Q&A: Michael Ho, Co-founder & CBO at D3, core contributor to Doma Protocol

May 26, 2026

D3 focuses on internet domains, an asset class with over $360M assets globally that still trades through fragmented, largely manual processes with limited liquidity and price transparency. This is starting to evolve with new structures that package domain portfolios into single tradable onchain assets while preserving existing Web2 monetization. Blockwind News spoke with him recently.

Q: Domain names have existed for decades, yet the market still appears fragmented and opaque. Why has this asset class remained structurally inefficient for so long compared to equities, commodities, or even NFTs?

A: Domains are still treated like temporary leases when they should be treated like assets you own. When you buy a stock or NFT, it settles and clears instantly. When you buy a domain, you’re looking at 45-90 days, 10-20% broker fees, and manual escrow.

The numbers tell you everything you need to know. Less than 3% of the 370 million registered domains sell each year. Public equities routinely see more than 1% of their market cap trade every single day. From my time at Goldman Sachs, I saw how a transparent, regulated market structure creates price discovery and attracts capital.

Domains can make money when people visit them or when you rent them out to businesses. But there’s no standardized way to capture or trade that value. We’re stuck with a broker-driven system that was built before the internet even existed.

Q: You describe domains as a digital asset class with intrinsic cash-flow potential through traffic, branding, and leasing. What fundamentally changes when these assets become tokenized and tradable onchain?

A: Tokenization turns domains into assets you can trade and build with. When we put a domain onchain, a few things happen at once.

First, speed. What used to take two months now takes seconds.

Second, flexibility. You can split ownership of a valuable domain without giving up control of how it’s used, or you can sell a piece of a domain portfolio without selling the whole thing.

Third, you can use domains in DeFi. They become collateral for loans, they can be rented out automatically, or bundled into products that generate yield.

Domains have always been able to make money. People visit them, companies want to own the right name, and businesses lease premium domains. That value was always there. The problem was that you couldn’t easily access it or trade it.

Tokenization builds the infrastructure to price domains properly, trade them efficiently, and create new financial products around them.

Q: One criticism of tokenization is that it can create liquidity theatrics rather than genuine liquidity. How do you ensure tokenized domain portfolios attract real long-term participants instead of short-term speculation?

A: The key is maintaining full DNS compliance so tokenized domains still function like normal domains. They resolve in browsers, handle email, and work within existing internet infrastructure.

Beyond that, integration with onchain identity systems means these assets serve multiple purposes across hundreds of applications. The focus needs to be on premium domains with track records, not speculative registrations from last week.

The best domains have renewal rates above 90% because companies depend on them. Targeting domains with years of ownership history and consistent traffic matters. Long-term participants emerge when the underlying asset has utility beyond just trading.

Q: You mentioned renewal rates of roughly 70% across the asset class. What does that tell us about the durability and economic behavior of domain ownership compared to other digital assets?

A: That 70% figure is the dropout rate after the first year. Most of those are speculative bets that didn’t work out, or defensive registrations companies didn’t end up needing.

The other 30% of domains survive past year one, and within that group, premium .com domains have renewal rates of 80-90% year after year. That’s similar to what is seen with high-quality commercial real estate leases.

The market splits into two camps. Most domains are throwaway registrations, but the valuable ones have solid economics and committed owners.

The domains worth tokenizing are in that second group: assets that businesses depend on and have owned for years. These don’t get dropped because they’re core infrastructure.

When renewal rates hit 85%+, that signals predictable revenue and low risk of default. That’s the kind of profile institutional investors know how to evaluate.

Q: How do you see the relationship between Web2 internet infrastructure and Web3 evolving?

A: They’re integrating, not replacing each other. Web2 DNS has to stick around because the browser needs to turn example.com into an IP address.

What’s shifting is where ownership and trading happen. As more domains get tokenized and show better liquidity and efficiency, the market will naturally move to trading onchain.

Traditional registrars can add tokenization without rebuilding their systems or changing how they’re regulated. The domain industry has 30+ years of ICANN governance and registry structures that work. Nobody’s throwing that out.

Web3 functionality gets added on top of what already exists. You end up with one unified ownership system where the same domain works everywhere, whether that’s the traditional internet or Web3.

Q: Are tokenized domains ultimately a bridge between the two worlds, or do you envision a more radical restructuring of digital ownership online?

A: Both, but it happens in stages. Right now, the focus is on building a bridge that keeps DNS working exactly as it does today while adding Web3 features on top.

Backward compatibility with 30+ years of internet infrastructure is essential for adoption.

Over time, though, market forces drive restructuring. Ownership moves to NFTs, trading happens on decentralized exchanges, and DNS resolution becomes one function among others, like onchain identity or DeFi collateral.

The ownership and trading layer shifts onchain while the technical layer stays compatible with regular browsers and email. The end result is convergence, one unified ownership system that works across both worlds rather than one replacing the other.

Q: You previously worked at Goldman Sachs. From an institutional perspective, what would need to happen before large investors seriously consider internet domains as an investable alternative asset class?

A: Institutions need regulatory clarity before they commit capital. That means working within existing structures like ICANN and established registrar systems.

Standardized valuation is equally important. At Goldman, we valued companies using cash flow models and comparable sales. Domains need the same rigorous approach based on traffic and renewal data.

The transaction history exists through platforms like NameBio, but it needs to be structured for institutional analysis.

Proper trading infrastructure with deep liquidity and custody solutions that meet institutional standards is also essential.

The domain market is worth $360 billion, bigger than many alternative asset classes institutions already invest in. The opportunity exists, but the infrastructure has been missing.