Newly Registered .si Domains: Following the Super Intelligence Wave
Our previous article followed the domains registered in the four days after Trump started renaming AI, from the poll terms to .si, the extension that spells SI. The rush did not stop there. By 2 October, the .si registry was reporting 46,066 new .si domains in the last month and 12,613 in the last 24 hours. After the first rush, the number of newly registered .si domains kept climbing. What kept pushing it up, and what kind of names did the rush bring?
What we observed
From 1 September through 1 October, we observed 42,673 newly registered .si domains. Trump's story opened the rush, but what pushed the volume up was the news that followed, from press coverage and registrars starting to sell .si to reports of large sales, which took the daily count to its highest day so far on 1 October.
When the story started
The first names after each step tell the same story. For almost an hour after the first post, only a few names came in, none of them tied to the poll; then the first poll term appeared and went straight onto a sale platform. By the next morning, short names were being taken in quick runs. After the UN speech, the reaction came within half an hour, in batches of intelligence-themed names registered seconds apart. Almost all of these first names are now listed for sale.
| Step | Name | Registered, UTC | After the step | Now |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trump's first post on X, 19 Sep 16:43 | extremeintelligence.si | 19 Sep 17:35 | 52 minutes | On a sale platform |
| The next morning, first poll still open | fdc.si | 20 Sep 07:05 | 14 hours | For-sale page |
| The next morning, first poll still open | abroad.si | 20 Sep 07:05 | 14 hours | For-sale page |
| The UN speech, 22 Sep | superiors.si | 22 Sep 15:20 | Within 30 minutes | For-sale page |
| The UN speech, 22 Sep | geniusmind.si | 22 Sep 15:27 | Within 30 minutes | For-sale page |
These times, together with the daily counts we observed, show clearly that Trump's moves opened this wave of newly registered domains.
What sped it up
Three things kept pushing the volume up. The rush itself became news: on 28 September Domain Name Wire reported that .si had grown by more than 15% in September, and Foreign Policy and Euronews covered it on 28 and 29 September. A mass-market host joined in: Hostinger began offering .si on 23 September, and on 1 October more than a third of the names we observed sat on its parking nameservers; it told TechCrunch that .si had become its second most popular extension after .com. And news of large sales spread, all of them made at Sedo:
- 29 September: Alpha.si sold for $8,895 at Sedo.
- 29 September: Books.si sold for $5,441 at Sedo.
- 29 September: Coins.si sold for $5,441 at Sedo.
- 29 September: Love.si sold for $13,602 at Sedo.
- 30 September: Pocket.si sold for $17,016 at Sedo.
With so many names selling within a very short time, the investor market caught fire: the next two days were the busiest we observed.
What the newly registered domains look like
We ran a set of checks on these names, from their nameservers to what their pages show. To show how the makeup of newly registered domains changed, we compare them with the names registered from 1 September until Trump's first post on 19 September.
What was registered
Even though this was mostly domain investors at work, what they chose is still worth a closer look. The names are shorter and plainer than the .si names registered before the post, almost all letters, with few hyphens or local words, and mostly the .si version of strings already registered in many other extensions. Within the wave, single English words led on most days, and two-word English names grew in the later days.
| Feature | Before Trump's first post, 1 Sep to 19 Sep | After it, to 1 Oct |
|---|---|---|
| Names observed | 1,870 | 40,803 |
| Average length, characters | 9.5 | 7.3 |
| Five characters or fewer | 18.8% | 34.1% |
| 13 characters or more | 22.0% | 6.9% |
| Letters only | 80.6% | 96.2% |
| Digits only | 1.0% | 1.6% |
| Contains a hyphen | 14.0% | 0.8% |
| Longer names that are two English words | 52.2% | 48.9% |
| Longer names of three or more English words | 12.7% | 2.1% |
| Same string also registered as .com | 66.2% | 98.4% |
| Registered only in .si | 28.8% | 1.2% |
| Registered in more than 50 extensions | 23.3% | 48.5% |
The scarcest names, the short ones, were taken along the way, including names that mean something to developers, in chat and on the web.
| Name type | 19 to 29 Sep | 30 Sep to 1 Oct | Total | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Three letters | 3,979 | 1,177 | 5,156 | jdk.si, otw.si |
| Three digits | 516 | 8 | 524 | 403.si, 120.si |
What the nameservers show
Most of these names were registered by domain investors and put up for sale through a range of platforms. Some went to marketplaces such as Afternic, Atom, Sedo and GoFruits; others were listed on registrar marketplaces such as Dynadot and Spaceship.
| Nameservers | Before Trump's first post, 1 Sep to 19 Sep | After it, to 1 Oct |
|---|---|---|
| Default nameservers from registration | 18.4% | 70.8% |
| Sale platforms | 4.3% | 16.2% |
| Afternic | 1.2% | 7.6% |
| Atom | 1.3% | 4.6% |
| Sedo | 1.6% | 3.7% |
| GoFruits | 0.1% | 0.2% |
| Nameservers named "domain for sale" | 4.5% | 0.6% |
| Hosting and CDN | 30.9% | 3.2% |
| Other nameservers, mostly Slovenian providers | 41.2% | 9.1% |
| No nameservers | 0.6% | 0.1% |
The table makes one thing plain: 16% of the names in the wave point directly to the large sale platforms, a clear sign that domain investors make up a large part of it (see How to Read Domain Registration Trends Like a Market). A closer look at the default nameservers adds more. Many names sitting on Dynadot's nameservers are also waiting to be sold. More interesting still, some names registered elsewhere have had their nameservers pointed to Spaceship on purpose, so they can be listed for sale there.
Summary
- Trump's renaming of AI opened the wave, and the news that followed kept it growing: we observed 42,673 newly registered .si domains from 1 September to 1 October, and 1 October was the highest day so far.
- After each step, the first names tied to the story came within an hour.
- The wave took short, letters-only names, mostly the .si version of strings already registered in many other extensions.
AI has created a lot of legends, from start-ups to .ai names, and investors are betting that SI will make .si the next one. News of sales can ignite market sentiment, but more parties still need to take part: if developers, large projects and companies keep pushing SI forward, holding .si names now may be a good opportunity, though only time will tell.
You can browse newly registered .si domains in the DomainKits newly registered domains search, with the same filters as the other extensions.
Data note: our data comes from open sources, so it does not match the registry's figures one for one, but in a market with many participants it shows how the event unfolded.
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