Your smart contracts might be bulletproof, your blockchain might be decentralized, and your security audits might be flawless. But there’s a dirty secret in the crypto world that nobody wants to talk about: your entire project can be destroyed by a $10-per-year domain name managed by a registrar that doesn’t understand crypto—or worse, actively works against it.
The hard truth? Traditional domain registrars are the Achilles’ heel of Web3. And if you’re running a crypto project without understanding why, you’re playing Russian roulette with your users’ funds.
The Legacy Mindset: When Your Registrar Lives in 2005
Domain registrars built their business models during the Web 1.0 era when domains were simple marketing tools for static websites. Fast forward to 2025, and most of these companies are still operating with the same mentality. They’re treating domains as commoditized services where one customer is as good as the next, and “closing the ticket” at the lowest cost is the primary metric.
But crypto projects aren’t static brochure websites. They’re high-value, high-risk platforms processing millions in daily transactions. When a DEX’s domain goes down, users lose funds. When a DNS hijack redirects to a phishing site, wallets get drained. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
Yet registrars continue to operate as if they’re just renting out digital billboards.
The problem runs deeper than ignorance. As outlined in research from ICANN critics and industry veterans, the domain registrar industry has faced accusations of being slow to act when resolving problems, opaque when responding to requests, and generally negligent of its duties. One prominent example saw ICANN taking over four years and 2,500 customer complaints to terminate an accreditation agreement with a problematic registrar, despite multiple failures to serve customer domain renewals and domains being moved without consent.
For crypto projects dealing with real-time financial operations, this lethargic approach is catastrophic.
Hostile Practices You Need to Know About
1. Arbitrary Account Closures: Guilty Until Proven Innocent
Traditional registrars often view crypto businesses through a lens of suspicion. Without understanding the technology or the legitimate use cases, they treat all crypto-related domains as potential fraud vectors.
The result? Accounts get flagged, domains get suspended, and support tickets languish for days while your users panic and your reputation burns.
Even worse, many registrars use automated compliance systems that can’t distinguish between a legitimate DeFi protocol and a pig-butchering scam. According to recent enforcement data, cryptocurrency-related scams cost Americans nearly $10 billion per year, leading registrars to adopt hair-trigger suspension policies that catch legitimate businesses in the crossfire.
2. The Expired Domain Gold Rush: When Your Loss Becomes Their Profit
Here’s something most crypto founders don’t realize: your registrar makes more money when your domain expires than when you renew it.
When a domain expires, it enters a lucrative aftermarket cycle. The domain goes through a grace period, then a redemption period (where you pay hefty fees to recover it), and finally hits the auction block. Registrars and aftermarket platforms price expired domains based on metrics like search volume, brand potential, and domain length, with expired domains delivering SEO advantages and established traffic that new domains cannot match.
Registrars earn auction fees, redemption fees, and transfer fees—often multiples of the standard renewal cost. They have a financial incentive to make renewals difficult, to let domains slip through the cracks, and to profit from your mistakes.
Combine this with “forgotten” renewal notices, payment processing “issues,” and conveniently timed server maintenance during renewal periods, and you have a system structurally designed against domain holders.
For crypto projects—where domain continuity is literally life or death for user trust—this misaligned incentive structure is unacceptable.
3. Technical Incompetence: Security Features They Don’t Understand
Ask your current registrar about DNSSEC, registry locks, or sitting duck vulnerabilities, and you’ll likely get blank stares.
Traditional registrars often lack the technical sophistication to protect high-value domains. They don’t understand why a crypto project needs registry-level locks (not just registrar locks), why DNSSEC is non-negotiable, or why 24/7 monitoring for DNS changes is critical.
Recent data from Infoblox Threat Intel is shocking: more than 1 million domains are vulnerable to sitting duck attacks, and during a specific monitoring initiative in summer 2024, 70,000 domains were hijacked from a pool of 800,000. These attacks exploit misconfigured DNS settings to hijack domains for their positive reputation, allowing attackers to bypass security controls.
Most registrars have no idea these vulnerabilities even exist, let alone how to prevent them.
4. The Customer Support Black Hole
When disaster strikes—and in crypto, it always strikes at 3 AM—you need immediate, expert support. What you get from traditional registrars? Outsourced tier-1 support reading from scripts, 24-48 hour ticket response times, and staff who think “DNS hijacking” is a cryptocurrency term.
This isn’t hypothetical. In July 2024, multiple crypto platforms experienced catastrophic domain hijacks when Google Domains was sold to Squarespace. The forced migration removed two-factor authentication from accounts, causing domains to become vulnerable, with several being hijacked. Compound Finance, Celer Network, and Unstoppable Domains all fell victim to DNS attacks that redirected users to malicious sites designed to drain wallets.
The crypto community’s advice during the crisis? “Best thing to do is to not interact with crypto and rest for the next couple of days until everything is resolved.”
Imagine telling your users not to use your platform for days because your registrar botched a migration.
The Horror Stories: When Registrars Enable Disaster
The GoDaddy Incidents: A Pattern of Failure
In March 2021, both Cream Finance and PancakeSwap—major DeFi platforms—experienced DNS hijacking attacks that redirected users to phishing sites requesting seed phrases and private keys. Both companies confirmed the incidents occurred after attackers gained access to their GoDaddy accounts.
This wasn’t an isolated incident. It was part of a pattern where attackers specifically target crypto platforms through their domain registrars, knowing it’s the weakest link in the security chain.
The Squarespace Disaster: A Wake-Up Call
The 2024 Squarespace incident exposed how corporate acquisitions and migrations can create overnight vulnerabilities. When Google sold its domain business to Squarespace, the migration process disabled 2FA on millions of accounts—including crypto platforms that had specifically enabled it for security.
The attackers didn’t need to hack blockchain infrastructure or break encryption. They simply logged into Squarespace accounts, changed DNS records, and redirected traffic to wallet-draining sites that looked identical to the originals.
One analyst’s response captured the severity: these incidents demonstrated that vulnerabilities in conventional Web2 infrastructure can have catastrophic consequences for decentralized applications and their users, serving as a wake-up call for the entire industry about the urgent need for comprehensive security measures that bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3.
What Makes a Crypto-Native Registrar Different
So what should you look for instead? A crypto-native registrar understands that your domain isn’t just a URL—it’s the front door to millions in TVL, the trust anchor for thousands of users, and a critical piece of infrastructure that must never fail.
Here’s what that actually means:
Technical Sophistication: They understand DNSSEC, implement it correctly by default, and know the difference between registrar locks and registry locks. They monitor for sitting duck vulnerabilities and DNS anomalies 24/7.
Aligned Incentives: Their business model rewards long-term customer success, not domain churn. They don’t profit from your mistakes.
Crypto Understanding: They know the stakes. They understand that downtime isn’t just inconvenient—it’s existential. They’ve seen the horror stories and actively work to prevent them.
Real Security: Registry locks, out-of-band verification for critical changes, anomaly detection, and rapid response teams that actually understand the urgency.
Transparent Operations: Clear policies, no hidden fees, and actual human support from people who understand your tech stack.
Your Registrar Evaluation Scorecard
Before you trust a registrar with your project’s domains, evaluate them on these critical factors:
Security Features (Must-Have):
- Registry lock availability and implementation
- DNSSEC with proper configuration
- 2FA/MFA that can’t be bypassed by support
- Real-time DNS monitoring and alerting
- Transfer lock mechanisms
Crypto Compatibility (Essential):
- Accepts cryptocurrency payments
- Understands blockchain projects
- No blanket anti-crypto policies
- History with crypto clients
- Transparent about compliance approach
Support Quality (Critical):
- 24/7 availability with <1 hour response for emergencies
- Staff with actual technical knowledge
- Direct access to senior support for critical issues
- Documented SLAs and uptime guarantees
- Proactive communication about security issues
Business Practices (Deal-Breakers):
- No profit from expired domain auctions
- Clear renewal processes with multiple notifications
- Transparent pricing with no hidden fees
- Easy domain migration (both in and out)
- Clear abuse policies that distinguish scams from legitimate crypto
The DomainSure Difference
At DomainSure, we built our entire platform around one principle: every business, including crypto projects deserve domain infrastructure that matches their technical sophistication and security requirements.
We’re not a traditional registrar trying to bolt on crypto support. We’re a crypto-native operation built by people who’ve been in this space for decades and understand both the technology and the threats.
Registry locks come standard, not as expensive add-ons. DNSSEC is implemented correctly with our Set-and-Forget™ system—no technical headaches. 24/7 monitoring catches DNS anomalies before they become disasters. And when you need support, you talk to people who actually understand what a sitting duck attack is and why your domain’s DNSSEC chain might be broken.
Most importantly, our interests align with yours. We don’t profit from your domain expiring or getting seized. We succeed when your project succeeds.
Take Action Before It’s Too Late
Every day you leave your domains with a registrar that doesn’t understand crypto, you’re rolling the dice. The question isn’t if you’ll face a domain security incident, it’s when, and whether you’ll be prepared.
Don’t wait until you’re the next cautionary tale trending on Crypto Twitter.
Start today:
- Audit your current registrar using the scorecard above
- Identify gaps in your domain security posture
- Schedule a free Domain Threat Assessment with DomainSure
- Migrate your critical domains to a crypto-native registrar
Your users trust you with their funds. Make sure the gateway they use to access your platform is as secure as your smart contracts.
Protect your project’s front door before attackers pick the lock.
Download our free white paper: Domain & DNS Security for Crypto, DeFi and Web3 Platforms
Or schedule your free Domain Threat Assessment at domainsure.zone
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