Some of the most hotly contested strings the 2026 round of the new gTLDs program are, perhaps unsurprisingly, crypto-related - with eleven applications for .bit, two for .bitcoin,five for .crypto and four for .btc (though two were replacement strings so only two will go ahead). But there are also a handful more specifically related the Ethereum ecosystem. We knew that the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) had already given up on .eth1 based on ICANN's draft guidelines for integrating with alternative naming systems, settling on .ens instead. Now we see the Ethereum Foundation's own .ethereum application along with two bids for .ether (one of which specifies .ethers as a replacement string).
ENS's application confirms they have applied for a dotBrand2 despite potentially not actually owning a relevant trademark for the name - it will be interesting to see if this allows them to assign .ens addresses on the blockchain and dish out corresponding addresses in the ICANN root and bypass all the restrictions suggested by ICANN's draft guidelines. Hopefully it doesn't just mean they will use it simply as a vanity domain for their own services (currently at ens.domains) although their application suggests they probably will.
Ethereum Foundation's application is also confirmed as a dotBrand3 and considering the unwieldiness of .ethereum I don't see them doing anything interesting with it for users - they also already have the concise ethereum.foundation domain. One interesting use case for either application could be a replacement for the eth.limo (née eth.link) service whereby you add .limo to the end of a .eth username in order to access an InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) website, favoured by Ethereum users, by conventional means. The service has had its fair share of issues including the eth.link domain being unrenewable due to the registrant being in prison4 which was followed by several hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent on a fight over it being transferred. This led to the slightly clumsy alternative eth.limo which then was hacked due to a screw-up at the EasyDNS registrar and subsequently transferred to Domainsure as an alleged security measure5.
Another obvious advantage to controlling the top-level domain for this service is the current risk of eth.limo being a single registration that could be affected by any .eth sites. If someone decided to host clearly illegal content on a .eth site, the entire eth.limo domain could be subject to a takedown request for abuse. Much like when Telegram's short domain t.me was suspended and took down all links in and to the network. So far, the Ethereum Foundation hasn't posted anything about their application and ENS simply shared ICANN's announcement while pointing out .ens is uncontested6.
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There are also two applications not officially related to the Ethereum network but are clearly looking to capitalise on it: Link Freedom Group (LFG) applied for .ether7 and Worldwide Internet Domains (WID) applied for it8 as well as specifying .ethers as a replacement string9. It's a slightly strange choice as a replacement because if they opted for it and allowed LFG to pursue .ether uncontested, then they would surely face resistance to .ethers as a plural variant. Ether is Ethereum's native cryptocurrency though neither organisation referenced it in their applications. LFG's answer to the question of the TLD's mission and purpose is just a copy/paste blurb which essentially boils down to them wanting to a apply for hundreds of new gTLDs; WID wrote a fairly detailed statement for theirs but crucially included the following:
The registry is intended to reflect the ordinary linguistic meaning of the word rather than the identity, brand, products, or activities of any particular organization. The meaning and intended use of .ETHER are not limited to any single company, technology, product, commercial ecosystem, industry, community, or region.
You can decide for yourself whether you believe that is true. Another broader application is XYZ's bid for .gas10 - as well as meaning gasoline or a state of matter, gas is the name of the network fees charged for making transactions on the Ethereum blockchain so it could find some fans there.
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Slightly adjacent to the Ethereum/ether applications are two dotBrands from, in what is a highly contested field, the most dubious of all cryptocurrency organisations: Tether. In an industry that argues more than anything for the decentralisation of finance, Tether managed to make the most-traded cryptocurrency one that they completely control the supply of, can revoke wallets for and all for a coin that is pegged to the value of the United States dollar. It is famous for printing its own unbacked currency to purchase bitcoin and artificially drive up its value, for secretly having the same people run it and the Bitfinex exchange and its stablecoin USD₮ is the favourite choice of scammers and money launderers. The only positive thing I can say about them is that they have a nice Tonga domain (tether.to). They applied for .tether11 and .usdt (as in the code for their currency). While the .tether application says, "all domain registrations will be restricted to organisations within our corporate group and, potentially, to licensees of our trademarks" the .usdt one more interestingly states they are looking to do something along the lines of .eth12:
We plan to use the .USDT TLD to create wallet address identifiers to make it easier for holders of USDT to use and manage their wallets and interact with other users. We intend to operate the TLD as a dotBrand TLD where all domain registrations will be restricted to organisations within our corporate group and, potentially, to licensees of our trademarks. We will implement a registration and governance process to ensure the business maintains control of all domains in the TLD, including controlling the DNS records associated with all domain names at any level in the TLD. Registration policies will require use of a trusted corporate registrar for the creation of all domain names. The registrar will only accept requests from authorised individuals within our organisation. Maintaining this operational model will easily be sustainable in the long term.
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Not wanting to be left out of the action, the Solana blockchain platform applied for .sol13 and .solana14, with neither as a dotBrand but the former as a community gTLD. For some reason they gave the applicant name of Sol Naming Limited for one and Ana Naming Limited for the other (both applications list redrock.foundation as their website). I'm not really familiar with Solana but I think they used to use .sol addresses onchain like the the .eth addresses on Ethereum but at some point they switched to .sns (for Solana Name Service). These onchain addresses are available to register at sns.id and I saw Twitter users discussing how their .sns handles will soon become real domain names. Although there seems to be some confusion - there is a .sns application15, but it's not by Solana, it's by a Japanese applicant called XRegistry for the initialism "social networking service". Registration for it will be open though, so with no restrictions on eligibility I could see Solana users opting for these domain names. The SNS website claims there are 456k registrations but I don't know enough about Solana to verify that and the copyright year in their footer is 2025.
And finally, two lesser known blockchain platforms applying for their own TLDs are Cardano going for .ada as a community string16 and DFINITY for .icp as a general string17 respectively. I don't know either of these platforms but Cardano seem to currently use .ada addresses like .eth addresses and DFINITY mostly talk about Internet Computer which appears to be some agentic AI bollocks. I noticed they have the domain internet.computer but redirect it to internetcomputer.org.