Welcome to the 39th 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 Q1: 10 Stats That Tell the Story 📈
- 📈 Public disclosed sales jumped 88.82%, reaching $5.11M, showing a much stronger quarter for reported liquid domain transactions.
- 💸 Escrow.com private sales climbed 80.79% to $25.54M, confirming that most of the action still happens behind the scenes.
- 💼 3L and 4L .coms dominated again across both channels, with 4L leading escrow volume and 3L close behind, reinforcing their status as the core of the liquid market.
- 🏛️ Public sales were far more concentrated, with 3L and 4L .coms making up the bulk of disclosed volume while the rest of the categories remained relatively small.
- 🌐 2L domains remain the most developed category by far, with nearly 30% in active use, a strong sign of deep end-user adoption and long-term scarcity value.
- 🧱 2C domains continue to stand out in development as well, at roughly 18%, putting them surprisingly close to 3L .coms and well ahead of most numeric categories.
- 🌀 Turnover stayed very low overall, but 5N, 2C, and 4N showed the most movement, suggesting that trading activity remains selective rather than broad-based.
- 📉 Numeric categories still looked weak on the public side, with very limited disclosed activity in 2N and 3N, while escrow volume was also concentrated mainly in 4N.
- 💹 In Q1, gold was the strongest major benchmark shown at +8.57%, while the 5th percentile of 4L .coms still managed a modest gain of 0.91%, outperforming several mainstream assets.
- 🚀 Over the past 12 months, 5th percentile 4L .coms posted a solid 11% gain, while 4L and 5N liquid domains broadly held up better than several major public market benchmarks shown on the chart.
Global Asset Markets – Q1 2026
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**Starting 2022 Q1, NAREIT has been replaced by the VNQ (Vanguard Real Estate ETF)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.
