Porkbun CEO Ray King and Dynadot CEO Todd Han have joined forces through a separate company called Oinkadot, applying for 25 new top-level domains in ICANN’s 2026 expansion round. The base application fees alone total $5.675 million.
Ech’s short answer
The partnership brings together two experienced registrar founders, but Oinkadot is separate from Porkbun and Dynadot. Its applications range from .anime and .manga to .hack, .moon, .weed and .zzz.
One of the more eye-catching stories from the closing days of ICANN’s 2026 new-gTLD application window is not coming from a giant technology company. It is coming from two familiar names in the registrar business.
Ray King, CEO of Porkbun, and Todd Han, CEO of Dynadot, have teamed up through Oinkadot to apply for 25 new top-level domains. Domain Name Wire first reported the full list on 15 August 2026 and said the partnership has already paid $5.675 million in application fees.
The name clearly combines the personalities of the two registrars, but the venture itself is not part of either registrar. That distinction matters: this is a separate registry bet led by the two CEOs, not a merger of Porkbun and Dynadot.
The size of the cheque makes the story interesting, but the strings themselves make it worth watching. Oinkadot has gone after a mix of technology terms, pop-culture words, broad consumer concepts and a few deliberately playful extensions. Some look commercially stronger than others, and several are already likely to end up in contention sets.
Two long-time registrar operators found themselves interested in many of the same strings and decided to apply together.
According to Domain Name Wire, King and Han realised they were targeting many of the same ideas while using EarlyWarning.Report, a service built around the 2026 new-TLD round. Rather than compete against each other on every overlapping string, they combined forces under a new company called Oinkadot.
King already has significant registry experience. In the 2012 round, his company Top Level Design successfully obtained .design, .wiki, .ink and .gay, and later acquired .tattoo. The registry portfolio was eventually sold to GoDaddy, with .design sold in 2021 and the remaining TLDs sold in 2023.
Han built Dynadot into a major global registrar but did not participate in the 2012 application round. This time, he is entering the registry side of the market alongside someone who has already been through the process.
The portfolio is broad enough to show that Oinkadot is not betting on a single theme or industry.
Oinkadot’s 25 disclosed primary strings are listed below. These are applications, not awarded extensions: each still has to make it through ICANN’s process, and competing applications may have to be resolved before a winner can move toward delegation.
.anime and .manga immediately stand out because they map to enormous global entertainment categories and have obvious branding potential. They are also exactly the type of strings where multiple groups may believe they have a strong commercial or community case for operating the extension.
The technology cluster is also interesting. .hack, .bit, .bug, .glitch, .loop, .stack and .wire are short, familiar words with natural uses across software, cybersecurity, developer communities and technology media. That does not guarantee high registration volume, but it gives registrars and marketers a lot of ways to position them.
Then there are broad consumer words such as .heart, .moon, .super, .stay and .dine, along with more niche or playful bets such as .weed, .puff and .zzz. That mix suggests Oinkadot is balancing obvious category names with extensions that could build a distinct identity through marketing.
Oinkadot has disclosed the 25 primary strings, but it has not published a detailed business plan for each one. Commercial potential will depend on competition, registry pricing, distribution, marketing and the eventual rules attached to each TLD.
Twenty-five applications at ICANN’s $227,000 standard evaluation fee come to exactly $5.675 million before other possible costs.
ICANN set the standard 2026 new-gTLD evaluation fee at $227,000 per application. Multiply that by Oinkadot’s 25 primary applications and the result is $5,675,000. Domain Name Wire reports that Oinkadot has already paid that amount.
The application fee does not necessarily represent the full cost of obtaining and launching a TLD. ICANN lists separate charges for some conditional evaluations, and applicants can also face third-party costs for objections, appeals and auctions. A successful registry then has ongoing operating and ICANN-related costs after contracting.
ICANN’s standard evaluation fee for the 2026 round.
The exact base-fee total for Oinkadot’s 25 primary applications.
Competing applicants may need to resolve contention, potentially including auctions.
Some application types or circumstances can trigger additional ICANN evaluation fees.
Winning a string is only the start; running and marketing a registry requires further investment.
Several of Oinkadot’s names overlap with strings already announced by other applicants.
Domain Name Wire notes that Link Freedom Group has announced applications involving .bit, .hack, .loop, .moon, .sign, .stack, .stay, .super and .zzz. It has not publicly specified which of those are primary strings and which are replacement strings, so the final contention picture is not yet settled.
.anime and .manga may also become crowded. Other groups have previously announced plans involving those terms. Until ICANN publishes the public-facing application data on Reveal Day, there is no complete view of who is competing for every string.
A submitted and paid application is a major commitment, but it is not the same as owning the TLD. Administrative checks, evaluations, objections and contention resolution can all stand between an application and eventual delegation into the DNS root.
ICANN received more than 1,600 primary applications in the 2026 round, so Oinkadot is entering a much larger competitive field.
ICANN closed the 15-week application window on 12 August 2026 at 23:59 UTC. The organisation said it received more than 1,600 primary applications, with more than 1,100 of those also including replacement-string applications.
The next major public milestone is Reveal Day. After ICANN completes its administrative review, it plans to publish the public-facing portions of the applications so applicants and the wider domain industry can see the applied-for strings and identify contention sets.
Oinkadot has disclosed its 25 primary applications early but is keeping its replacement strings private for now. That means even this unusually detailed announcement is only part of its full strategy.
This is a sizeable registry bet from people who already understand registrar distribution, domain pricing and what customers actually search for. The important question is not simply whether Oinkadot wins a large number of strings. It is whether it can win the right strings at a sensible total cost and then turn those extensions into products that registrars want to sell and users want to register.
In brief
Ray King and Todd Han have put serious money behind 25 new TLD applications, including some unusually memorable strings. The next question is how many attract rivals and how expensive those contention battles become. For me, .anime, .manga, .hack, .moon and several of the short technology terms are the ones to watch most closely when ICANN publishes the full field.
