The domain name I currently use for this website is www.extua.pw.

.pw is the TLD for the Republic of Palau, and was made available to the general public in March 2013. I registered this domain with Gandi two months later in May 2013. At the time I was just looking for a cheap domain, I looked up Palau on Wikipedia and decided to go for it. 🇵🇼

The fact that the domain was very cheap turned out to be a problem of its own, as .pw was quickly adopted by spammers and gained a pretty bad reputation. I’ve had a few problems with this domain getting blocked by web filters in the past, although for the most part it’s been fine.

Domain registries actually matter

.io is the TLD for the British Indian Ocean Territory, and a popular domain used by tech startups. The British Indian Ocean Territory is a colonial entity formed around the expulsion of native Chagossians; before paying to register a .io TLD you should consider whether it’s harmful.

.af is the TLD for Afghanistan, and there used to be a Mastodon server for LGBT people registered at queer.af. In February 2024, the queer.af domain was suspended by the Afghan Ministry of Communications and IT, probably because they didn’t like the content of the website.

.ly is the TLD for Libya, and was used by the link shortening service bit.ly from 2008 to 2011. Bitly started using bitly.com in 2011 after the Libyan state was subject to regime change and the integrity of the .ly registry was called into question.

The CEO of the .uk domain registrar Nominet resigned in 2022 after losing £4.9 million on a failed investment in a US cyber security company. Nominet isn’t quite as stable an institution as you would have thought.

Earlier this year there was an organisational crisis within AFRINIC around a large block of IPv4 addresses which had been acquired by a Chinese company. Again, not as stable an institution as you’d think.

The World Wide Web is not completely virtual; the web is governed by people in particular locations with their own cultures and ideologies. You should think about where your domain is registered, and by who.

The Unprofessional Web

The .pw TLD was initially marketed for the ‘Personal Web’¹ (cool!), then rebranded for the ‘Professional Web’ (less cool). Earlier this month I noticed Radix started offering .pw domains, now representing ‘Public Wallet’ for use by cryptocurrencies.

The .pw domain can be used as an easy-to-remember wallet address for holders of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and other cryptocurrencies, replacing long and complex character strings with simple, personalized domains.

While I hope this generates some revenue for the people of Palau, I think Radix et al. would to better to lobby ICANN for a generic TLD. Why not use .crypto, .coin, or .wallet?

This site is not a public wallet and I feel I should move domains soon. I’ve had a new domain in mind for a while, and I’m planning to switch over early next year.