I’m Mostapha. I buy and sell names from Morocco. Every year a talk says URLs are dead: apps, AI answers, and blockchain. Then a stranger still asks for the name, types an email, and pastes a link. The DNS did not retire. The conference perfume did. Our filter is still the Domain Value Checker letters, not a prophecy. How we score. FAQ.
What did not change
A name a human can say and trust. Usually .com when the buyer could be anyone. Sometimes a ccTLD when they live there: when .ae is the product. Fluency: why names stick. Five factors: the string plus demand. Record tape is still short .coms: outliers.
Keyword cages got weaker. Trust did not. A company would rather own a sayable invented word than best-ai-tools-online. Generator output is not the future of inventory: not automatically worth buying. An AI score is not a bid: that page.
What the hype actually is
New endings as a personality: a bet, not a replacement. NFT wrappers as security: Web3 does not lock the registrar. Theme piles for “the next internet”: no secret niche list. More suffixes also mean more impersonation so keepers still need security 101, not a wallet screenshot.
.eth and friends are other namespaces. Email, browsers, and banks still live on DNS. Official labels: IANA’s root. Comps still in the world you can sell into: NameBio.
What I would still buy
Short enough to say. Ending the buyer already types. History you can explain: snapshots. No fight you will not fund: UDRP. A book that grows is a stricter door: portfolio. Drop leftovers instead of waiting for a new internet: why they fail.
Decision
Bet on letters a stranger already knows how to use. Ignore models that require a different internet. Before you buy. Keep the Google row. AI, Web3, and the new digital frontier were the old title. What still matters is the name.