.ada
Is .ada a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.ada is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is Cardano Foundation.
A crypto-community address tied to Cardano: useful inside that ecosystem, weak signal outside it.
cardano ecosystem projects, wallets, stake pools and community members who want an address that reads as native to that chain; secondarily people named Ada or Ada-language projects if registration is open to them
The 2012 applications making the most similar bet. Chosen by AI from every string in that round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Same bet: a non-profit foundation applying for the proprietary name of the technology ecosystem it stewards, intended as the address space for everything built on that platform, meaningless to anyone outside it and worth nothing if the underlying technology loses its adopters.
Same bet in a different community: a short code a self-identifying group already uses as shorthand for itself, filed by the foundation that speaks for that group, where demand is voluntary badge-of-belonging registration capped by the size of the community rather than by any commercial category.
Same bet and the same hinge: a defined community's own name held by that community's central institution, which is either an open namespace its members put their primary identity on or a closed institutional brand, and nothing about the string itself decides which.
What a .ada domain is
.ada is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Crypto. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .ada domain extension real yet?
.ada is not yet a domain extension you can register: nothing resolves under it, and no registrar sells names in it. It is a string applicants have put forward in the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, the process that decides whether it becomes one.
When can you buy a .ada domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .ada name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .ada was .frogans, delegated on 19 April 2014.
Is .ada a real TLD?
Not yet. .ada is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .ada is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Cardano Foundation · first recordedICANN
- Band chosen: 30-49 (usable but limited). The record shows a single confirmed application from Cardano Stiftung, with .cardano filed as a replacement string naming .ada as primary, so the string is positioned as the ecosystem namespace for the Cardano chain, whose native token is known as ADA. Within that community the string carries a real, immediate meaning, and chain-native naming has shown genuine demand by analogy: ENS-style .eth names (an off-DNS analogy) became a common wallet-facing identity for Ethereum users, and that pattern suggests a Cardano-native DNS string could see steady community registrations if it is open and wired into wallets. It is not in the 50-69 band because primary-identity use would be confined to one chain's ecosystem, the string says little to buyers outside crypto, and the aftermarket for chain-specific names has, by analogy with other chain-branded namespaces, been shallow and sentiment-driven rather than sustained. It is above the 10-29 band because the demand is not a one-off event: an active chain ecosystem produces ongoing projects, pools and tools that would plausibly adopt it as a working address, not merely a vanity registration. The string also collides with unrelated meanings (the Ada programming language, the given name, acronyms such as a disabilities act), which adds some incidental demand but also dilutes brand signal. Main market uncertainty: whether the registry operates it as an open ecosystem namespace with on-chain or wallet integration, or as a tightly held brand-style TLD used mainly by the foundation itself; the former supports the upper half of the band, the latter would push it toward the floor of it.