information Why Domain Investors Should Take Note Of The Fediverse

Powerful centralized social media giants have probably not been good for domain investment. Some businesses have opted for social media presences instead of a domain name and website. Those businesses could lose control of their online presence, and demand for quality domain names has been lowered.

Decentralized alternatives to the dominant social media applications have recently received renewed attention. Even if you have no intention to personally use one of the platforms, I think there are important implications for domain investors.

It is not so much that the decentralized fediverse will directly result in many aftermarket domain name sales, as I see it, but rather it may foster an increased awareness and appreciation of domain names.

What Is The Fediverse?

You have probably heard of Mastodon, a microblogging alternative to Twitter. Mastodon is just one part of the fediverse. So what exactly is the fediverse?

The term fediverse, not yet a word in major dictionaries, is a combination of federated and universe. Universe implies all-encompassing. To see what federated means, let’s consider Mastodon as an example.

While at first glance Mastodon may seem similar to Twitter, there is one fundamental difference. Mastodon software, free and open-source, is run on many independent Mastodon servers, which are called instances.

Each instance sets rules and procedures, and manages registrations. Most instances are run by individuals or nonprofit organizations, often on a shoestring budget funded through donations.

At time of writing, there are almost 10,000 Mastodon servers, called instances, serving more than 2 million monthly active users, and more than double that total users. You can get current statistics, and read more about Mastodon, at JoinMastodon.org.

All of those instances are part of a federated network, so that you can interact with people on any of the instances. The term federated comes from a federal political system, in which each region has some autonomy, but also coordination through a federal government. The instances are like the regions, and the overall Mastodon organization is like the federal authority.

Each Instance Needs A Domain Name

Before I delve more deeply into the fediverse, let’s state one obvious fact. The 10,000 Mastodon instances required 10,000 domain names. If it ever scaled to eventually serve the entire population of the world, the number of domain names needed might scale by almost a factor of 1000x.

I am pretty sure the majority of instances today are operating from hand-registered domain names. So there may not be much of an impact on the domain aftermarket, but there is some potential.

A Boost For .SOCIAL

If you browse the list of instances, there are many different extensions in use, including some rarely used ones.

It is not dominated by .com, probably because it is difficult to get a memorable short word inexpensively. Because the name of the instance needs to be shared repeatedly, it is important that it be short and memorable.

I used instances.social, to compile statistics on the TLDs used by the top 180 instances. Each of these instances had more than 4000 users. Shown below are the results for every TLD used by 3 or more instances.


The .social domain extension is clearly the most popular for Mastodon instances, used by almost 24%. That is largely because it was chosen for two of the best-known, and largest, instances mastodon.social and mstdn.social.

There are about 6.7% .com, 6.1% org, and less than 4% in any one other TLD. Perhaps the most surprising finding, 45.6% are spread across TLDs with only one or two instances each. Many of these are TLDs with sparse real-world use.

With two instances in the top 180 are the following TLDs: .au ,ca, .cafe, exchange, .io, .it, .me, .network, .nu, one, .party, .pt, .scot and .uno.

There was a single instance in the top 180 using the following TLDs: .ai, .app, .art, .bar, .business .camp, .cat, .ci, .co, .cologne, .community, .cz, .es, .eu, .eus, .fi, .fun, .green, .guru, .ie, .in, .kr, .LGBT, .link, .live, .lol, .moe, .nl, .nz, .pizza, .pl .rocks, .science, .sh, .st, .to, .top, .town, .tr, .uk, .us, .wales, .world, and .xxx. In some cases the use of lesser-known extensions was to get the exact word Mastodon, while in others related to the special interest group running the instance.

Does that mean .social domain names are a worthwhile investment based on use by fediverse instances? It is hard to predict the future, but so far it would appear not.

According to nTLDStats .social registrations have been rising, but at a modest rate, standing at about 34,000.

There are only 11 sales in the .social extension listed on NameBio, only 3 of which are 4-figures or more. A quick check did not indicate the major sales were in use for Mastodon instances.

Domain Names Front And Center

When you share your Facebook, Instagram or Twitter handles, you don’t need to specify the domain name, because they are centralized.

With Mastodon, and throughout the fediverse, you do need to indicate both your handle and the domain name of the instance. For example, I am on Mastodon at mindly.social/@BobHawkes. Every time I share my handle, I also share the domain name of my instance.

As more people use the fediverse, they will encounter domain names more explicitly and frequently. This increased visibility should be good for domain names in general.

The general public will also become familiar with many extensions. As we saw, the majority of instances do not operate from one of the major legacy TLDs or a major country code extension.

The Fediverse Tree

Per Axbom has written a great background piece on the fediverse. While by no means every platform is included, the diagram shows many of the key players arranged on a tree.


Image by Per Axbom at Axbom.com/fediverse. It is displayed here under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

While the section of the tree for microblogging and social networking has the most platforms, including Mastodon, other segments include platforms for video sharing and comment, PeerTube; podcasting, Owncast; image sharing, Pixelfed; event promotion and coordination, Mobilizon; writing and books, and more.

Different instances in one platform, say all of the different Mastodon servers, can be considered one branch of the tree. Users can interact with different Mastodon instances, and through the ActivityPub protocol, see next section, with other fediverse platforms as well.

ActivityPub

For most of the fediverse, interconnections and notifications employ the ActivityPub protocol, a W3C initiative. See complete documentation for ActivityPub here. Learn more about ActivityPub at ActivityPub.rocks.

While ActivityPub is not the only protocol used in the fedisphere, it is the dominant one. Diaspora is one alternative.

The same platform can have integrations with more than one protocol – see the table in this article.

Note that WordPress has a plugin to allow integration through ActivityPub with the fediverse. Tumblr is adding support for ActivityPub as well.

Does It All Work?

It sounds complex to maintain communications between many millions of users on perhaps a hundred thousand different servers, on different platforms and many different instances for each platform. Does it really work?

Not perfectly, but for the most part, yes. Maybe it is easier to accept by considering the email system. Email is handled far more servers, with far more users, at least 6 billion active email accounts globally, and yet we all have confidence that most email messages do get promptly and correctly routed. Well thought out decentralized systems can work.

Types of Names Used By Fediverse Platforms

I did not do a formal analysis, but it seems that the majority of platforms operating in the fediverse use a made-up name, altered spelling, or word merge.

Names like Friendica, Hubzilla, Mobilizon, Owncast, BookWyrm, Castopod, Kibou, Inventaire, and Lemmy are typical. Two-word names such as PeerTube and SocialHome are also found. A handful of fediverse platforms do use single-word names such as Honk, Plume, Mastodon, Hive, and Zap.

The Diaspora protocol uses a dictionary word with multiple meanings, including the scattering of a population into many regions, an analogy for the fediverse.

Nonprofit does not imply lack of funding, and there may well be a market for strong names suitable for new fediverse platforms.

Exact Fediverse Names As Investments?

Metaverse went rather quickly from being relatively unknown, not even in the major dictionaries, to a trending term. There were also a number of domain sales, with NameBio showing 22 sales of the exact term, including the $175,000 sale of metaverse.io and $20,000 for metaverse.one.

The term metaverse is now registered in 679 TLDs according to dotDB, one of the most popular terms. The word metaverse has now been added to the main dictionaries.

Will fediverse enjoy similar popularity? At time of writing, fediverse is registered in 145 TLDs according to dotDB.

I searched for exact fediverse domain names listed for sale using Dofo Advanced Search. Surprisingly, only 10 names were found, most listed in 4-figures. Of course, not all listings appear in Dofo.

The only exact fediverse domain name sale in NameBio is fediverse.de, that sold at Sedo last month for $2558.

Takeaway Messages

Here are takeaway messages I drew from my research and exposure to a small part of the fediverse:

• While a few rough edges, the system works.
• Through the fediverse, the general public will become more familiar with many different domain extensions.
• In particular, the .social extension, and a few others, will get a boost.
• Google search dominance, and the centralization of Web2, have tended to reduce visibility of domain names. I can see the fediverse reversing that to some degree, which would be good for domain name investment.
• A smoothly operational fediverse would give more small businesses confidence that perhaps they should take control of their destiny through their own domain name and hosting, and perhaps even run a server for one of the fediverse platforms.
• If the the fediverse is seen as successful, it might give impetus to other decentralized ventures. That may help some Web3 ventures.
• I don’t see a significant aftermarket for fediverse-related names, but there will be occasional sales for both instances and platforms.
• I think the term fediverse will become common, and there will probably be a few, but not many, sales of the exact term.
• I think large centralized services will always be with us. Many prefer to use them, and habits change slowly.

Draw your own conclusions, and do your own research prior to any domain name investments.

Reading List

I found the following resources helpful:

1. Per Axbom wrote one of the best articles on the fediverse, and is the author of the diagram shared above.
2. The Wikipedia fediverse article fediverse includes a comprehensive table of platforms and types.
3. One of the more complete articles on the fediverse, and Mastodon in particular, is published at PCWorld How Mastodon and federated services put social networks in the people’s hands. Written by Adam Taylor, the article is strong on the nuts and bolts of federated social media.
4. Cindy Cohn and Rory Mir published at Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF, the article The Fediverse Could Be Awesome (If We Don’t Screw It Up).
5. Read about Mastodon at JoinMastodon.org or on the Mastodon Wikipedia entry..
6. An incredibly rich source of information on the fediverse, from apps to servers to news and more, is at fediverse.party.

There are also dozens of easily-found blog posts on the fediverse.


Thanks for NameBio, nTLDStats, dotDB, and Dofo for information used in this article, and to all of the cited information sources. Particular thanks to Per Axbom for his article and the Many Branches of the Fediverse diagram.