After looking more into appraised values of domains, he should have offered at least half of what he paid. It looks to be worth no more than $130K (and I even checked sushi.com and it receives appraisals way above $million dollars, so not a good comparison to Badger.com). His overspending on acquiring the domain shouldn’t be passed on to the Badger community. It would be nice to have the .com domain, but maybe only reimbursement half? He should be held accountable for overpaying and not negotiating closer to the appraised value. Maybe even offer a little over the appraisal and offer $150K ($20K premium), but reimbursing an amount over double the appraised value is an irresponsible use of a startup’s funds.
Appraised domain values are B.S. I just sold a 4 letter domain that appraisal tools said was worth $20K for $125K no questions asked. It’s worth what it’s worth, that’s it.
I’m basing my vote, and the ROI on the key demographics that are driving crypto.
- The primary drivers of cryptocurrency adoption are age, income, and education level.
- 29% of 18-34 year olds claim to be “very familiar” with cryptocurrencies.
- In contrast, 71% of 55+ year olds claim they are “not familiar at all” with cryptocurrencies.
The 55+ demographic that will use crypto and DeFi when it becomes appealing and user-friendly for them make up a huge portion of the income factor of driving adoption.
This demographic also grew up during a time when (for a period) .com was the only trusted TLD, and credibility was given to companies that had a “dot-com presence” this reputation is ingrained in their psyche as being associated with legitimacy. Couple this with the fact that after secondary TLDs like .org, .net were common, there was a wave of new TLDs, many of which were used for scamming and phishing. For those who were not alive/old enough/or “in the know” during the early internet, many articles and websites further ingrained “dot-com legitimacy” by issuing warnings to users to look for phishing sites and be weary of imposters by checking what TLD the site was using. This further ingrained .com has having intrinsic value into the psyche of this demographic.
Crypto has risen to unbelievable adoption and market caps already, and that’s been done by the demographic with relatively the least amount of money to spend. Imagine what the space looks like when humans over 55+ are diversifying their portfolios into crypto, or retiring and taking funds from now-liquid 401(k)s which have been accumulating for 20-30 years and investing in DeFi.
Think it’s a broad leap? Not only are .com domains considered more trustworthy, but people are 3.8x more likely to assume a domain ends in .com.
Interesting but unrelated note, this study was performed by “growthbadger”.
A sign from divine sources? Probably, prove me wrong.
Regardless, ICANN did a study on awareness and trust of TLDs (I can’t post more than 2 links, will reply with ICANN study) that when combined with the first study paint a picture that should be obvious:
- There’s a currently untapped pool of assets in a specific demographic of humans that don’t know about or use crypto.
- As broader adoption grows, this demographic will be pushed into DeFi, potentially out of necessity.
- These humans trust
.commore than any domain and assume that a company has a “dot-com presence” over another TLD. - This is a brand loyal demographic of humans thanks to the rise of blatant and aggressive advertising during their formative years
So as someone who was a software developer during the dot-com boom, this is a no-brainer YES vote based on the ROI that will come when tens of millions of humans utilize DeFi for the first time, hear about BADGER, and more than likely assume that our presence is a .com. It’s a mid to long-term investment.
Do I think it will have a hugely positive ROI? Possibly. We’ll at least break even monetarily. The real ROI will be in our reputation with what will be a substantially large demographic of humans.
All that being said, this should by no means set a precedent. $300k is a decent amount of money to be essentially morally backed into a corner to spend, despite good intentions on the part of Arben (your commitment to the community is much appreciated). If humans are going to do something for the DAO that may requires the DAO’s time, money, or resources it should be discussed here first.
3 Likes
I agree with you that it’s much more than it should have been.
$300k is high, much higher than it should have been purchased for, but that’s aside the point. Having sold domains since 1999, I will attest that should have gone for no more than $75k, and that’s assuming that the selling party knows that the site will be a monetization source, if no information was given regarding what the site would be used for, it’s a ~$25k domain. It’s the common name of a species and could be catchy for a number of reasons. But there are no large companies with the name seeking the URL, no towns that require promotion or tourist information with that name, and no particular zeitgeist related to badgers in general.
As @gmoney said, appraisal values are BS. What’s done is done, the trust that will be brought to Badger via a .com is huge. Arden was forward enough to think of The DAO and shouldn’t be penalized for it. Unless there is any reason to believe that there was any collusion between Arden and the person whom they purchased the site from (it was mentioned they had prior dealings) in order to profit from the domain, it’s a YES here.
2 Likes