Years ago there was someone that set a goal of trading up to a million dollar domain. I think I traded a time or two in the thread.
the basic premise is, I start with a terrible domain, then you trade me a slightly better domain, then someone else trades me a slightly better domain for the one you gave me, until I reached a goal of whatever I was trying for.
the reason you would be willing to trade ‘down’ was because each trade would be discussed in a blog post, and the entire list of trades would be on the main page of the web site hosting the contest.
So, owning one of the domains in the chain of trades becomes more valuable because of the interest generated as the goal nears; other domainers start posting about the trades, maybe the AP News network picks up on the event, causing hundreds of thousands of clicks, etc. The whole point was to make the web site go viral as people watch to see someone earn a million dollars off the original $10 domain.
I think the experiment died after a few trades. But it was clever, and IMO certainly more entertaining than spending thousands of dollars on low art ape NFTs.
I think the original domain was something like ‘this domain sucks’ dot something, I don’t think it was even the dot com.
I also believe the idea was a percentage of the final trade would be distributed to everyone who made a trade in the chain. So that would more than compensate those in the first few rounds trying to get the contest started.
