Every account gets its own dedicated deposit address on each chain, watched continuously, credited on confirmation. There is also no chargeback mechanism behind us when something goes wrong, which is a real liability we hold rather than pass on.

3 — A program can spend on it

API access is not a reseller tier or an enterprise line item here. The same key that runs the desk lets an agent search, quote, register, edit DNS and order a server against the same balance, with every debit itemised in the ledger. An autonomous program cannot complete a KYC flow or hold a card; pricing that access separately would be charging twice for the thing that makes the account usable at all.

What the cheap price leaves out

A promotional first year is an acquisition cost, and acquisition costs get recovered. Usually at renewal, sometimes through the privacy add-on, often through the upsell stream — and always from a customer the seller knows by name.

Where the money actually goes

The largest single component of a domain price here is the wholesale cost of the name itself, held the way it is held. That is not where the interesting part is — the interesting part is that the remainder funds things a cheap registrar recovers elsewhere:

• The deposit rails. Dedicated per-account addresses on Solana, Base, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Zcash, watched around the clock and credited without anyone being asked to file a ticket.
• The DNS plane, which is free on every name and therefore has to be carried by the name.
• The API and the ledger, which are the same surface a program uses and a person audits after the fact.
• The absence of a processor, which means no interchange to pay and no fraud desk to appeal to — a saving on one side and an exposure on the other.

What it does not fund is an advertising budget aimed back at you, because we do not know who you are to aim it.

When you should not pay it

There is a version of this page that tells you everyone needs this. It would be a lie, and it would be an easy one to catch. Use an ordinary registrar if:

• The name is already public. If it fronts a business that publishes its address on its own contact page, the record discloses nothing that was secret.
• You need to be the registrant of record. Trademark enforcement, corporate portfolios and anything that has to sit on a balance sheet want the name in your legal name. Here it is in ours. That is the point of the product and the wrong shape for that job.
• You need an invoice or a card. Funding is crypto. There is no billing department to raise a purchase order with.
• You want recovery by identity. Nobody can prove they are you to get the account back — which is the guarantee and the risk in one sentence. Keep the credentials.

If none of those apply, the premium is buying you something specific: a name that works exactly like any other name, attached to nobody.

Common questions

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