Unstoppable Domains and Farmsent announced that they are jointly preparing an application for the new gTLD .FARMS and intend to submit it during the next stage of the new domains program. Farmsent is a startup from the United Arab Emirates that is working on creating an online trading platform for farmers and consumers of farm products based on blockchain technologies. And Unstoppable Domains is a well-known company in the blockchain domain market, which, following the results of the new stage of the new domains program, intends to become a registry for “regular” domain zones.
The companies have already launched .FARMS blockchain domain, and now they have announced that they are working on preparing an application for the corresponding generic top-level domain and will submit it to participate in the next stage of the ICANN new domains program. It is not known how far the work has progressed, but Domain Incite, reporting this news, notes that the preparation could well be limited to a careful reading of the Guidelines for Applicants for New Domains, specially prepared by the ICANN. For now, this Guidelines have the status of a draft, but it is unlikely that they will undergo significant changes.
One of the points clearly states that applications for new generic top-level domains, the names of which are the singular or plural form in the same language as the names of already delegated domains, are subject to rejection. .FARM domain was delegated to Donuts (now Identity Digital) back in December 2013. Today, it has about 26 thousand registrations, which, however, is of no importance: the very fact of the existence of such a domain deprives the application for .FARMS of any meaning.
