October 16 is one of those dates when domain history becomes Internet history.
On this day, the Internet lost Jon Postel — one of the people who helped build the system behind domain names. Five years later, one of the industry’s most famous registrar businesses changed hands. And today, in 2026, fresh market data shows millions still moving through premium .com domains.
1998 – The Internet Loses Jon Postel
On October 16, 1998, Internet pioneer Jon Postel died at the age of 55.
Postel played a fundamental role in the development of Internet standards and ran the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority — IANA — for years, helping coordinate domain names, IP addresses and protocol parameters.
ICANN had only just been created when he died.
Today we casually register a domain in seconds.
Behind that button are decades of work by people like Postel.
2003 – Network Solutions Is Sold for $100 Million
On October 16, 2003, VeriSign announced that it would sell Network Solutions to Pivotal Private Equity for approximately $100 million.
The interesting part for domain history: VeriSign sold the registrar business, but kept its registry operation — including the .com and .net registries.
Registrar sold.
.com registry kept.
Some assets are apparently harder to let go of than others.
Domainers understand.
2026 – $31.44 Million in Liquid-Domain Sales
And today, October 16, 2026, the latest Liquid Domains Overview reported that Escrow.com sales of liquid .com domains reached $31.44 million in Q3 2026 — up 92.18% from the previous quarter.
The report tracks a universe of 614,928 liquid .com domains, including short and highly tradable names.
Twenty-eight years after Jon Postel’s death, people are still trading little pieces of the naming system he helped organize.
Only now some of those little pieces cost six or seven figures.
“Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send.”
— Jon Postel
October 16 connects two very different sides of domain history: the people who built the Internet’s naming infrastructure and the market that later grew on top of it.
Have a great day… and even better domain sales!
Pavel from pavel.domains
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