Every year your renewal bill gets a little heavier and you tell yourself it’s the cost of doing business. Since 2021, the wholesale price of a .com has climbed about 30% — to $10.26 a name. Verisign’s operating margins sit above 67%. Across more than 160 million registrations. That’s not the cost of doing business. That’s a toll booth with no other road.
On September 4, someone finally said the quiet part out loud. The class-action firm Hagens Berman filed suit in California federal court accusing Verisign and ICANN of maintaining an illegal .com monopoly — “billions of dollars in illicit gains,” in the complaint’s words. The proposed class covers everyone who paid .com renewals since September 2022. If you hold names, that’s you. The firm’s managing partner put it bluntly: “Verisign didn’t build .com. It bought it, made sure no one could compete for it, and has since raised prices at every opportunity.”
Will the lawsuit win? Don’t hold your breath. But don’t miss the point either — this is the first serious legal challenge to the .com pricing machine, and it drags the single biggest cost line in every domain investor’s portfolio into daylight. Monopolies don’t reform because somebody writes a stern letter. They reform when the spotlight gets hot and the discovery gets embarrassing.
And here’s what the lawsuit doesn’t touch: the asset class underneath is doing just fine. This month Cyber.com changed hands in a seven-figure deal through Sedo — price under NDA, because that’s increasingly where the top of the market transacts. H2.com sold for $240,000 and the buyer, a domain investor, turned around and relisted it at $3 million. Orchestra.ai took $250,000. The names keep appreciating. It’s the toll on holding them that’s the argument.
So renew the keepers before November 1, keep the receipts, and watch the docket. If the toll booth ever has to justify its prices, the people holding the most tickets win twice.