Welcome to the 37th edition of the Liquid Domains Overview, which focuses on the 614,928 .com domains we call “liquid”. The objective of the report is to present key statistics and generate a debate amongst the industry stakeholders about the fair value of such domains. We hope you enjoy it and we encourage your feedback and participation for the next reports.
What You Missed in Q3: 10 Stats That Tell the Story 📈
- 📉 Public sales fell sharply this quarter, dropping by 81.61% to $4.36M, after last quarter’s record surge — a reversion to the mean driven by the absence of standout end-user deals.
- 💸 Escrow.com volume held firm, rising 7.43% QoQ to $14.47M, showing steady investor interest despite the cooling in public markets.
- 💼 4L .coms once again dominated, generating over $10M in escrow sales, nearly 70% of the total escrow.com volume for the quarter.
- 🧾 3L .coms were a distant second, with approximately $1.5M in escrow.com sales and $659K in public deals, showing modest but consistent liquidity.
- 🌐 2L .coms continued to show the highest development rate, with over 28% actively developed, underlining their value to end-users.
- 🔁 Turnover remained low across the board, with no category exceeding a 1% quarterly turnover, reflecting tight supply and cautious trading.
- ⚠️ 5N .com values remain weak, with poor development and minimal activity — a continuation of their downward trend.
- 🏗️ 2C and 3L .coms showed relatively high development levels, above many more expensive categories — an underappreciated trend worth watching.
- 📉 GoDaddy and Verisign underperformed in Q3, with GoDaddy down 24.01% and Verisign slipping 2.93%, trailing behind other asset classes like Gold (+16.61%), NASDAQ (+11.24%), and Bitcoin ETFs (+5.82%).
- 🏘️ REITs (VNQ) posted modest gains of 3.64% in Q3, mirroring the sideways trend seen in 4L and 5N .coms — highlighting a cautious investment climate across both digital and physical assets.
Global Asset Markets – Q3 2025
Global Asset Markets – Past 12 Months
*Data from MorningStar
**Starting 2022 Q1, NAREIT has been replaced by the VNQ (Vanguard Real Estate ETF)
***GBTC – Grayscale Bitcoin Trust
Index, ETF and all security return data was initially computed by Morningstar, Inc. and is shown in this report for display purposes only. This data is not, nor is meant to be used as, actionable investment advice; nor a direct comparison between any exchange or market traded security, or individual stock, or index and any category of domain names. We cannot guarantee the accuracy of any such data, as it is maintained by a third party and may be subject to errors, or unavailability. Morningstar, Inc. did not participate in the creation of this report and reserves all intellectual property rights in regard to its own materials or data.
