.nft
Is .nft a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.nft is contested: 2 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 8 October 2026. They are Intercap and Link Freedom Group. Identity Digital named .nft as a backup string for four of its applications: .craft, .llm, .well and .cast. ICANN deactivated those backups, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup.
Who is applying, and what they run today
One of the two already run TLDs, 11K names between them. Link Freedom Group runs none.
Will names sell?
A crypto-culture badge: fun for NFT drops and collector projects, but the term's hype has cooled and few serious brands would live on it.
Last round the AI scored the 2012 strings blind to their fate. Strings it scored 60 or more hold a median 27,168 names today; those under 30, a median of 30. .nft’s closest 2012 strings hold .cfd 688K, .forex 1K and .cloud 552K.
The nearest 2012 strings, and how many names each holds today
The closest 2012 string, .cfd, held 688,049 names, June 2026. .forex held 1,350; .cloud held 551,867. Chosen by AI from every string in the 2012 round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Both are insider initialisms for a speculative, newly-mainstreamed asset class, betting the instrument's jargon name becomes the front-door identity for the marketplaces, issuers and traders who deal in it.
Same bet on a trading-category label as primary identity for brokers, exchanges and speculation-adjacent content, differing mainly in that its market was decades old rather than a few years old.
Both are generic nouns for a digital technology category riding a hype wave, wagering that an entire emerging industry adopts the category word as its address rather than treating it as a passing buzzword.
Where they meet elsewhere
Identity Digital and Link Freedom Group face each other in 68 contests this round, .nft included.
- Identity Digital × Link Freedom Group
- Identity Digital × Intercap
- Link Freedom Group × Intercap
NFT project teams, digital-art collectives, crypto-native creators and marketplaces wanting a themed address for drops, galleries, or collection pages; secondarily speculators betting on a web3 revival.
What a .nft domain is
.nft is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our Crypto category. 2 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .nft domain extension real yet?
.nft 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 .nft domain?
You can’t yet. A .nft name can only be registered once the string is delegated (added to the DNS root) and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .nft was .cfd, delegated on 13 March 2015.
Is .nft a real TLD?
Not yet. .nft is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .nft is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Identity Digital · fact correctedICANN
- Identity Digital · first recordedICANN
- Identity Digital · first recordedICANN
- Identity Digital · first recordedICANN
- Identity Digital · first recordedICANN
- Intercap · first recordedICANN
- Link Freedom Group · now confirmedICANN
- Link Freedom Group · first recordedLink Freedom Group
“IRI2679T-T68974 · Intercap Registry Inc. · primary · contention set 2026-164 LFGL2683T-T14908 · Link Freedom Group Ltd · primary · contention set 2026-164”ICANN
The source’s 6 linesHide the lines
IRI2679T-T68974 · Intercap Registry Inc. · primary · contention set 2026-164 LFGL2683T-T14908 · Link Freedom Group Ltd · primary · contention set 2026-164 SS2654T-T33516 · Hair Apparent, LLC · replacement string of .cast · Deactivated SS2654T-T59410 · Hair Apparent, LLC · replacement string of .well · Deactivated SS2654T-T62301 · Hair Apparent, LLC · replacement string of .llm · Deactivated SS2654T-T73111 · Hair Apparent, LLC · replacement string of .craft · Deactivated
“.nft · Crypto & Web3 · “Own what’s truly yours.””Link Freedom Group
- Band chosen: 10-29 (vanity/narrow). The string names a product category whose cultural moment peaked and receded before this application round; demand over the next 5 years looks event-driven, spiking with any NFT market revival and thinning otherwise. It is not in the 30-49 band because volume registrations at sustainable renewal rates are doubtful when the underlying term itself carries fad connotations that many web3 teams now avoid in their own branding; primary-identity use by serious projects is likely rare, with .nft addresses serving as campaign or drop pages beside a .com/.io/.xyz main identity. It is not in the 1-9 band because a real, global crypto-native community exists, blockchain-side naming services have offered similar suffixes outside the DNS root (analogy, suggesting proven willingness to pay for the string in some form), and crypto-flavored TLD analogs have shown genuine if speculative registration waves. By analogy, generic hype-cycle TLDs tend to see a launch spike, heavy speculation, then steep renewal decay unless an end-use community forms; .nft's end-use community is narrower than the broader crypto audience since NFTs are one instrument within web3. Applicant facts: the string is announced by Link Freedom Group, which filed more than 300 strings in the ICANN 2026 round and published its list ahead of Reveal Day; a large-portfolio applicant suggests standard registry distribution rather than a community-led launch, which neither helps nor hurts the string much. Main market uncertainty: whether tokenized digital ownership re-emerges as durable consumer infrastructure under the NFT label, or the industry rebrands away from the acronym entirely, and whether a possible collision with pre-existing blockchain-side use of the same suffix confuses or cannibalizes DNS-side demand (analogy-based concern, specifics unknown).