alt Hacker News.self: A new top-level domain designed to support self-hosting
Comments
Hi there. I've done a bit of work on specifying human-centric identity goals for the internet over the last 10 years. May I suggest you look at Microsoft Vega? https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/vega-zero-know... (I have no affiliation).
In brief, I think they aim to solve the most important needs for online identity-gated services in a maximally private way.
For instance, I'd like to see .self offer the following: a single domain to any person in the world with identity blinded. I can imagine two 'tranches': say xxx.v.self for 'verified' and xxx.u.self for 'unverified'.
Both would use a Zero Knowledge proof to confirm they had not already registered a domain; verified would register with you guys or a data broker some PII in case it was needed for verification / checks / etc, while unverified would maintain the promise of one domain = one person, but not allow the TLD or registrars to be able to unblind which person it is.
Use cases like this would be really fantastic. And, obviously could be tested out and tried on a normal domain name while you make your pitch, and put in for the auction / however ICANN is currently managing TLD launches.
https://hccf.onmy.cloud/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/dot-self....
> Everyone entitled to a subdomain at no cost
How are you going to pay for the (substantial) cost of running a TLD without registration fee revenue? Is this a loss leader for other services? Are you operating on a 100% donation model?
> No parking, squatting, or reselling
How do you plan to tell the difference between a parked/squatted domain and one in legitimate use but offering no public-facing services?
The reason why this won't work is right there, in the original link itself.
They're allowing comments and obviously the first thing there is a scam.
No way any goodwill on the Internet is going to prosper. Not anymore.
I’m just using .home.arpa for my self hosted stuff. Free, just have to deal with TLS root cert trust, but once that’s down; you’re golden.
We should probably just bring back Geocities at this point.
Site errored out and gave me three different error messages as I reloaded. I guess it's self-hosted on something underpowered, and dynamic where static would do the job?
Hold up...why isn't .self listed here:
https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db
Is this just an idea at this point, or some kind of "you have to use our DNS to resolve .self domains" scheme - ?
Shotgun on your.self! That’s going to yield a ton of great second level sub domains :)
I don't fully understand how this works... who regulates and defines what is "self-hosted" or "ethical technology"... I feel you can't really solve the distributed consensus and governance problem by just introducing a new domain suffix.
.me is cooler, but...
That all the cool 2-letter TLDs are designated as country codes was an extraordinary mistake that will have unpredictable and devastating consequences long into the future.
mine.my.own.my.precious.self
Better charge an arm and a leg for it, or people will complain that it’s too cheap and argue for blocking it everywhere.
Can someone explain how the "core features" would work ?
How/Why is this linked to a TLD and not a hosting provider ?
It simply cannot be both free and free choice of domain.
If it has both, it will be squatted to uselessness, and blocked everywhere because of phishing scams everywhere.
You can either make the domains cost money, which seems counter to the entire point, or disallow choosing the domain, instead handing out free what3words style names.
I've been looking to get into the TLD game. It's gonna cost about $600k, and it's a coin toss as to whether or not you'll get your money back. The two I've been eyeing, is .ion and .ness. Anyone want to go in on either of those with me?
What is the expected price range for registration and renewal under this TLD?
Will there be any assurance that renewal prices will remain fairly stable, rather than being significantly raised after customers grow attached to their domains (a practice that seems to be common with new gTLDs)?
> One Person, One Subdomain
> - Everyone entitled to a subdomain at no cost
One subdomain, or one subdomain? Would I be entitled to something like "pavel.hosts.self"?
Will Self[0] is going to love this.
Seems that my.self is already taken. Moving right along, then ...
In practice sadly many of these more obscure TLDs seem to be more expensive than more 'normal' ones like .org
Feels like putting a flag on yourself that you are an easier target (security vulnerabilities, ddos, etc.)
Just use cloudflare with static hosting for things like this. Doesn’t load for me.
Wanted to find out more but it looks to be down. Unfortunate.
I use netbird.io for my home lab and all my connected devices are reachable to each other without manual firewall hackery
my.self is going to be sold for millions
ICANN and its consequences have been a disaster for the internet namespace.
>One domain per person
How will you ensure this?
Good luck getting your outgoing emails accepted by Gmail and outlook.
it.self
[dead]
Remember when the .tk TLD became free 20 years ago ? Every hobbyist took one, then scammers followed, then Facebook and antiviruses started blocking it.
I remember publishing a website for a class on my .tk domain, the teacher couldn't open it and I almost got a failing grade because of it.