The “Unstoppable Domains” Scam has no place in ICANN

ICANN to trust Unstoppable Domains with real extensions?

This insanity ends here and now.

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There are companies and companies. Some make the world better, others make it worse.

Some make it worse for no good reason so in essence, they don’t deserve to exist. Today we’ll tell the story of one such company.

Unstoppable Domains was founded in 2019 as part of a wave of blockchain startups aiming to build infrastructure for the decentralized web (Web3). It claimed (and still claims to be) extremely innovative. Here we’ll examine the company’s history and how innovative they actually were and whether it was simply all a money grab.

Blockchain domains first appeared in 2011 on the Namecoin blockchain (.bit) — one of the earliest blockchain projects and the first serious attempt at a decentralized domain name system. Namecoin was launched as the first Bitcoin fork in April 2011 (essentially the first altcoin!) and with it the .bit namespace was created as a decentralized alternative to traditional DNS.

There was nothing truly innovative about Unstoppable Domains. However compared to early blockchain extensions like .bit and .nxt, there was a subtle change.

.bit and .nxt were ground for true geeks, true speculators and true criminals (as they could not be stopped in case of illegal activity, similar to .onion). They explored the frindges of the market not hiding that these domains do not and would never resolve in mainstream browsers.

Those extensions have the following advantages:

• They are honest, you get what you see.
• They are truly decentralized. 100% on the Blockchain. Truly Unstoppable.
• They are cheap.

And we mean cheap!

• As of writing a .bit domain costs $0.01 a year. A cent!
• As of writing a .coin domain costs way less, a whopping $0.0000568 a year.
• In 2021 UD was selling .coin names for more than a million times (!) this (market) price.

Unstoppable domains blatantly overcharge for something that already exist. Not to make it better. They actually make it worse by both breaking the trust and the decentralization of the domain. Basically its only existing qualities among the many downsides.

Unstoppable domains took a different approach from the very start regarding honesty and trust. They did not explicitly warn users that the domains do not resolve and are basically unusable for any normal purpose. And while this was mentioned in the FAQ, the wording was made to sound like this could change any moment, saying “not initially” and “near future”. And this was deliberate – anyone in the domain industry well knew this was a lost cause. Same with indexability by search engines.

What has changed in their messaging in 6+ years? Well, not much:

(https://www.reddit.com/r/Domains/comments/1lsz7u2/are_you_using_unstoppable_domains/)

In 2021 Unstoppable Domains were offering domains based on the Ethereum blockchain. The process was such a disaster that in this period the first 14 (!) Trustpilot reviews were all one 1 of 5 stars. Every single one! Here are some gems:

More Trustpilot reviews here and here

The general vibe of the company is visible here:

The pattern of some of the next Trustpilot reviews shows that they are highly likely artificial or paid. Even with those the average score is a lackluster 3.84/5 – Trustpilot only displays 4.4 because their dumb algorithm gives less weight to older reviews, even though these are usually the most genuine ones.

Unstoppable Domains has a history of fake reviews with a glaring example here:

We checked LinkedIn profiles and indeed the first three reviews of the extension were made by one UD employee and the other two are both by Ukrainian QAs, almost impossible to be a coincidence – so not legit.

In July 2022, the company raised $65 million in a Series A round led by Pantera Capital with a $1 billion valuation. No ones knows where this money has gone but it seems that it’s solving invented, rather than real, problems in the blockchain world. For example the practice of using Web3 “domain names” as a shortener for crypto wallet addresses has created a whole new opportunity for crypto scams via typo domains (according to this investigation) which is actively used for criminal activity. So instead of making blockchain better, Unstoppable domains taking money to make it worse. Everything they touch turns to sh*t because this is a company optimizing for revenue, not value created. No wonder when asked to describe UD in short, our region’s top crypto expert directly said “scoundrels”.

According to the official investment statement:

“Over the past four years, we’ve taken that vision from our CEO’s living room to people across the globe. Our community has registered 2.5 million domains, which people can now use to connect with more than 300 integrations. Today, people can use their Unstoppable Domains to log into more than 150 Web3 applications, replace lengthy crypto wallet addresses on more than 80 wallets and exchanges, create decentralized websites, and build their web3 identity. We’re proud to have built our business until this year with under $7 million in VC funding in the history of the company, prior to this round.

So why raise funds now? When we first launched, NFTs were a little-known technology on the fringes of crypto. Today, people have begun to understand the promise of Web3, and how NFTs can put power back in the hands of people. Now is the time to bring our technology to the world”.

Let us make a humoristic translation for you beyond the corporate BS with (extra comments from us)

“Over the past four years, we’re discovered how nice money grabbing is. We have sold 2.5 million “domains”, that are not real domains, but people can use them for 300 largely useless integrations and to log into more than 150 Web3 applications, most of which will scam them less than us, yet some will scam them more. They can replace lengthy crypto wallet addresses on more than 80 wallets and exchanges (because not one copy-pastes those, everyone writes them just to be sure no errors are made) create decentralized websites (that we may kill by killing not just the website, but the entire extension) and build their (invisible) web3 identity. We’re proud to have built our business until this year with under $7 million in VC funding in the history of the company, prior to this round, because money grabbing also requires investors so we can do misleading advertising with their money, not our own.

So why raise funds now? When we first launched, NFTs were a little-known technology on the fringes of crypto. Today, people have begun to understand the promise of Web3, and how NFTs can put power back in the hands of people (they totally did). Now is the time to bring our technology to the world. That means we need more resources and great partners like Pantera Capital to support our growth so we shore up our extremely questionable operation and have marketing funds for a huge, one time FOMO-based campaign”.

In October 2022 UD filed a questionable lawsuit to get a competitor out of business and to increase their chances in court simply deleted a whole TLD with no prior warning (!), rendering 116000 .coin “domains” and their respective websites and integrations 100% unusable. People were left sitting on useless blockchain records, essentially just a huge excrement pile. While refunds were offered, the offer was for store credit, not cash and required the “domains” being returned, well knowing that most buyers would not made the technical effort needed.

(https://domainincite.com/28356-unstoppable-domains-stops-over-116000-domains-as-alt-root-tld-goes-dark)

Honesty? Where?
Trust? Why?
Prices? Total money grab.

And most importantly… unstoppable? More like Unstartable.

To call your Unstartable-in-a-browser domains “Unstoppable” is misleading. To have the worst ratio of stopped/active domains among any major registry (!) and still call yourself “Unstoppable” makes you a laughing stock.

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How Not to Buy Legitimacy

Years were going by and the domain company that sold “domains” that did not resolve, was going well. It was financially stable and even got an ICANN registrar accreditation. It immediately used it to try to attract normal domains with lucrative transfer promos trading the shady crypto cash for something resembling legitimacy.

For Unstoppable Domains and their investors, there is only one way forward. Getting from ICANN real new gTLDs matching their fake TLDs so they finally depart snake-oil-land and have a real business case. And it may have worked if not for one fatal mistake. Unstoppable Domains decided to mess with… Bulgaria!

WTF!?

See, Bulgaria, a small country, has a relatively large domain community holding a big domain portfolio (200,000+ domains) which functions differently than usual. The domains are owned by various companies and individuals but are in some regards collectively managed and branded. The community has a single client-facing brand (Seo.Domains) and Kalin Karakehayov is the most known domain expert in it.

In 2025 Unstoppable domains decided to trade cash for badly needed legitimacy and offered $5 transfers with some limitations. Since the portfolio has some really trashy domains and news spread fast, many of the Bulgarian domain owners decided to transfer in some domains (the worse of the worse in general since who would trust UD with anything decent). 8000+ domains were transfered by various individuals.

Then on December 1st, all Bulgarian accounts were blocked. No domain owners could log in or make any changes. No domain owners received any official communication or explanation. To this day, 2 months later, this has not changed.

The only communication received was the following Telegram message from Brady from Unstoppable domains to Kalin Karakehayov, who previously had chatted about promos:

“We noticed that your team created at least 50 accounts at UD, each maxing out the transfer in promo of 360 transfers each, totaling at least 18k transfers and at least $100k in discounts that we’ve given you. This is clear abuse of our terms, which ban using multiple accounts to game our promos. https://unstoppabledomains.com/terms#discountedTransferPromo

These accounts are now locked with no access. Please confirm these are your accounts, and if there are any more duplicate accounts, deliver me a list. let us know how you’d like to pay back this $100k to unlock your accounts and get access to your domains“.

Kalin had to contact people, collect information about the situation and help Bulgarian domainers get some legal help, which also led nowhere. Kalin gave a final warning to Brady on Dec 30th to unlock the accounts. There was no answer.

According to the promo TOS:

This offer applies to all DNS domains. It is limited to a maximum discount of $3.09 per domain and applies to no more than 100 domains per Customer. As used in this Promotion, “Customer” refers to a unique individual or entity.

So if the domains belong to different owners, how can Unstoppable Domains question their ownership? The owner is visible in the billing data in their own database. There isn’t and cannot be any other owner than the one who paid UD for the transfer.

While this will likely be resolved with ICANN complaints, most of which have already been filed, there is a much bigger picture.

What kind of company just blocks all accounts from a whole country, does not communicate with the domain owners at all and then asks a $100,000 ransom from someone who does not own the domains to unlock the accounts?

ICANN, is this right?

Well, the same kind of company whose whole story is built on fakeness and complete lack of ethics. You cannot wash your true colors away. You cannot astroturf them. You cannot fool everyone. Your one and only chance is to fool the ones, who hold the keys to your destiny. In this case ICANN for the new gTLD round.

However, ICANN does not support deception, discrimination, $100,000 ransom notes over Telegram and blocking numerous accounts of ordinary domainer owners. And will make sure they make the right decision when the time comes.

Unstoppable Domains made their bully move. Bulgaria was patient and civil for 60 days but time is now up.

Now Bulgaria will move. We were founded in year 681. We outlasted empires way more powerful than us. We can handle a company that does not deserve to exist.

The problem with fucking up everyone on your way is that people remember. They don’t have the resources to fight back publicly and legally. But you know who has them? Bulgaria does.

Today is a day of reckoning for Unstoppable Domains. Everyone who saw your endless ads, bought a “domain” and then realized how useless it is, will come back to haunt you. Only now they are all coming for you at the same time with strategy and support from us. We will gladly provide them ICANN emails to tell them what they think of your company and whether you should be trusted with any new gTLDs.

So, let’s get this party started.

• If you were ever fucked up by Unstoppable Domains, contact us at [email protected] and share this website everywhere, including to any domainers and journalists you know.
• If are/were an employee at Unstoppable Domains and want to signal about shady or downright illegal practices, contact us at [email protected] and we’ll assure you have legal protection if we use the information provided.

You know what the world will lose if Unstoppable Domains ceases to exist?

Absolutely nothing.

Regards from the lions of Bulgaria. Let’s share and roar until ICANN makes the right choice. Smash those buttons!